When old, he wilted and handed out flowers, preached "pure Christianity" and warned against involving yourself too much in anything but a relationship to God.

She longed to be a flame.

He flipped through the book's pages until he found a pair of limbs that matched the woman's.

Then she saw a small peach with a soft neon glow.

One morning, he wrote down all of the passages in the Bible that he felt were the backbone behind Seventh Day Adventist philosophy.

Later, she found his name in a history of the blues.

At times, he loved her and at times he thought that she was his father's lover.

As soon as she was out of the magpie's sight, she crept along the short corridor which led back to the garden.

He needled the air with his baton as though poking a rotisserie ham with a thermometer.

For the next three years, she traveled all over the world with her meditation and yoga teacher, studying Indian philosophy, Sanskrit, yoga, Indian music and cooking.

He forced himself to think about Denver.

She lived in a cream-colored world.

He loved humankind dearly and with all his heart, but he disliked most human beings.

She flickered away, pale and mothlike in the gloom.

Despite his youth and delicate health, he retired to a desert; he practiced severe mortification, tempted continually by the demons expending all their efforts to make him abandon this life of total renouncement.

Hopelessly behind schedule, she frittered away much of the remaining time on an unrelated project.

Not thinking too much about things, he returned home only to develop a bad case of curiosity later in the day.

But when she ordered a chicken Caesar salad in a restaurant one day, it never occurred to her that the small amount of cheese in the dressing would be a problem.

He grasped the strategic importance of Hungary.

She took the lamb and drove to Boston, where she stayed with a friend.