The Floating Nun - Harris Burdick

     The air in the upper part of the cathedral had more movement than the cold and stagnant heaviness down below. She could almost imagine what it would have felt like on her hair, had her hair not been so severely constricted by her habit.
     She had been floating here - in the centre of the nave, on one of the hard chairs that they used instead of pews - for at least half an hour now. The strange thing was not the floating chair, but the complete peace she felt up there: no fear of falling, not even any questions of why she was where she was. She wondered when she might get back down to earth, but she certainly didn't worry about it.
     The Bishop and his aide had walked into the church, and seemed as unfazed as the Floating Nun.
     "You've been there long?" asked the Bishop in his nasal drawl.
     "Not too long," she replied. "I seem to be in a place quite beyond the constant state of flux existent down there. I think I shall stay here for the foreseeable future."
     "Stay there?!" exclaimed the Bishop, for the first time showing an inkling of emotion, though it wasn't clear if that emotion was anger, horror, or just surprise.
     "Yes! Stay here."
     The Bishop frowned his frown that the Nun knew only too well, for he employed that frown for his many employments: praying, preaching, teaching, disciplining, and even - if his aide was speaking the truth - for sleeping.
     The Nun had always been beyond the reach of the Bishop; as a woman she answered to her Mother Superior, and of course to the Lord her God, but to no one else. Now, however, she was beyond him in a whole new way, and as she realized that she smiled, and as she smiled her chair floated higher towards the vast and ornately decorated ceiling.

The Perfect Sentence

Currently I am reading Death comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James. This is my first foray into the land of James' mysteries, and I have to say that although I was eagerly anticipating the content of this novel, I had low expectations about the quality of the writing. Having read Steig Larsson and Dan Brown, I assumed that mystery writers were all in the same class, yet I am pleasantly surprised - and consistently blown away - by the beauty of her sentences.

Here, then are a few of my favourites so far:

"They also accused [Elizabeth] of being sardonic, and although there was uncertainty about the meaning of the word, they knew that it was not a desirable quality in a woman, being one which gentlemen particularly disliked."

"An assembly ball was a penance to be endured only because it offered an opportunity for her to take centre stage at the piano forte and, by the judicious use of the sustaining pedal to stun the audience into submission."

"Mr Bennet was a quiet and reassuring presence in the house, rather like a benign, familiar ghost."

Lovely.