"I had lain down on my bed, a book in my hand, in my room which tremulously protected its frail transparent coolness from the afternoon sun behind its nearly closed shutters, through which a gleam of daylight had nonetheless contrived to pass its yellow wings, remaining motionless between the wood and the windowpane in a corner, like a poised butterfly."

-Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

"Silk-sheathed women with plucked eyebrows brushed past the marble-topped table, nearly sweeping off the cloth and my supper with their hips, trailing the fringes of Spanish shawls and mingled perfumes of Coty and femininity, or lolled, smoking, on the red plush seats."

-Europa, Robert Briffault

"Deep in the heart of the Caucasus mountains a wild storm was gathering. Drear shadows drooped and thickened above the Pass of Dariel, –that terrific gorge which like a mere thread seems to hang between the toppling frost-bound heights above and the black abysmal depths below, -clouds, fringed ominously with lurid green and white, drifted heavily yet swiftly across the jagged peaks where, looming largely out of the mist, the snowcapped crest of Mount Kazbek rose coldly white against the darkness of the threatening sky. Night was approaching, though away to the west a broad gash of crimson, a seeming wound in the breast of heaven, showed where the sun had set an hour since."

-Ardath, Marie Corelli

A Sicilian Romance

"A melancholy stillness reigned through the halls, and the silence of the courts, which were shaded by high turrets, was for many
hours together undisturbed by the sound of any foot-step. Julia, who discovered an early taste for books, loved to retire in an evening to a small closet in which she had collected her favorite authors. This room formed the western angle of the castle: one of its windows looked upon the sea, beyond which was faintly seen, skirting the horizon, the dark rocky coast of Calabria; the other opened towards a part of the castle, and afforded a prospect of the neighbouring woods."

-Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance

"Like the swarms of clustering bees that issue forever
in fresh bursts from the hollow in the stone, and hang like
bunched grapes as they hover beneath the flowers in springtime
fluttering in swarms together this way and that way,
so the many nations of men from the ships and the shelters
along the front of the deep sea beach marched in order
by companies to the assembly, and Rumour walked blazing among them,
Zeus' messenger, to hasten them along."

-The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore

"Thus, when Mermoz first crossed the South Atlantic in a hydroplane, as day was dying he ran foul of the Black Hole region, off Africa. Straight ahead of him were the tails of tornadoes rising minute by minute gradually higher, rising as a wall is built; and then the night came down upon these preliminaries and swallowed them up; and when, an hour later, he slipped under the clouds, he came out into a fantastic kingdom.

Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they were supporting the squat and lowering arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight toward the exit from the temple. And this spectacle was so overwhelming that only after he had got through the Black Hole did Mermoz awaken to the fact that he had not been afraid."

-Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Montagne Pelée, 1902

"Thursday 8 May was Ascension Day. The morning was calm, although a cloud of ash covered the sky over St Pierre. The governor, his wife and a small party of officials set off by boat for Le Prêcheur. They were never seen again.

... At 8:02 there was a blinding flash, and then a sound like the roar of thousands of cannons. A directed, low-angle blast, followed by a nuée ardente, left the summit by the little notch on the southwestern rim of the caldera, swept down the Rivière Blanche valley, rushed southwards beyond it at speeds estimated between 200km and 500km per hour, and at temperatures ranging between 200ºC and 450ºC, devastated an area of 58 [square] km, and overwhelmed St Pierre in less than two minutes. The blast and then the incandescent cloud of swirling ash, steam, and an emulsion of lava blocks, boulders, pumice, toxic gases, trees and masonry hurtled down the streets, into the houses, into the cathedral crowded with worshippers, and killed more than 28000 people in the space of two fatal breaths."

-Volcanoes, Alwyn Scarth