Moppet

“Sometimes in the late evenings one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks - bed-making, washing, one errand and another - and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind.”
― Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates

“By seven o'clock even the long corridor was as dim as the alley outside. No one thought of shutting the windows - I doubt whether they will shut...and the fog rolled over the sill in banks and round the open glass doors, till even the white cap of a Sister could hardly be seen as she passed.”
― Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates

“Sous un ciel infiniment pur et très haut, dans la lumière douce de la lune, la place de la Concorde paraissait immense et étrange. A cette heure, ce n’était plus un carrefour de Paris, avec son obélisque aux lignes hiératiques, la voie blanche du pont menant à un palais d’architecture grecque, la large avenue des Champs-Élysées fuyant mystérieusement sous la verdure, les terrasses désertes et les jardins silencieux des Tuileries, elle ressemblait à l’agora de quelque ville de rêve sur laquelle planait le sommeil et qui donnait une délicieuse sensation d’immobilité, d’apaisement et de repos.”
― Pierre De Coulevain, Eve victorieuse

“I have said before that the long corridor is wonderful. In the winter afternoons and evenings, when the mist rolled up and down over the tiles like the smoke in a tunnel, when one walked almost in darkness and peered into the then forbidden wards, when dwarfs coming from the G block grew larger and larger until the A block turned them into beings of one's own size, the corridor always made a special impression on me.”
― Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates