From The Confessions of Augustine: 

Everything most enticing to Augustine’s intellect is stacked on the altar, less as a combustible sacrifice than as a bundle of fireworks: the way the mind works, the very memory he relies on to write this very autobiography; time, that powerful and mysterious entity seemingly both inside and outside himself; and reading and interpreting, those psychologically fascinating, ultra-prestigious, defining acts of a Roman gentleman.

From The Invisible World: 

It is almost impossible now to imagine the fear and disbelief that Röntgen must have experienced when he waved his hand in front of the fluorescent screen and saw his skeletal hand waving back in the dark. That night, he was understandably late for his dinner. His wife Bertha, whose mother-in-law had taught her to prepare Röntgen’s favorite Dutch meals, sent for him several times from their large apartment above the ground-floor lab. He did not reply.

From The Last Englishmen: 

By the end of his first year as viceroy a face-to-face meeting with Gandhi had become pressing. First, however, he had to parse those devilish questions of protocol by which he set great store.

Should Gandhi be allowed to sign the Viceroy’s guest book?

Could his office insist upon decent dress?

From The Prime Minister of Paradise:

From Nowhere Land: 

The cellblocks were crude, slapdash and — even at a cost of $30 million — not well made. Pentagon officials who tried to decipher the cryptic instructions of their boss thought Rumsfeld wanted something he wouldn’t mind abandoning after a few years, once the prisoners had all been wrung out, prosecuted or sent home.

From The Yellow House: 

Shame is a slow creeping. The most powerful things are quietest, if you think about it. Like water. I cannot pinpoint the precise moment I came to understand that no one was ever to come inside the Yellow House. My mother began saying you know this house not all that comfortable for other people and that line seemed, after a time, unending, a verbal tic so at home with us that she need not ever complete the sentence.

You know this house...