He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out.

She didn't do that. Never in a billion years.

Because I'm afraid, Montag thought. A child feigning illness, afraid to call because after a moment's discussion, the conversation would run badly.

Beatty was looking at him as if he were a museum statue.

He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw.

We've got to start somewhere here, figuring out why we're in such a mess. We're heading right for the cliff, Millie. God, I don't want to go over.

Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great city could penetrate.

She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night.

A fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stairwell.

He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.

The books lay like great mounds of fishes left to dry.

The moonlight was like a breath exhaled upon the window. It was like a faint drift of greenish luminescent smoke.

Montag was cut in half. He felt his chest chopped down and split apart.