1
Did you find anything special?' Blackie asked. T. nodded. 'Come over here, ' he said, 'and look.' Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. 'Old Misery's savings, ' he said. 'Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.'' What are you going to do? Share them?'' We aren't thieves, ' T. said. 'Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me - a celebration.' He knelt down on the floor and counted them out - there were seventy in all. 'We'll burn them, ' he said, 'one by one, ' and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. 'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through, ' T. said.' You hate him a lot?' Blackie asked.' Of course I don't hate him, ' T. said. 'There'd be no fun if I hated him.' The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. 'All this hate and love, ' he said, 'it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie, ' and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. 'I'll race you home, Blackie, ' he said. ("The Destructors").Graham Greene
2
It was nearly lunch-time before Blackie had finished and went in search of T. Chaos had advanced. The kitchen was a shambles of broken glass and china, the dining-room was stripped of parquet, the skirting was up, the door had been taken off its hinges, and the destroyers had moved up a floor. Streaks of light came in through the closed shutters where they worked with the seriousness of creators - and destruction after all is a form of creation. A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become. ("The Destructors") .Graham Greene
3
He stopped and leaned against a pole and looked up at the deaf and swollen sky. It was a movement of dark shapes, a hurrying, a running. He closed his eyes. ("Hunger")Charles Beaumont
4
A cold wind raced across the surrounding fields of wild grass, turning the land into a heaving dark-green ocean. It sighed up through the branches of cherry trees and rattled the thick leaves. Sometimes a cherry would break loose, tumble in the gale, fall and split, filling the night with its fragrance. The air was iron and loam and growth. He walked and tried to pull these things into his lungs, the silence and coolness of them. But someone was screaming, deep inside him. Someone was talking. ("Hunger") .Charles Beaumont