[W]hen the grate is brought forward, there is a great vacancy left bet — Fireplace

"The prisoner was no longer fastened to the bed save by one leg. Before the seven men had had time to recover themselves and spring upon him, he had bent over to the fireplace, reached his hand towards the furnace, then rose up, and now Thenardier, the Thenardiess, and the bandits, thrown by the shock into the back part of the room, beheld him with stupefaction, holding above his head the glowing chisel, from which fell an ominous light, almost free and in a formidable attitude."

"I interrupted the old man in midsentence and stood straight up from the rocker. It felt as if a pulse of energy ran up my spine, compressing my lungs, electrifying my skin, bringing the hairs on the back of my neck to full alert. I moved closer to the fireplace, unable to absorb its heat. "Are you saying what I think youre saying?" My brain was taking on too much knowledge. There was overflow and I needed to shake off the excess. The old man looked at nothing and said, "We are Gods debris."

"Gwell eo beroù war an oaled / Eget e ti march rous ar pried (Better skewers on the fireplace than in the spouses russet horse shed.)"

"It happened because one day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, "Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” And she said, "That’s a first-class idea! You write it!" So I went ahead and wrote it."

"Lele liilii ka lehu o kapuahi (He is scattering the ashes of the fireplace)."

"In the winter on a Sunday afternoon, I can spend six hours in front of the fireplace, just looking at the flames and thinking. In the evening, I’m drunk with beautiful thoughts. My wife says to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ I say, ‘The fire.’ We have to take a step backward."