Please read this paragraph from Mrs. Dalloway and tell me if you’ve ever read a better, more animated, or longer description of the passage of time anywhere! A one sentence paragraph, devoted to telling the time.  What a writer!

“Shredding and slicing, dividing and subdividing, the clocks of Harley Street nibbled at the June day, counseled submission, upheld authority, and pointed out in chorus the supreme advantages of a sense of proportion, until the mound of time was so far diminished that a commercial clock, suspended above a shop in Oxford Street, announced, genially and fraternally, as if it were a pleasure to Messrs. Rigby and Lowndes to give the information gratis, that it was half-past one.”