“Condense your want into a word, and water will emerge from your mouth like milk.”
-K-Ming Chang
“..the one corner of the throw rug that flipped up like a cowlick…”
-Celeste Ng
“With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong.”
-Kurt Vonnegut
“He skitters through the schoolyard like a traitor to childhood.”
-Richard Powers
“The woman was staring at her, so Ava stared back—the two of them aiming their gazes at each other like guns—all the way across the City of Lights. Just looking at each other from opposite shores of the rattling train. Eventually Ava took off her earrings, still not taking her eyes off the woman. Why? Because her assumption at that point, of course, was that the two of them would fight to the death. But when the train pulled into the last stop on the line, the woman just stood to exit, and when she did so, she even held back the sliding doors politely, so Ava could go first.”
-Mona Awad
“They all sat there in silence. It was like being in a play where no one knew the next line.”
– Emily St. John Mandel