“Constitutionalism didn’t burst from the head of James Madison, like Athena from Zeus, simply on account of all the books he’d read. Sure, constitutionalism flew from the pages of those books, but it was also shot from the barrel of a gun.”
-Jill Lepore
“With the help of fear and echoes and winter silences, that dog had a voice like a big bronze gong.”
-Kurt Vonnegut
“For to wish to forget how much you loved someone — and then, to actually forget — can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”
– Maggie Nelson
“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
“When I write, it’s as if I were butchering eels… I pay little attention to the unpleasantness of the operation.”
-Elena Ferrante
“Then the river, like an awakened bear, yanked the rope and Juan went down too.”
-Diane Cook
“Most of Muriel’s friends are writers, real writers, not like my old friends who got over it like the flu.”
-Lily King
