The Simile Museum

August 2, 2014

“She was all charm, beauty, perfect grace, with a forehead like the new moon, eyes like those of a deer or a wild heifer, eyebrows like the crescent in the month of Sha’ban, cheeks like red anemones, mouth like the seal of Solomon, lips like red carnelian, teeth like a row of pearls set in coral, neck like a cake for a king, bosom like a fountain, breasts like a pair of big pomegranates resembling a rabbit with uplifted ears, and a belly with a navel like a cup that holds a pound of benzoin ointment.”

-The Arabian Nights

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July 30, 2014

“A story is like water that you heat for your bath. It takes messages between the fire and your skin. It lets them meet, and it cleans you!

-Rumi

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July 25, 2014

“The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform somberness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The voice of the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother.”

-Joseph Conrad

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July 22, 2014

“Sometimes the midday silence of the house is so large it’s like a thought.”

-Tony Cohan

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July 18, 2014

“When I turn around all I see is the Mississippi Bridge: its great latticework of girders is gridded against the southern horizon like a waffle iron, filled with blue sky as with batter.”

-Bennett Sims

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July 12, 2014

“Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we beat out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity.”

-Gustave Flaubert

 

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July 7, 2014

“The train, which was black and sleek and elegant, and was called the Fireball, had pulled more than halfway across the bridge when the engine nosed over towards the lake and then the rest of the train slid after it into the water like a weasel sliding off a rock.”

-Marilynne Robinson

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July 4, 2014

“All of his tenderness is like a minotaur gazing at a cow.”

-Guy Davenport

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June 30, 2014

“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flag, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”

– Italo Calvino

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June 19, 2014

“Words, like a procession, rush across a bridge which is usually drawn up and has even grown rusted from the love of solitude.”

-Anaïs Nin

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