“I identified the flaws, the weaknesses of my characters–and exploited them–like a thumb digging into the rotten spot of an apple.”
-Benjamin Percy
The Simile Museum
Tag: Essay
October 24, 2021
“So as long as it lasts, I want to write nearby Rodrigo Toscano, who pulls his Spanglish phonetic syllables apart like taffy (“tha’ vahnahnah go-een to keel joo”).”
-Cathy Park Hong
October 14, 2021
“it was the longest day of the year, and the Irish Sea had a metallic tint. The waves were tiny but insistent, like uncoöperative children.”
-D.T. Max
December 2, 2018
“There is something feckless about a writer’s journals. They are a specialist’s document, and those who parse their pages are like grooming baboons, searching for fleas.”
-Dustin Illingworth
June 26, 2018
“I wrote this as a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan because their work epitomizes salient aspects of the British Empire which remain vibrant. And because as a child I was sick to death of hearing “I am the very model of a modern major general.” I enjoyed writing this, playing with rhyme and language–it was like spitting into their cultural soup.”
-Michelle Cliff
June 16, 2018
“There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday of youth and poetry that it may be true in gleams and fragments. Then its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see that it must be true.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
November 20, 2017
“A cloud of intense literary ambition hung over the house like a stormy little micro-climate. “
-Claire Dederer
The Simile Museum 