“When I had been there a little longer, and had seen this phase of crystal clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold; when the storms of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support; I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months’ siege like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter.”
-Edith Wharton
“I still remembered the moment they first arrived, their spaceships burning the atmosphere like comets, like falling angels, and how we’d surrounded the ships in horror, aiming for their thin legs with anything we could find, because the rest of their bodies were armored but the legs snapped like pencils.”
-Brenda Peynado
“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
“But I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and I still couldn’t make out the words when smoke rose around him and he stood holding a giant seashell the size of a baseball glove filled with tobacco and this long, thick, bushy thing I’d later learn was sage that burned and smelled calm, like salt water.”
-Morgan Talty
“The rain lightened, and then turned to gravelly pellets of ice. It began to patter his windshield like the taps of someone trying to get his attention.”
-Rachel Kushner
“Her hands are neatly folded, like two birds, in the shallow dip of her lap.”
-Julie Otsuka
“Hazel’s mom has a cloud of pale hair that she burns dry every morning. Whenever Hazel meets her focus, her frown springs into a grin. The grin is toothy and tight, like a sad shark that smiles only because of its anatomy.”
-Lydia Conklin
“When I woke, my joints had tightened like screws.”
-Tessa Yang
“Patches of overgrown grass resembled a comb-over on the head of a bald person who didn’t want to see reality.”
-Elif Batuman
“He felt the mystery of his own unconscious like a whale looming invisibly beneath a tiny swimmer. If he couldn’t search or retrieve or view his own past, then it wasn’t his. It was lost.”
-Jennifer Egan
The Simile Museum 