“He offered an explanation, speaking of his search for tiny pores in the skin of reality, like holes that worms bore into wood, and how upon finding one he was able to expand and stretch it the way a glassblower turns a dollop of molten glass into a long-necked pipe, and how he then allowed time to flow like water at one mouth while causing it to thicken like syrup at the other.”
-Ted Chiang
“Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.”
-Jenny Offill
“Rather than fabulous and enviable, then, I felt in London the way you do when you take one step too many at the bottom of a flight of stairs: brought up short by the unexpected plateau and its dull, unyielding thud.”
-Lisa Halliday
“While we sped through the city, the air scraping against my face, I felt like a kite not quite catching the wind, thinking that if he could go just for a little longer and if I tightened my grip, I might take flight.”
-Christopher Gonzalez
“Human beings pass me on the street, and I want to reach out and strum them as if they were guitars.”
-Sandra Cisneros
“The wind opened and closed Rawiya’s scarf like a lung.”
-Zeyn Joukhadar
“He was hiding something he exposed by his very attempt to conceal it, flanked by a dozen of their classmates who clung to his charisma like lint.”
-Susan Choi
“For days after getting a letter he was irascible and joyful, worked day and night, foamed out ideas like a fountain. Then slowly, with desperate spurts and struggles, he came back to earth, to dry ground, ran dry.”
-Ursula K. Le Guin
“Above us, maybe, is a full moon. It shimmers like an enormous backlit tooth, and we stop a moment to stare.”
-Jennifer duBois
“Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee.”
– E. M. Forster
The Simile Museum 