“Maria sits on the pallet, hands in her lap like broken sparrows.”
-Anthony Doerr
“Maria sits on the pallet, hands in her lap like broken sparrows.”
-Anthony Doerr
“I drove home, weeping out of helplessness. My hands were shaking, and now I knew this would end badly. With a sigh of relief, the Samurai stopped outside the house, as if it were on my side in everything, I pressed my face against the steering wheel. The horn responded sadly, like a summons. Like a cry of mourning.”
-Olga Tokarczuk
“She looked to be in her midthirties, about fifteen or so years behind him, and rather tall, with long straight hair parted to the right and rounded eyes like the portholes on a ship.”
-Pitchaya Sudbanthad
“Suddenly Wally stooped, reached down, and heaved Sir Arthur out in a fireman’s lift. He flung him over his shoulder like an old bag of oats.”
-Samuel Steward
“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
“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
“She came into his eyes sudden and permanent as a photograph.”
-Tracy O’Neill