“The man laughed and left us on the curb and went back and handed a bill to the driver in the middle of a great honking and some yelling, and then we saw the girls from the magazine moving off in a row, one cab after another, like a wedding party with nothing but bridesmaids.”
-Sylvia Plath
“Truth is, I hardly understood half of what the gold man said. I’d never seen a train, didn’t know the ocean route he spoke of, or where the workers had come from. But I understood his gold. I didn’t ask questions. He had a gold watch the size of my palm that he flicked as he talked. He was fat enough that I could cling like a tick to his wealth.”
-C Pam Zhang
“Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away. And that was exactly what I wanted–my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.”
-Ottessa Moshfegh
“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
“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
