“The Boston T was completely different from the New York subway–the lines named after colors, the cars so clean and small, like toys. And yet it wasn’t a toy, grown men used it, with serious expressions on their faces.”
-Elif Batuman
The Simile Museum
Tag: Novel
April 16, 2018
“We all got into the back of a taxi together and started fixing up our seat belts. Bobbi sat in the middle, with her head turned to speak to Melissa, so I could see the back of her neck and her little spoon-like ear.”
-Sally Rooney
April 9, 2018
“This seemingly futile moment marked the beginning of our long journey toward nothingness, into the craggy pits of this measly universe. Generation after generation, our bodies have been coated with the dust of death. Our hearts have been extinguished, our lives leveled. We are weary, thin as rakes, hacked into pieces. But we believe our duty is to persevere against a world hell-bent on eliminating the few who dare to sprout in the collective manure of degenerate humans. That’s where I come into the picture. I–astonished and amazed at the magnitude of darkness that surrounds us–am the last in a long line of valiant thinkers.”
-Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi
February 19, 2018
“Leaning back on his rattan chair, sporting a white T-shirt and khakis, his perfect ankles exposed because he wore no socks with his boat shoes, he was cool as ice cream even in the tropical weather.”
-Viet Thanh Nguyen
February 13, 2018
“It left my sister Greta, younger than me by two years but with test scores that painted me a remedial toddler by comparison, with a tic that made her pull out her hair until the white bald patches of her scalp shone through like flags of surrender.”
-Xhenet Aliu
January 25, 2018
“Snow fell like clots of wet laundry.”
-Lisa Ko
January 16, 2018
“The mixture of wine and dreary weather is like a barnacle on the hull of my sinking mood, and I consider calling in sick for the afternoon, going home, retreating into a prolonged coma-nap.”
-Cate Dicharry
January 10, 2018
“In her mind, she had ridden the Shimonoseki ferry, the Osaka train, and even the trolley that could outpace a boy running or cycling. As cars drove past them, she marveled that they did look like metal bulls on wheels, which was what Hansu had called them. She was a country girl, but she had heard of all these things. Yet she could not let on that she knew of uniformed ticket collectors, immigration officers, porters, and of trolleys, electric lamps, kerosene stoves, and telephones, so at the trolley stop, Sunja remained quiet and still like a seedling sprouting from new soil, upright and open to collect the light. She would have uprooted herself to have seen the world with him, and now she was seeing it without him.”
-Min Jin Lee
December 27, 2017
“His presence is like an alarm clock that never stops ringing.”
-Nell Zink
December 16, 2017
“The house felt almost as much like a ship as a house. Placed there to ride out storms, it was built into the island as though it were part of it; but you saw the sea from all the windows and there was good cross ventilation so that you slept cool on the hottest nights. The house was painted white to be cool in the summer and it could be seen from a long way out in the Gulf Stream.”
-Ernest Hemingway
The Simile Museum 