“Solitude wrapped him like a cloak.”
-Francine du Plessix Gray
The Simile Museum
Tag: Simile
November 23, 2016
“Annika was speaking very fast and had apparently decided that the best strategy was to treat Willem like an eclipse and simply not look at him at all.”
-Hanya Yanagihara
November 16, 2016
“Only the animals are seasoned owners.
The lakes belong to frogs with broken voices.
Farms are inhabited by rabbits.
A fox barks like a landlord down the dark.”
-Alastair Reid
November 11, 2016
“Rough channels of water meandered out in a maze through a forest of reeds on the canal side, and islands, oases of wind-contorted trees, appeared in the distance like sudden revelations.”
-Jeff Vandermeer
November 6, 2016
“Generous gestures, when she attempts them, seem to swipe through the lives of others like a random bear paw, often making matters worse. And she finds no momentum in sharing, in benevolence, in charity, no interaction with another person ever brought her a bolt of pure aliveness like entering the water on a still morning with the world empty in every direction to the sky. That first entry. Crossing the border of consciousness into, into what?”
-Anne Carson
October 21, 2016
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
-E.L. Doctorow
October 17, 2016
“One of them bubbled out of the ground with a crystalline spurt and a sort of sob, and then carved its own sandy bed. But it was no sooner born than it lost confidence and plunged underground again. The other spring, almost invisible, brushed over the grass like a snake and spread itself secretly in the middle of a meadow where the narcissus, flowering in a ring, alone bore witness to its presence.”
-Colette
October 1, 2016
“Your heart like a hawk-mouth in the sun, your heart like a ship on an atoll, your heart like a compass needle driven mad by a little piece of lead, like washing drying in the wind, like a whining of horses, like seed thrown to the birds, like an evening paper one has finished reading! Your heart is a charade that the whole world has guessed.”
-Louis Aragon
September 30, 2016
“Electrical wires reach from poles and rooftops, webbing the overcast sky like a cracked windowpane.”
-Kelly Luce
September 26, 2016
“For a long while she lay on her sweaty sheets listening to the cacophony of toucans and araras and howler monkeys, rude and relentless as dengue.”
-Edward Hamlin
The Simile Museum 