“You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears
Were like a better way; those happy smilets
That play’d on her ripe lip seem’d not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence
As pearls from diamonds dropp’d.”
-William Shakespeare
“With a piece of copy in my hand I listen to the music around me, the hum and drone of voices, the tinkle of the linotype machines, as if there were a thousand silver bracelets passing through a wringer; now and then a rat scurries past our feet or a cockroach descends the wall in front of us, moving nimbly and gingerly on his delicate legs. The events of the day are slid under your nose, quietly, unostentatiously, with, now and then, a by-line to mark the presence of a human hand, an ego, a touch of vanity. The procession passes serenely, like a cortege entering the cemetery gates. The paper under the copy desk is so thick that it almost feels like a carpet with a soft nap.”
-Henry Miller
“The back porch was bathed in moonlight, and the shadow, crisp as toast, moved across the porch towards Jem.”
-Harper Lee
“They peel the morning like a fruit.”
-Lawrence Durrell
“God and I have become like two giant fat people living in a tiny boat.
We keep bumping into one another and laughing.”
-Hafiz
“The mist has flopped over onto the embankment like a sailing ship.”
-Michael Ondaatje
“None of them could bear to imagine that child, their own flesh and blood, raised by birds, essentially a bird slowly converted to human by lab scientists. He appeared in the prayers of this scattered cult once in a while, but even then they, with their own troubles, eventually let the horror of him fade, like an old bad dream.”
-Porochista Khakpour
“My daddy’s face is a study. Winter moves into it and presides there. His eyes become a cliff of snow threatening to avalanche; his eyebrows bend like black limbs of leafless trees.”
-Toni Morrison
The Simile Museum 