The old man’s eyes struck me first.
Jan-Philipp Sendkerk, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
Mabel had known there would be silence. That was the point, after all.
Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
3 May. Bistritz.—Left Munich at 8:35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.
Bram Stoker, Dracula
In April 2008, Neal Logiudice finally subpoenaed me to appear before the grand jury. By then it was too late.
William Landay, Defending Jacob
Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
I remember, in no particular order:
—a shiny inner wrist;
—steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it;
—gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of the house;
—a river rushign nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeambs;
—another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface;
—bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door.
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement … anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa’s antipodal ant annexation.
Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa
On the boat we were mostly virgins.
Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
