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Penelope Lively – Moon Tiger
“I said that one of the things one never did was notice this place. See it for itself. For us it was nothing but a backdrop. ‘It’s a beautiful country,’ I said. ‘And we don’t see it.’ And he said, ‘We shall always see it’.”
The Smiths – Handsome Devil
“There’s more to life than books you know, but not much more.”
James Reid Parker – The Archimandrite’s Niece
“He waited uncomfortably for a display of histrionics, but none materialized. Mme. Liapchev showed no sign of anger or even of acute disappointment. She looked at him dreamily and smoothed her gloves with exquisite grace. ‘You are so sympathetic,’ she said, either with rapt admiration or an excellent imitation of it. ‘So sympathetic and so good!'”
Stephen Crane – The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky
“The bride was not very pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue cashmere, with small reservations of velvet here and there, and with steel buttons abounding. She continually twisted her head to regard her puff sleeves, very stiff, straight, and high. They embarrassed her. It was quite apparent that she had cooked, and that she expected to cook dutifully. The blushes caused by the careless scrutiny of some passengers as she had entered the car were strange to see upon this plain, under-class countenance, which was drawn in placid, almost emotionless lines.”
John Updike – The Lucid Eye in Silver Town
“Shimmering buildings arrowed upward and glinted through the treetops. This was New York, I felt: the silver town. Towers of ambition rose, crystalline, within me.”
John McNulty – Cluney McFarrar’s Hardtack
“You don’t really know what’s happening in a war like that until a couple years later when you come home and read in a slow-written book just what the hell was going on that time.”
Jack Kerouac – On the Road
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, splashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries. I stuck my head out of the window and took deep lunfuls of the fragrant air. It was the most beautiful of moments.”
James Thurber – Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife
“He opened the cellar door. ‘Here, you go first.’ ‘Brr,’ said Mrs. Preble, starting down the steps. ‘It’s cold down here! You would think of this, at this time of year! Any other husband would have buried his wide in the summer.’ ‘You can’t just arrange these things whenever you want to,’ said Mr. Preble. ‘I didn’t fall in love with her till late fall.’ ‘Anybody else would’ve fallen in love with her long before that. She’s been around for years. Why is it you always let other men get in ahead of you?'”
Father is Firm With His Ailments
Loren isum
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