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“She stood at the edge of a glassy river lined with impossibly tall trees, fanning out their wide emerald leaves among the puffy white clouds. Across the river, a row of crystal castles glittered in the sunlight in a way that would make Walt Disney want to throw rocks at his “Magic Kingdom.â€� To her right, a golden path led into a sprawling city, where the elaborate domed buildings seemed to be built from brick-size jewels—each structure a different color. Snowcapped mountains surrounded the lush valley, and the crisp, cool air smelled like cinnamon and chocolate and sunshine.”
― Shannon Messenger, Keeper of the Lost Cities

“To put it succinctly: description without prescription is the germ of resignation, and prescription without description is mere whim.”
― Reza Negarestani

“Eloquence is painted thought, and thus those who, after having painted it, add somewhat more, make a picture, not a portrait.”
― Blaise Pascal, The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal

“His voice was a deep and quiet rumble. It made me think of a freshly tuned tractor engine.. He didn't sound illiterate, but he didn't sound educated. In his speech as in so many other things, he was a mystery. Mostly it was his eyes that troubled me - a kind of peaceful absence in them, as if he were floating far, far away.”
― Stephen King, The Green Mile

“The house is seventies modern with sliding windows, gas-effect and a giant TV in the living room. There are almost no books. I'm not making any judgement. It's just the sort of thing I can't help but notice.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with no writing inside it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“Night would settle in like slow blindness, sucking the color from the trees and the low sky and the rocks and the frozen grass and the frost white hydrangeas until there was nothing left in the window but her own reflection.”
― Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife

“I hiked up a path and into the woods, thinking about what I should be thinking about and almost having a real feeling—a feeling like, this is really sad, this is a sad place to be, a sad part of my life, maybe just a sad life. The woods were not particularly beautiful. I was not impressed by the trees.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“My mother likes odd numbers and is suspicious of the even ones. She reads a new book every week and is bewitched by black holes in the universe. She describes herself as an optimist but she worries about everything—worries incessantly—worries on behalf of others when she feels they are not worrying adequately for themselves.

And my mother misses her own mother, my grandmother, immensely, who only has a past now; who is only allowed to be as we remember her.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“Mitch looks in her direction. He can't meet her eyes. It's as if she's semi-invisible, a kind of hovering blur.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

“Her freckles looked as if someone had blown cinnamon across her nose and high cheekbones.”
― Jo Ann Brown, An Amish Match

“ÃŽn locul în care ÅŸedea el se modificaseră forÅ£a gravitaÅ£ională, densitatea aerului ÅŸi indicele de refracÅ£ie a luminii. Văzut de la distanţă, arăta ca o veste tristă.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“It was grotesque and eerie, too strange of a dream.”
― Catherine Lacey, The Answers

“Holul corpului central al Hotelului Okura era spaÅ£ios, întunecat, cu tavanul înalt ÅŸi te ducea cu gândul la o uriaşă ÅŸi elegantă peÅŸteră. Glasurile oamenilor care stăteau de vorbă aÅŸezaÅ£i pe canapele rezonau gol, ca suspinul unei vietăţi eviscerate. Mocheta era groasă ÅŸi moale, aidoma unui covor de muÅŸchi antic care îmbracă o insulă de la Polul Nord, absorbind paÅŸii tuturor oamenilor care se perindaseră pe acolo de-a lungul timpului. BărbaÅ£ii ÅŸi femeile care treceau prin hol arătau ca niÅŸte fantome care îşi jucau rolul iar ÅŸi iar, legate din vremuri străvechi de acel loc printr-un blestem. BărbaÅ£i ferecaÅ£i în costumele lor ca într-o armură, fete subÅ£irele în rochii negre, ÅŸic, gătite ca pentru o ceremonie din sala de recepÅ£ii. Bijuteriile lor mititele dar scumpe tânjeau după un ochi de lumină care să le dea strălucire, aidoma unor lilieci însetaÅ£i de sânge. ÃŽntr-un colÅ£, doi străini în vârstă, mari de statură, ca un rege ÅŸi o regină trecuÅ£i de mult de prima tinereÅ£e, îşi odihneau pe tron trupurile obosite.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Max always mumbles; not in a shy way, but rather as if he's telling you what it will cost to take out your worst enemy, or how much you'd have to pay to rig a horse race.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“I see foxes often, but always they are crossing fallow fields in the distance. Gold flecks on faraway expanses of green. Magnetic to the meandering eye. Enigmatic, unreachable.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“This morning, I see the lead in my glass tumbler. A slim, bright glint, a silverfish. I feel it collecting in my blood, papercutting the lining of my veins.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“Only the lighted houses remaining, the lemon blush of their inhabited windows.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“I begin to describe a three-tier cake. The bottom tier would be a deep, dark devil's food cake filled with thick chocolate custard. The middle tier would be a vanilla cake filled with a fluffy vanilla mousse and a layer of roasted strawberries. The top tier, designed to be removed whole and frozen for the first anniversary, would be one layer of chocolate cake and one of vanilla with a strawberry buttercream filling. The whole cake would be covered in a layer of vanilla buttercream, perfectly smoothed, and the tiers separated by a simple line of piped dots, looking like a string of pearls.”
― Stacey Ballis, Wedding Girl

“A fighter, muses Rachel, is a fighter through and through, consistently irregular, a fighting man on every scale. Fractal, fractious, with a rough complexity! Nothing she can do. A fractal, Papa once told her, is a way of seeing infinity.

In Zachariah, she sees infinity.

Mandelbrot famously wrote a paper called 'How Long Is the Coast of Britain?,' the answer to which, of course, is that it depends how you look at it. The closer one looks, the larger it is. And more and more intricate, on an infinite scale.

There is a template for all things.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“Aleksei with his impossible curls so very like her own, yet less seemly perhaps. Such hair is somewhat fairy-tale in a man. Poetic.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“The sky is grey, with a thin TV-static drizzle that hangs in the air like it's been freeze-framed.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“I open my eyes to find the morning adjourned.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“And out the bus window, here is my dead world come true, my whole dead world in motion.”
― Sara Baume, A Line Made By Walking

“He's the navigator, he could probably find you a route to Hawaii underwater.”
― Jocelyn White, The Ezekiel Experience

“On the floor beside the spare pillow that had tumbled from the bed in her sleep was a single yellow flower. Five heart-shaped petals. As fresh and as pure as if it were in full bloom in a summer meadow.
Drowsy and mind-fogged, she crept downstairs to look for a book on Irish wildflowers. It took her a while to find anything that resembled the yellow flower, but eventually she found an image and description that matched: "Cinquefoil, a flower renowned for its healing properties and a flower also said to be favored by fairy folk. Meanings associated with it include money, protection, sleep, prophetic dreams, and beloved daughter.”
― Hazel Gaynor, The Cottingley Secret

“In the park, the bright colors of the children's clothing, the timbre of their young voices, lowered and darkened.”
― Cherise Wolas, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

“The late-afternoon light was thick and orange and she passed four different couples taking photos of themselves on the same cobblestoned block, all their loves endlessly recorded and reviewed, ever and ever, a little archive of two.”
― Catherine Lacey, The Answers

“Zach's eyes flash with light, caught by the peculiar greenness of early summer grass and the strobe effect of sun through wrought-iron fencing and trees. He kicks at dust and gravel with his unlaced desert boots, cricket spikes slung around his neck by the laces, his tread lazy and ostentatious, full of close-of-play sensuality.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff

“The hours stretch out in summer, the evenings go on and on; has he lost track of hours? Where are you, Zachariah? Come home! Rachel stands by the windows again, listening to the thrum in Camden Road and the Gardens behind, everything noisier on long summer afternoons, streets and voices, people speaking louder even face-to-face as if fighting to be heard over the seasonal rush of blood, over the bright light and heightened smells and unusual clamour of days. The city transfigured this year almost overnight and it has not rained in weeks. How the sun shines, how the rain falls, the qualities of light and precipitation, London has a microclimate all its own. London weather has powers of change, change and conjuration.”
― Emma Richler, Be My Wolff