"It was squishy under my feet and at first I thought it was a wad of napkins. But as the crowds cleared, it became obvious. It looked just like me if I’d been made out of cornstalks and had button eyes."
"Jacky woke as the first tentative tendrils of light worked their way through the trees, clawing through the branches, pushing softly through the leaves. It was not the light that had woken him, rather it was a relentless gnawing hunger."
"Søren buttoned a gray shirt, stepped into a pair of dark green pants, and threaded a brown leather belt through the loops, his hands bright against the dark fabric. It was a cold morning; I didn’t know what time. I watched him for a long while before I said hi."
"For twenty years, Erma and Violet lived together in Glass, neither simply as friends nor precisely as lovers. If ever a question on the matter was raised, or if (more often) assumptions were made, they would share a glance, blushing, without a reply, not having a name for what they were to each other."
"I heard it said God moves on the water. Well, I have looked for Him there. My thirst grows with his flood. Our kin homesteaded where desert met lake. "
"She was seventeen; it was early spring. The ground was thawing beneath her and groaned at night, changing shape. That was the year that the scandal broke wide and the church closings began."
"There’s terrorism and there’s long-term strategic interests. Some might say fighting terrorists is a clearer game, with a more immediately identifiable set of risks and rewards. Others will argue espionage in essence is about the long-range, about understanding enemies operating on a different clock."
"This is not a story I’ve told before. No one would believe me. I mean, really believe me. They would get that look and nod. They would ask certain questions that suggested I was somehow culpable or that I was making most of it up out of nothing—just girlish fantasies and daydreams."
"After the End came the Beginning. And in the Beginning, there were eight of us, then nine—that was me—a number that would only decrease."
"It is widely known that Chopin died at two o'clock in the morning ("aux petites heures de la nuit," as French Wikipedia tells us) on October 17, 1849."
"Gina received a call from Adam, her only child, at 3 a.m., more than two months since she’d last heard from him."
"The bus to Kilburn is a long time coming, and while waiting Anna looks back and forth between two versions of the Edgware Road, the real and the digital."
"For the first time since you left the hostel, or rather since you left the advertising agency on the pretence of marriage, your heart beats calmly in your chest. After your period of troubles, events are finally conspiring for you and not against you."
"He’s against a wall, in the street. Standing there in suit and tie. He has ears that stick out, a frightened glance, short white hair. He’s thin, narrow shoulders. He’s holding out a magazine with the word AWAKE on it. The photo caption reads “Jehovah’s Witness—Los Angeles.” The picture dates from 1955. He looked like a little boy."
"Margaret didn’t like to make a fuss. But despite the number of blankets she’d wrapped around herself it was still bitterly cold."
"The story goes that my grandfather, Hector, married Winnie, an obeahman’s daughter. Grandpa Hector was a tailor, a quiet man who liked to smoke a little herb now and then down by the river. That’s what Gran-Win told me. She said nobody knew about Hector’s herb except she."
"This story starts when my parents drop me off at my uncle Jim’s house, on the way to the hospital where my little sister is about to be born. I am six years old."
"Kyunghwan and I met where the farm fields ended and our refugee village began. I waited until my little brother was asleep, until I could count seven seconds between his uneasy inhales. "
"I was a new immigrant, eager to shine, and if self-abuse were to be omitted from the reckoning, pure of body and heart."
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