"They pull up to the hospital in a red car, can’t tell the make or year. There’s something familiar in them, even after they step out. I’m behind the check-in desk as usual and can see them from the window."
"I never heard the siren. I slept through the rising wind and the tree branches wrenching loose and colliding with the roof."
"Renatino was surrounded by other kids, they'd singled him out for a while now in the jungle of bodies, but by the time he even noticed, four of them were standing around him. The gaze is territory, homeland—looking at someone amounts to entering his home uninvited. To stare at someone is a form of invasion. Not to look away is a manifestation of power."
"BUOYANCY What you have that makes you float. Does what the word sounds like it does with its B and its U bobbing up. Memories have buoyancy. They bob up to the surface like corks. "
"I’m sitting in the theater—dusty old seats, the smell of soggy popcorn, sticky soda, and cheap chocolate. The dust that has risen glitters and turns in the sputtering projector light. "
"This is what I know: She left last night. My mother, Billie Jean Fontaine, stood in our front hallway with a stale cigarette in one hand and her truck keys in the other."
"On Magdalena Mountain, at the base of certain boulders, the winter forage of little rock rabbits, called pikas, lies curing in the sun."
"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."
Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for your contribution, you'll get an ad-free site experience, editors' picks, and our Joan Didion tote bag. Most importantly, you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving.
