Colin McInnes
- from "Westward to Laughter"
In islands, and island people, I think there is a kind of madness. I have noticed how, in my own country, Scotland, the Lowlander has a kind of sense and docility, whatever his defects; while the Hebridians show a wild kind of extravagance.
Banana Yoshimoto
- from "The lake"
Various little signs here and there suggested that the people inside were living proper lives: the potted plants, for instance, and the way spokes shone on the ancient bicycle that stood off in an unobtrusive corner, even though there was a hole in the basket.
Ursula Le Guin
- from "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" - ending
Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Ursula Le Guin
- The opening lines of "Things"
On the shore of the sea he stood looking out over the long foam-lines far where vague the Islands lifted or were guessed. There, he said to the sea, there lies my kingdom. The sea said to him what the sea says to everybody. As evening moved from behind his back across the water the foam-lines paled and the wind fell, and very far in the west shone a star perhaps, perhaps a light, or his desire for a light.
Steven Galloway
- from "The Cellist of Sarajevo"
Every day he's less and less sure that the Sarajevo he thinks he remembers ever existed. It's slipping away from him a little at a time, like water cupped in the palms of his hands, and when it's gone he wonders what will be left.
Steven Galloway
- from "The Cellist of Sarajevo"
There is no way to tell which version of a lie is the truth. Is the real Sarajevo the one where people were happy, treated each other well, lived without conflict, or is the real Sarajevo the one he sees today, where people are trying to kill each other, where bullets and bombs fly down from the hills, and the buildings crumble to the ground?
T H White
- from "The Goshawk"
One had to find out what things were not necessary, what things one really needed. A little music and liquor, still less food, a warm and beautiful but not too big roof of one's own, a channel for one's creative energies and love, the sun and the moon. These were enough...
Arthur Conan Doyle
- from "The Lost World"
It was dreadful in the forest. The trees grew so thickly and their foliage spread so widely that I could see nothing of the moonlight save that here and there the high branches made a tangled filigree against the starry sky.
Curtis Jobling
- from "Wereworld- Rise of the Wolf" Chap. 3
The ground was wet and mulchy as they continued along the path, rotten mosses squelching beneath their boots as they saw large beetles and grubs scurry for cover. The mist was thickening, making the path less clear. Before long, they found the ground obscured by a thick blanket of fog. It hung in the air like a giant milky cobweb.
