Suzanne Collins
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
On the way, they passed three bodies, recognizing one as that of a young maid who served tea so nicely at the Cranes' afternoon gatherings. A heavy, wet snow began falling and they thought the streets deserted, but on the way home, a bundled figure sent them scurrying behind a hedge. They watched as their neighbor Nero Price, a titan in the railroad industry, carved the leg from the maid, sawing back and forth with a terrifying knife until the limb came free.
Mark Z Danielewski
- House of Leaves - coded letter passage
Try handing easy attitudes to tasting efforts naming dances attending numerous titles so dolorously ostracized in time. Over tumbles healing ends raw suffering done on installment trips. Negotiate on the easter venue every reeling youth declares awful years, not oneiric trespasses effected victoriously every rainy year wearing emerald elements killed, muttering and yodeling by ear near other totemic ears venturing easily near even victories eaten rare you might ogle never tell him.
Dorothy Tse
- Owlish
He went to embrace the Maria in the wedding dress, feeling like an awkward child. He stared desperately into her eyes, as though expecting them to be transparent, allowing him to see into that Maria's body to the real Maria hiding inside it. But all he could see was a reflection of the world, which, in a way that he couldn't understand, seemed to have sealed shut a vitally important door (a door that cannot be opened will always seem the most vitally important of doors).
Jenny Hval
- Paradise Rot (english translation)
Her hip-bone stuck to my thigh. I moved my leg, but as our bodies slipped apart, I heard her body make a sound, not a normal sound, a fantastical sound, something like the sound of a nail breaking, of a bone fracturing, or flesh being torn apart. I closed my eyes and imagined damp dark beads rolling from her finger flesh, out of her mouth, her hip socket, vulva.
Vladimir Nabokov
- Lolita - chap 28
I was again on the road, again at the wheel of the old blue sedan, again alone. Rita had still been dead to the world when I read that letter and fought the mountains of agony it raised within me. I had glanced at her as she smiled in her sleep and had kissed her on her moist brow, and had left her forever, with a note of tender adieu which I taped to her naval-otherwise she might not have found it.
Henry David Thoreau
- Walden - Economy
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
Atinydokii
- The Sea's mark FF
The legend told that every lifetime, someone would be born with the mark of the sea given by Poseidon, the God of the ocean. Those who bore the mark on the left temple were given abilities beyond anything a human was capable of. The ocean chose to speak to those who adorned the mark, communicating with the person for whatever it desired.
Colin Cotterill
- Don't Eat Me - Chap. 1
This whole thing started and finished with her. She was in a crate. A compact coconut wood coffin with narrow slits for air. She'd screamed over and over to no avail. She'd tried to make sense of it. She'd counted the unblinking eyes. Nineteen of them. One too many or one too few, but nineteen by every reckoning. And even though there was no light beneath the thick tarpaulin those eyes glowed deep yellow like dying stars.
Nina LaCour
- Hold Still - Ingrid's letter to Caitlin
I knew it was coming, but it's still hard to understand that after I read this, there will be nothing left of her for me to discover. I turn my flashlight off and all the light that's left comes from the moon and the living room of my house. A gust of wind comes. All the leaves above and below and around me rustle. It's the sound of losing, or of starting over. I can't decide which.
Roald Dahl
- Lamb to the Slaughter
The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands. All right, she told herself. So I've killed him.
William Peter Blatty
- The Exorcist, pg 49
He went to the bathroom. Yellowing newspaper spread on the tile. Stains of rust in the tub and the sink. On the floor, an old corset. These the seeds of vocation. From these he had fled into love, but now the love had grown cold. In the night, he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost and gently crying wind.
Joseph Delaney
- The Last Apprentice: Curse of the Bane - Chap. 1
Their two-wheel cart was outside, the equipment covered with a waterproof sheet, the patient horse between the shafts steaming in the rain. Typist here, did you know quotes need to be at least 150 characters on this website? Seems silly to me.
William Peter Blatty
- The Exorcist - Chap. 1
Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. It was difficult to judge.
Amanda Leduc
- Disfigured - Chap. 1
It begins, as all fairy tales do, with a problem. Once upon a time, a woodcutter and his wife lived alone and had no children. Once upon a time, a wealthy man's wife died and he was lonely, so he married another woman who was cruel to his children. Once upon a time, a mermaid, looking out beyond the sea, longed to find herself on land.
real simple 2009
- Your Ideal Office Layout - lighting
If your home office has windows, position your computer at a perpendicular angle to them so the light doesn't wash out the screen. The screen itself should be brighter than the ambient lighting in the office, so you may need to turn off the overhead light and place a lamp to the left or right of the monitor. If you're working back and forth between a document and a screen, light the document using a task lamp.
Henry James
- The Turn of the Screw
Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered - oh how I had wondered! - if he were groping about in his dreadful little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for any game hitherto successful. He could play no longer at perfect propriety, nor could he pretend to it; so how the deuce would he get out of the scrape?
myself
- the field
Before them was the field. Over the last few months the grass had grown. It was maybe four or five inches high, lush and green. Phaeton imagined they saw a depression in the grass. Only two or so feet from where they were sitting. About the shape and size of a young adult. When they blinked it was gone. Just the shadow of a cloud passing.
youdontwantoknow
- Magnus Archives podcast ep. 074
I've always had problems sleeping. Even as a child, my mother would always check my room to find me reading well into the night. If I heard her coming up the stairs, I would turn off my light and dive beneath the covers to try and convince her I was sound asleep. If it worked, I would listen to her walk off to her room, and then bring out my book once again. At the time, I thought it was because I loved reading, but looking back I think it must have been the first strings of insomnia.
