The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.

Now, in Mr. Thornton’s face the straight brows fell over the clear deep-set earnest eyes, which, without being unpleasantly sharp, seemed intent enough to penetrate into the very heart and core of what he was...

She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do.

Like a fruit hidden among its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved by man, until it falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid’s confinement.

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating … but there are other ways to understanding.

You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.

When he did appear his eyes were as brown as I remembered, pupils flecked with gold like beach pebbles.

And across the water, you would swear you could sniff it all; the cinnamon and the cloves, the frankincense and the honey and the licorice, the nutmeg and citrons, the myrrh and the rosewater from...

The color of the sky was like a length of white chalk turned on its side and rubbed into asphalt. Sanded–that was how the world looked, worked slowly down to no rough edges.

Most of the passenger cars are lined with thick patterned carpets, upholstered in velvets in burgundies and violets and creams, as though they have been dipped in a sunset, hovering at twilight and holding on...

I felt that these celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures who had been pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the disguise which covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern...

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else’s blood on his shirt. You could trust...

Mother wasn’t afraid of the sky in the day so much, but it was the night stars that she wanted to turn off, and sometimes I could almost see her reaching for a switch in...

A thousand stories had painted cities in his mind, the great cities of kings and queens, of thrones and powers and legends, and Caemlyn fit into those mind-deep pictures and water fits into a jug.

Your personality should be described in poem not in paragraph.

The tumultuous noise resolved itself now into the disorderly mingling of many voices, the gride of many wheels, the creaking of wagons, and the staccato of hoofs.

Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment.

He was sometimes stern but more often kindly—just according to his lights, but he saw the world in simple shades of black and white, and found it hard to be patient with things that struck...

Sometimes in the afternoon sky the moon would pass white as a cloud, furtive, lusterless, like an actress who does not have to perform yet and who, from the audience, in street clothes, watches the...

[My father] had a name for the bottom of the sky–‘the hem of heaven.

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s...

The child-like, gum-chewing naïveté , the glamour rooted in despair, the self admiring carelessness, the perfected otherness, the wispiness, the shadowy, voyeuristic, vaguely sinister aura, the pale, soft-spoken magical presence, the skin and bones…

He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.

There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very...

They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

… that distant look characteristic of people who do not wish to be agreeable…

She wasn’t dressed like a student. She wore an elaborate burgundy dress with long skirts, a tight waist, and matching burgundy gloves that rose all the way to her elbows.Moving deliberately, she managed to get...

She was strong and stubborn but loving. She was an untouchable angel with a devil’s mark. She was beautiful.

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman’s...

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were...

…his eyes were exactly the color of that gleaming golden-brown moss you see on stones under the clear water of running brooks.

My head felt like it was going to crack down the middle, like some demented dwarf was driving glass pins through my brain.

My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful, but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it could play the piano, I am sure it...

They cleared swiftly, dramatically, like a stage set or a movie; we went from black to stunning blue, the day emerging at once wet and crisp, the trees dripping jewels, the flowers drunk on drinking,...

He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle.

The young man who stood there was the handsomest mad Rand had ever seen, almost too handsome for masculinity.

He swung around. His body, bathed in the first rays of the sun, was stippledwith color like a stained glass saint.

If I could tell you about RedI would sing to you of fire Sweet like cherriesBurning like cinnamon Smelling like a rose in the sun

To write, for example, a crime that is horrible but which somehow ‘resembles’ the butterfly, which would be light and fine like the butterfly. I could also describe the butterfly, but bearing in mind the...

Tonight the sun has died like an Emperor … great scarlet arcs of silk … saffron … green … crimson … and the blaze of Venus to remind one of the absolute and the infinite...

… the glow of a sunset more lasting, more roseate. more human – filling, perhaps, with romantic wonder the thoughts of some solitary lover, wandering in the street below and brought to a standstill before...

A good story or a book is all about it’s power to hold it’s readers still till the very last word of it’s climax – complexity in language, dialogues, descriptions, everything else is secondary!

The minute grains of sand slipped silently down the curved hourglass, no matter how many times the people of Earth willed them not to. Time, fate and the actions of others were out of their...

The sky was as blue and delicate as a porcelain teacup, and the hills rolled gently in all directions, intersected occasionally with the silver ribbon of a river.

A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet.

His voice reminded me of the slow stretching descent of honey from a highly placed silver spoon.

Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone.

… like an entirely cloudless sky when one is going mountaineering…

Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice – a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to.

It was raining when Amarelle Parathis went out just after sunset to find a drink, and there was strange magic in the rain. It came down in pale lavenders and coppers and reds, soft lines...