The desert at night was black and a strange madder-tinted silver; the sky was black, and the great contorted cliffs, and the vast expanses of sand that stretched out in all directions. But the red...

I stumble across the sea of tarmac, finding pavement, concealment and a brick wall. Palms brace against the scrubby surface. My stomach churns and then bubbles over, burning my throat as acrid yellow acid spills...

I wanted this day, the perfect buttery sun like peach ice cream, the speed, the satin leather of the car seat, the fair. Forbidden fruit, a day like no other.

…an old guy with a Hemingway beard and the build of a girl.

There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterly curvature of his manhood.

To demonstrate is to show clearly & deliberately, and to describe is to give a detailed account in words.That thing called ‘Love’ is defined when demonstrated, not when described.

… washed clean like a porcelain, with housewifely care…

Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child’s take on morals and ethics.

Un colț desprins al perdelei lăsa să se vadă o lună galbenă, în zdrențe, închipuită de un pictor nebun.

Tirza, his youngest daughter, the one who turned out best. Turned out wonderfully, both inside and out.

As that ripe summer turned to autumn, the sunlight cooled to a slantwise gleam, bronzing the beach grass and setting the beetle-bung trees afire.

Her flesh was powdery and voluptuously weary, as if tenderized by all the different beds and arms in which she had lain. Her face was as soft as the pulpy flash of an overripe banana,...

Remember…we don’t see objects, we see light. […] Light can do anything water can do–flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do–paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always...

… Odette seemed a fascinating and desirable woman, the attraction which her body held for him had aroused a painful longing to secure the absolute mastery of even the tiniest particles of her heart.

What it must feel like to lie back with cut wrists in a warm bath, a voluptuous dwindling feeling.

His body was tubby but his arms apparently couldn’t understand that, for they were long and scrawny. From his brow to an inch below his eyes, his nose turned up; from there on, down. His...

He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or...

The sky was like ebony and the only illumination was the harsh white light of the central streetlamp, which cast shadows so hard it seemed you might cut yourself on them.

One word I’d use to describe space is lonely. The only way I’ll board a space shuttle is if I had a babysitter with me. You know, to watch the baby I’ll make with her.

Tomorrow was over the horizon and it would take an entire day to reach

… it was with an unusual intensity of pleasure, a pleasure destined to have a lasting effect upon his character and conduct…

She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent.

He was too many things at once – a boy, a man, and everything in between – and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet...

Lady Moon rose an’ gazed o’er my busted’n’beautsome Valleys with silv’ry’n’sorryin’ eyes, an’ the dingos mourned for the died uns.

I’m looking for a man— -There are several suspects in Topeka, Ks. that match that description. Why don’t you try there first?

The room was not impressively large, even by Manhattan apartment-house standards, but its accumulated furnishings might have lent a snug appearance to a banquet hall in Valhalla.

Swann could at once detect in this story one of those fragments of literal truth which liars, when taken by surprise, console themselves by introducing into the composition of the falsehood which they have to...

… with a quiet suggestion of infinity…

The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear...

Night. Wind. Stars. Sea. Stones.

You describe your Wonderful Night very well. That is, you describe the place & the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well—but not the thing itself—the setting but not the...

I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don’t know why they’d decided to confine its purpose just to sitting....

He spoke so effortlessly, as if his mouth were a musical instrument that just let sound out when touched, when opened.

The color palette is confined to that of a Gustave Dore’ engraving, greys and blacks, and subtle shadings of these rendered in harrowing crosshatches and highlighted with sudden glaring areas of nothingness, like splotches of...

I’m not going to tell you how to start a bug-powered vehicle, I’m just going to put you inside one with somebody who knows how, and send you off on a ride.

Naming can satisfy a need, it can shorten a conversation that otherwise might go on for hours.

Meantime the clang of the bows and the shouts of the combatants mixed fearfully with the sound of the trumpets, and drowned the groans of those who fell, and lay rolling defenceless beneath the feet...

She was a thin, sickly, bony child, like an eft, with fine hair like sunlit smoke.

…although her mouth uttered fond words, her eyes spoke only venom.

No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to almost vanish when seen edge on. There was...

Wings of a half finished book across his chest.

Anxiously he explored every one of these vaguely seen shapes, as though among the phantoms of the dead, in the realms of darkness, he had been searching for a lost Eurydice.

Una rosa se despertó en su sangre y ensombreció sus mejillas. Un agitado aliento separó los pétalos de sus labios, que temblaron. Sobre ella sopló algún viento sur de pasión y movió los delicados pliegos...

A writer need not be bound by flat statement like “It was a rough sea,” when verbs like tumble and roil and seethe wait to spell from her pen.

The sun was deaf’nin’ so high up, yay, it roared an’ time streamed from it.

The psychobabble began.Reluctantly, Harry felt her vibes, embraced her empathy, and was seduced and violated by her verbal rhythm. Her sweet, whispering, soothing voice enslaved him with a melodic and rhythmic hypnotic dance, attaching her...

Anatomy is to physiology as geography is to history; it describes the theatre of events.

But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except...

… I felt that I was not penetrating to the full depth of my impression, that something more lay behind that mobility, that luminosity, something which they seemed at once to contain and to conceal.

Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they’re not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it’s not...