Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.

One word was the method by which the state collected their information. They could reel in the informants and spread them out like tentacles, ready to sting in any direction.

She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He’d read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: “Well, darling, we’re going...

You’ll likely always have some reason or other to hang onto that girl. You just want her cause she was married to your son, and I understand that, he was a friend to me like...

The expected battle hadn’t taken place, yet something else had. Images of the entertainment which had just gone down were already coming back into Rat’s head. It had been wonderful to watch, unbelievably wonderful, the...

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

I am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?” His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. …

And I tell her about his description because I want her to know what I now know, which is that the place where the pepper grows is not a place to be afraid of…I tell...

We put our flags in soil when we arrive, as if it now belongs to us and we know where we are.

Can you imagine how many people got laid in here?” Abby said, walking to the other side of the Jacuzzi.

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your...

The air was cool and soft. The desert looked empty from our great height, enough to believe the geographers and travel writers who tell of the terrible desert life, the stillness, harshness, and death. I...

The others moved in like a wake of vultures, ready to devour their prey. she had seen it on television once. ‘Scavengers,’ Tatinek called them. They swoop in and feed off the carcasses of animals...

Appalling things can happen to children. And even a happy childhood is filled with sadnesses. Is there any other period in your life when you hate your best friend on Monday and love them again...

War’s all either country knows, and everything seems to depend on it now.

We just move on, don’t we, with traitors still amongst us? But there was one thought that wouldn’t go away. If I loved him, I would forgive him.

We lie on the blanket, our bare bodies basking in the sun like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only our apples were bitten a long time ago, and we ate them too.

She felt the cold blast from the sterile air conditioning on her bare arms and thighs, as she ambled down the center of the shopping complex’s ground floor.The scene was a swirl of candy bright...

One likes to think that there is some fantastic limbo for the children of imagination, some strange, impossible place where the beaux of Fielding may still make love to the belles of Richardson, where Scott’s...

The lines in the corners of her eyes spoke of years of wisdom, as a tree with the number of rings increasing with each passing year. She was a small frame of a woman with...

A Quote from Monty’s journal in GOD MUST BE WEEPING. “I felt as anonymous as a grain of sand.

The problem with a lot of people who read only literary fiction is that they assume fantasy is just books about orcs and goblins and dragons and wizards and bullshit. And to be fair, a...

Largely, now, it was not anger he felt, but rather a kind of bone-scraping, quiet, ever-present sorrow. To come to the place that was supposed to stay the same, to come and find it changed....

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

Underground, in the dark wet hole that was home to the spiders and the rats, something moved. It had no right to be down there but it belonged nowhere else. Half drowned half alive it...

She said, “Well, that’s right, she’s going to heaven very soon. And now it’s time for us to say good-bye to her and tell her how much we love her.”Mary martha nodded and looked at...

…he’d assumed their relationship would go on forever. It was going on now, but in another way, like the rearrangement of the stars, which were all still in the sky, just burning in unexpected places.

I came to the party with the sole purpose of getting completely shit-faced, to be perfectly honest. That was it, that was The Plan from the very beginning. I wanted more than anything that ever...

Her entire life, she’d been told sin was wrong, a black and white interpretation of what is evil and what is holy in the world—colored like a priest’s robe and collar—but she never believed it...

There exists an oasis where inspiration bursts forth like black gold from the fertile loam and every odd bellbird chirps a melody worth remembering. There’s no bloody map or nautical chart that can deliver you...

The sublime beauty was almost hidden withing the castle walls. She believed that the treasured things in life were often hard to find – a pearl in an oyster shell, a kind word in the...

It’s autumn, Sunday, great weather, and crowded everywhere you go. Relaxing indoors like this is the best thing you can do on such a nice day. It’s exhausting to get into those crowds. And the...

…the pleasures of literary fiction are the pleasures of orientation; the pleasures of literature are the pleasures of bewilderment.

Apparently, faith in life is one thing and faith in literature is another.

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I’m waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we’re dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.

Hurl them back to Hell!”The wild look in the Kahn’s eyes was something that Mal-Greb understood.And so they began.

I left Hairball to his manic mantric singing. I walked toward the house and stopped to rub some white pine needles on my fingers. The evergreen smelled fresh and alive. The needles were long and...

But this bus was a bit too full. The driver only appeared to control the glass and metal around him. In reality, he was at the nose of a travelling paroxysm.

As the sun went down outside, the television screen started completely lighting up the room in obnoxiously bright colors at hyperactive speeds. The conversation had been slowly rising in volume and frequency, as everyone started...

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey.

I wonder if every girl yearns for her father’s love,almost like waiting to catch the moon hiding in the trees—beautiful, yet so eternally elusive.-MUKTA

I don’t know, Benes. I’m not sure I’ve ever really understood women for that kind of commitment.’ He flipped his beer mat up int the air with his index finger and caught it in his...

It was a sacrifice worthy of her and dreams are made to be killed.

Needs are stronger than liking.

It was a year ago today your daughter went missing.’ Bagg had closed his eyes, feeling the death going on inside.

In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess’s glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti–no fancy modern clothes for him. That’s...

Underneath the groundyou can’t hear a soundnot even the sweet falling rainyou might forget about tomorrowforget about the swallowsbut they won’t forget youthey won’t forget you

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at...

I guess if you get too close, the twinkling stops; they don’t look like stars anymore.

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely. “What?” Alex asked. “This cannot be.” “What can’t be?” Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time. “I have been reading people all...