literary-fiction

Maybe that__ why I was so afraid of Sasha__ love. With him comes the remembering part that I was so good at forgetting.~Piper - 'Breathe Me

Evil should not be, Detective Vera. Truly never can be. But in defining it as such, an inherent human bond with negativity confirms its very existence. Its mere acknowledgement cancels its credibility. Evil is nothing__he lack of anything of substance_ made concrete as a balance to everything else. Evil is not, yet it is a part ofeach human, because humans welcome its participation in their lives. They speak of it in anger or disgust, fear or even wonder_ the most appropriate response_ giving it a stronger foundation with every passing thought it distorts. Though within their pliable minds, they welcome it with the glee of the ignorant, nurturing the unthinkable, thinking the unimaginable, imagining the most horrid, abysmal designs, embellishing them with an insidious veracity until evil is as substantial a reality as their next breath. I strive for something else, beyond evil__ claustrophobic clutches. I strive to transcend evil by becoming pure nothing. I strive as my followers strived._ He paused, his ideology a cancer, spreading_ __ am, yet I strive to not be. Do you understand, comrade?_ His tone suggested fellowship, disciples of the same obscene religion. ...

Beautiful day out there,_ I said, perching on the stool and crossing my legs. __t__ 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__ exhausting to get into those crowds. And the air is bad. I mostly do laundry on Sundays__ash the stuff in the morning, hang it out on the roof of my dorm, take it in before the sun goes down, do a good job of ironing it. I don__ mind ironing at all. There__ a special satisfaction in making wrinkled things smooth. And I__ pretty good at it, too. Of course, I was lousy at it at first. I put creases in everything. After a month of practice, though, I knew what I was doing. So Sunday is my day for laundry and ironing. I couldn__ do it today, of course. Too bad: wasted a perfect laundry day.

Just read The Virtue of Minding Your Own Business. Oh my, what currents run deep! Beautifully seen, beautifully told. Praise praise praise . . . Pardon my French, but you are one darn major American writer!"---Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions, on Sandcastle and Other Stories

I don't correct her to let her know her backdoor wisdom yanks me deep into another country, where water runs uphill.

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 one of the things I admire about him, how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest.

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.

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 to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die.

Once upon a time Karen saw somebody nobody else could see. She thought to ask an old man: who were you? Once upon a time I thought to dream of medicine. Now I dream of medicine by the sea.

The things white men failed to notice would fill the world they had ruined ten thousand times over.

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__ heroes still may strut, Dickens__ delightful Cockneys still raise a laugh, and Thackeray__ worldlings continue to carry on their reprehensible careers. Perhaps in some humble corner of such a Valhalla, Sherlock and his Watson may for a time find a place, while some more astute sleuth with some even less astute comrade may fill the stage which they have vacated.

When they ask me why I jumped off the roof of my brother__ apartment building, I will tell them it was because I wanted the sky to mourn me.And because I wanted to know what it feels like to hit something so hard it shatters me into bits that they can never sew back together.

The Booker thing was a catalyst for me in a bizarre way. It__ perceived as an accolade to be published as a __iterary_ writer, but, actually, it__ pompous and it__ fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself. I__ always read omnivorously and often thought much literary fiction is read by young men and women in their 20s, as substitutes for experience.

There comes a hush between darkness and day.Like expectation of a caress.A murmur of silence. Tree crests peeked down at Paulette through slowly lifting fog. Bark felt around for its texture again. Morning gathered and drifted through mere hints; through vague hopeful nuances of __ust maybe_.- From "The Gardens of Ailana" handbook for healers & mystics

Decades after little Colleen__ death, my sister Kathy still loves her daughter dearly. Colleen was born with cerebral palsy. She died in Kath__ arms in a rocking chair at the age of six. They were listening to a music box that looked very much like a smiling pink bunny.The opening quote in this book, __ will love you forever, but I__l only miss you for the rest of my life,_ is from Kath__ nightly prayers to her child.Colleen couldn__ really talk or walk very well, but loved untying my mother__ tennis shoes and then laughing. When Mom died decades later we sent her off in tennis shoes so Colleen would have something to untie in Heaven.In the meantime, Dad had probably been taking really good care of her up there. He must have been aching to hug her for all of her six years on earth.Mom__ spirit comes back to play with great grandchildren she__ never met or had a chance to love while she was still _ I almost said __mong the living._ In my family, though, the dead don__ always stay that way. You can be among the living without technically being alive. Mom comes back to play, but Dad shows up only in emergencies. They are both watching over their loved ones.__he Mourning After_ is dedicated to all those we have had the joy of loving before they__e slipped away to the other side.It then celebrates the joy of re-unions.

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man__ done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!

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

I had a dream. In the dream someone was critical of my newest novel The Snail's Castle. I said, "don't worry about it. If you don't like it, just throw it out the window." I awoke, grinning, with a wonderful feeling of freedom.