fiction

I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it.

I want art that makes the world seem more unreal. I want fiction that can crumble the world and build it back into something new.

Love, is an unknown passion, for an unknown person, for an unknown reason.

Then, the door opens and there he is; silhouetted in the hall light. Long hair, long legs, and a heartbeat in tune with my own.

Light has a voice?_ Sarucha inquired, amazed.

NOTHING IS GREATER THAN ITS SOURCE

It was dark, so I couldn't make out much of her face, but she had brilliant red hair, like honey and roses and the sun altogether.

I have been incapable of moving, even a finger or an eye, for at least a year now. I feel relatively certain about this timeframe because I have been watching the crepe myrtle outside the window of the room I am in...

Grover spit expertly between his teeth. "You know, Nerburn," he said, "you're like those treaty negotiators we used to have to deal with. Always in a hurry. Sometimes there are preliminaries." "There are preliminaries and there are evasions," I said. "Look out there." I swept my hand across the blazing, parched horizon. "We've got to get moving if we want to get up there before it's a hundred and ten degrees." "Just relax. He's just doing it the Lakota way, by laying out the history. That's how we remember our history, by telling our story," "But does every story have to start with Columbus?" "Everything starts with Columbus. At least everything to do with white people." "But what's with the French fries?" "He likes to get rid of the salt." "No, the piles. First he insists on getting exactly twenty-eight, then he divides them into piles. It doesn't make any sense." A small smile crept across Grover's face. "How many piles?" he asked. "Four." He spit one more time onto the ground. It made a small puff of explosion in the dust. "Mmm. Twenty-eight French fries. Four piles of seven." He made a great charade of counting on his fingers. "Let's see. Four seasons. Four directions. Four stages of life. "Seven council fires. Seven sacred rituals. The moon lives for twenty-eight days. Yeah, I guess that doesn't make any sense." "That's crazy," I said. "What is it? Some kind of Lakota French fry rosary?

That__ what fiction is for. It__ for getting at the truth when the truth isn__ sufficient for the truth.

A fiction writer is nothing more than the ambassador of an alternative world of their own design. Their success dwells in how many people their work entices to relocate

Philippe to his mother "do stop chasing after a carriage that has a runaway mare.

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

If I kiss you now, I won't be able to stop.

Procuring the house in Ballister was a desperate bid for respect, for recognition, the ultimate gesture (or sacrifice, as it turned out) that would prove him a worthy successor to the Flo and Walter Prices of the world. To my mind, the Culver was Norm__ way home, the only way he knew. It was an ever-evolving means to an ever-evolving end that eventually ended him. Who or what led Norm down that thorny path__evotion, economic pressures, family cynicism, Beth__ insatiable appetite__as been a topic of endless debate. You can believe what you want to believe. Personally, I don__ think any rational argument under the sun would have deterred Beth__ __essiah_ from his mission. If the Ballister acquisition was Norm__ cross, as everyone seems to think it was, then it was Norm who chose to bear that cross. And pride that nailed him to it.

I am taken to the police station and they place me in an interrogation room. I am there for about thirty minutes before someone walks in.

Shimmel: __EVER TRUST THE GOYIM. They are just like these other weird dangerous people, Messianic Jews! How dare Jews become __hristian-like_, Messianic? We should cherem (ban) them from every aspect of Jewish life. And we must strip them of every Jewish privilege!

It hurts,_ Summer cries, head shaking back and forth. __lease, make it stop._ Sweat beads on her forehead.__hat hurts?_ Cameron asks.__y eyes.__ummer__ eyes open. Everyone gasps. They__e no longer blue; they appear bionic, like a circuit board__ inside her eyes. Panicked now, Summer reaches for her face. __hat is it? What__ wrong?