Up: [[Words, Beautiful and Otherwise]] “The sky was a wet newspaper, its headlines blurred…” ##### Howard Axelrod, *The Point of Vanishing*, p.50 Rainfall — “not enough to wet a stamp” ##### overheard someone saying “By early summer, when my surroundings had taken on the chewed, grainy monochrome of crumpled newsprint….” ##### Hilary Mantel, *Giving up the Ghost: A memoir “Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.” — Carl Sandburg “…the air in her house has the thick flavour of dust, sunlight, old books, fried chicken, and furniture polish.” ##### Phyllis Theroux,*The Journal Keeper*, p.43 “It had started to rain. The London pavements smelt of old coins.” ##### Deborah Levy, *The Cost of Living*, p. 89 “The crowd made soft little splashes of applause….” ##### Claire Keegan, *Small Things Like These*, p. 29 “His complexion is as wan and floury as an overcooked potato and his mouth was made for sneering.” ##### Jess Kidd, *Things in Jars*, p.19 “The man who occupies it (the study) is unsteady. He’s like a rare vase, one that’s suffered a break, has been mended badly, and now, near useless, has been relegated to an occasional table in the corner.” ##### Jess Kidd, *Things in Jars*, p.54 “His gabardine overcoat…was tailored slightly too short, as though its creator had forgotten to carry a zero.” ##### Reif Larsen, *The Selected works of T.S. Spivet*, p.156 “Every human catastrophe the carpet in the hallway had endured over the years had been solved with a splash of bleach, which rendered it a long, abstract painting.” ##### Ann Patchett, *These Perfect Days* p.47. about a old inn turned into a homeless shelter "Time didn't pass in Duneen; it seeped away." -- Describing an old town that never changes ##### Graham Norton, *Holding*, p.6 "Some marriages combust, others die, and some just lie down like a wounded animal, defeated." ##### Graham Norton, *Holding*, p.12 “Amy took an empty cart, the plastic-coated bar still warm from someone else’s hands.” ##### Elizabeth Strout, *Amy and Isabelle*