“Reinhardt shuddered awake, again, clawing himself up from that dream, that night of a winter field, the indolent drift of smoke amidst along the hummocked ground, the staccato line of the condemned and the children’s screams.” Luke McCallin, The Man from Berlin.

“Upholstery is often a self-taught craft.” Steve Cone, Singer Upholstery: Basics Plus.

“It is after midnight on one of those Friday nights when the guests have all gone home and the host and hostess are left in their drunkenness to try and put things right.” A.M. Homes, Music for Torching.

“These are the central questions that the great philosopher David Hume said are of unspeakable importance: How does the mind work, and beyond that why does it work in such a way and not another, and from those two considerations together, what is man’s ultimate nature?” Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature.

“In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.” Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.” Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit.

“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.” William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury.

“Over the years I have found that there is one room that generates question after question and that room is the bathroom.” Linda Cobb, Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean.

“She came by way of Archer, Bridgeport, Nanuet, worked off 95 in jeans and a denim jacket, carrying a plastic bag and shower shoes, a phone number, waiting beneath an underpass, the potato chips long gone, lightheaded.” Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life.

“The Film Snob’s stance is one of proprietary knowingness—the pleasure he takes in movies derives not only from the sensory experience of watching them, but also from knowing more about them than you do, and from zealously guarding that knowledge from the cheesy, Julie Roberts-loving masses, who no right whatsoever to be fluent in the work of Samuel (White Dog) Fuller and Andrei (the original Solaris) Tarkovsky.” David Kamp with Lawrence Levi, The Film Snob’s Dictionary.

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” Donna Tartt, The Secret History.