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A Clean Marriage
Sayaka Murata
‘Frequency of sex since marriage: zero.’ Sayaka Murata on a sexless marriage and the ‘Clean Breeder’ technique for pleasureless reproduction.
A Hebrew Sibyl
Cynthia Ozick
‘And so began what I was to become. To all these things – the admonitions and the testimonies, the rites and the annunciations – I had easily acquiesced.’
A Killing
Katherine Faw Morris
COKE SMELLS COLD AND CHEMICAL LIKE THE INSIDE OF A REFRIGERATOR. It’s what back then smells like, now when she thinks of it.
A Meeting of Minds with Henry David Thoreau
Andrew Motion
‘What am I doing here more than looking – / which I would stop / only to help things through their vanishing’
Biographical Detail
Ángel González Muñiz
‘The cockroaches in my house complain because I read at night’.
Blood Is Usually Red
Katherine Faw Morris
‘A lot of babies were born in skiffs during storms, their umbilical cords cut with rusty pocketknives.’
Blue Moon
Hiromi Kawakami
‘Rather than death itself, it is the disappearance of traces that seems unbearable and sad. The disappearance of all signs that I existed.’
Books and Roses
Helen Oyeyemi
‘A golden chain was fastened around her neck, and on that chain was a key.’
Breakfast
Toshiki Okada
‘If I had known she were heading for Tokyo then, and if I had known she thought of Tokyo as a city of zombies, I would have wanted to know, of course, whether she saw me that way, too.’
Bucket of Eels
Mitsuyo Kakuta
‘I was gazing into my empty bowl and realizing how little time it takes to eat when you’re not carrying on a conversation.’
Chasing Wolves in the American West
Adam Nicolson
‘It is the wildest part of the American South-West and, in a way, its most beautiful.’
Cynthia Ozick | First Sentence
Cynthia Ozick
‘Some stories begin with an incident, or a set of enigmatic circumstances, or a scene indelibly witnessed, or the relationship of unlike temperaments, or even something as gossamer as a mood. And then there is the kind of story that is rooted in an idea.’
