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from Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues
Ronald Sukenick
‘when rising expectations hit the upcoming decline hell was going to break loose it was already starting to break loose’
from Son of the Morning
Joyce Carol Oates
‘The livingness of the rifle and the bullet and the death spasm and his own bright quickening blood: never would he forget.’
from The Franchiser
Stanley Elkin
‘In sickness he understood what he never had in health, that his body, anyone’s, everyone’s, was something for the public record.’
Requa-I
Tillie Olsen
‘Night scratched at the window and seeped from the room corners. No other sound but rising river wind.’
A Bar on North Avenue
Roger Ebert
‘We regulars knew each other. We dated each other. We slept with each other.’
A Battle
Patrick Süskind
‘Early one August evening, when most people had already left the park, two men sat confronting one another across a chessboard.’
A Beheading
Mohsin Hamid
‘The words are just dribbling out of my mouth. I can’t stop them. They’re like tears.’
A Bizarre Courtship
Ben Okri
‘One morning, more golden than yellow, I went outside to our housefront and saw that the beggars had gone.‘
A Bosnian Alphabet
Lawrence Norfolk
‘APOLOGY: A should be for Alphabet: the device I am resorting to in some desperation to structure my thoughts on this subject: my relations vis-à-vis two Yugoslavian wars.‘
A Brief History of a Musical Failure
Catherine Tice
‘At the end of the piece, there was silence, followed by a sudden thunder of feet and bows on the stands. A thrilling noise.’