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The Cabin

Raymond Carver

‘Yell defiance until his chest hurt, at the hawks that circled and circled over the meadow.’

Winterkill

Richard Ford

‘He’d do anything in the world for something.’

Cowboy Movie

Carolyn Osborn

‘All the cowboys are cheering John Wayne.’

Danner, 1965

Jayne Anne Phillips

‘She was sliding down on the seat under him and it was like the soundtrack at the drive-in – a surface closed over her.’

Soul and Body

Milan Kundera

‘What was screaming in fact was the naive idealism of her love trying to banish all contradictions, banish the duality of the body and soul, banish perhaps even time.’

Human Moments in World War III

Don DeLillo

‘Happiness is not a fact of this experience, at least not to the extent that one is bold enough to speak of it.’

The Night Shift

Jay McInerney

‘You see yourself as the kind of guy who appreciates a quiet night at home with a good book. A little Mozart on the speakers, a cup of cocoa on the arm of the chair, slippers on the feet.’

The Boat Train

Russell Hoban

‘The train wheels, now authorized to take up their song of distance, clacked and clattered their traditional shanty of miles.’

Niagara

Frederic Prokosch

‘Thomas Wolfe's enormous body and low, grumbling voice made the cutlery look like trinkets in a brittle Lilliput.’

Boris

John Berger

‘Sometimes to refute a single sentence it is necessary to tell a life story.’

A Day in the Life in El Salvador

Manlio Argueta

‘I have not failed you, José. I understand that you were saying goodbye when you opened your eye, and that, besides greeting me, you were expressing your pride in me, seeing me standing with my arm around the shoulders of your granddaughter.’

The Country House

José Donoso

‘It was the season when unwholesome rumours were bred spontaneously, as life breeds in stagnant waters gone foul.’

A Short History of Coronation Ale

Graham Swift

‘Rest assured, it was no ordinary ale that they drank by the Ouse while in Westminster crowds thronged.’

Greasy Lake

T. Coraghessan Boyle

‘I contemplated the car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization.’