#prose

But aren't all great quests folly? El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth and the search for intelligent life in the cosmos-- we know what's out there. It's what isn't that truly compels us. Technology may have shrunk the epic journey to a couple of short car rides and regional jet lags-- four states and twelve hundred miles traversed in an afternoon-- but true quests aren't measured in time or distance anyway, so much as in hope. There are only two good outcomes for a quest like this, the hope of the serendipitous savant-- sail for Asia and stumble on America-- and the hope of scarecrows and tin men: that you find out you had the thing you sought all along. ↗

— Jess Walter

#beauty

...because of the foulness of her mother's emotional river, a current which ran swift, changing its path without warning... ↗

— Tamara Rose Blodgett

#descriptive-prose #dystopia #from-review #paranormal-romance #post-apocalyptic

He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#character-development #characteristics #description #prose #change

I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later it will begin to disintegrate, and then I shall die, and die conclusively. How can we face such a fact, and not live in fear? ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#beat #death-and-dying #early-stories-and-other-writings #fear-of-death #fleeting-life

i could have told him to learn from Gatsby. from the lonely, isolated Gatsby, who also tried to retrieve his past and give flash and blood to a fancy, a dream that was never meant to be more than a dream. ↗

— Azar Nafisi

#dreams

The lobby of the Nelson Hotel always smells of the river -- it's in the pores of the place -- but this evening the smell is heavier than usual. It's a smell that makes us think of bad ideas, blown investments, forged checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unpaid alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cheap novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen arches. This is the kind of place you don't come to unless you've been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclosed. It's a place where men who left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and smoking cigarettes. ↗

— Stephen King

#family

Maybe they will only find one another by being somewhere they have never been and maybe none of this has a thing to do with forgiveness but home doesn't always resemble the path. ↗

— Mikl Paul

#poetry #prose-poetry #forgiveness

The hands that felled trees also cut umbilical cords; the hands that wrung the necks of chickens and butchered hogs also nudged African violets into bloom; the arms that loaded sheaves, bales, and sacks rocked babies into sleep. They patted biscuits into flaky ovals of innocence- and shrouded the dead. They plowed all day and came home to nestle like plums under the limbs of their men. The legs that straddled a mule's back were the same ones that straddled their men's hips. And the difference was all the difference there was. ↗

— Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye

#home

Watch me go. Watch me. Because you said i couldn't. Because you thought I wouldn't. Go on, cry now. Cry. ↗

— Kellie Elmore

#breaking-up #couples #excerpts #free #heartbreak

You take what you can get, I reckon. You take what you can get. ↗

— Chris Howard

#prose #rootless #life