Snippets

Fiction
“Lorna sat weeping on a bench in St. James’s Park, with the willows cascading into the lake, and a cohort of bright-feathered ducks eddying about at her feet. She became aware that she was not alone on this seat, looked sideways, stopped crying, and the rest of her life began.” Penelope Lively, in Consequences (2007)

Nonfiction
“Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?” Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life (1989)