Mariano > Mariano's Quotes

“An astonishing, curdled smell that had subtle layers of foulness for the nose to explore.”
― Andrew Michael Hurley, The Loney

“Another corner was dedicated to alchemy, another to witchcraft, another to philosophy of the most disturbing sort.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian

“But could she see things clear like you can? Could she see straight through you? See through your hair and skin to your blood and bones? Did she ever give your cheek a lick to see how you tasted and tell what you would become? Did she have a scar on her chest like a door? Did she ever leave you for long periods? Did a squirrel ever come and sit on her shoulder and whisper in her ear?”
― Laird Hunt, In the House in the Dark of the Woods

“maple. I wasn’t going to get the old samurai sword out and chase him.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“Louise was from childhood a neurotic, one of the race of over-sensitive women that in later days industrialism was to bring in such great numbers into the world.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

“He pointed the rifle at Orion’s Belt and squeezed off a round. Missed, or too early to tell.”
― Laird Barron, X's For Eyes

“After five years of marriage he seemed to have been left with nothing to say. It was like being embarrassed by a shortage of money.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“that glam-band dream-balladry of that Argentine band that Evil Elvis used to listen to (Babasónicos!).”
― Chuck Wendig, Wanderers

“His right hand had been chopped off at the wrist by one of Mussolini’s public executioners, and now that the old man’s enemies were dead, he carried the stump proudly.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and talked and Enoch Robinson, the boy from the farm near Winesburg, was there. He stayed in a corner and for the most part said nothing.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

“Now, the story makes no reference to specific years—it uses that eighteen-followed-by-a-dash business which writers were so fond of in those days, I’ve never understood why”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“You shudder deliciously. It becomes you.”
― Ray Russell, Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories

“A less sensitive horse was found to serve.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit

“I robbed one of them little high-interest banks there. Thought I was doing a good service. You can’t rob a thief, can you? I never robbed no citizens. I never taken a man’s watch.” “It is all stealing,” said I. “That was the position they taken in New Mexico,” said he.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit

“Fogelson abused us like a stepfather.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit

“Nothing I like to do pays well.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit

“There is a thing that I know but always forget: Winter is hard.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“quoting Tacitus’s epigram “Omne ignotum pro magnifico”—everything unknown is wonderful”
― Bradford Morrow, The Forgers

“A mare’s tail of cirrus cloud stands in high from the Gulf.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

“In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

“in those days I didn’t drink, smoke, swear, or speak Italian.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“if you wanted to flush the toilet you had to lift the lid off the water tank, roll up a sleeve, and reach deep into the cold and rusty water to manipulate the valves.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“I cannot any longer endure being served breakfast in bed by a hairy man in his underwear.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“My wife and I are terribly unhappy together, but we have three beautiful children, and we try to keep things going. I do what I have to do, like everyone else, and one of the things I have to do is to serve my wife breakfast in bed. I try to fix her a nice breakfast, because this sometimes improves her disposition, which is generally terrible.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“after a luncheon party with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Luise Rainer, Greta Garbo, and two producers—“I think it was a psychological test to see how I would act”—Knopf offered O’Brien work as MGM’s “European Scenario Editor.”
― Heidi Pitlor, 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“They were in a sylvan wilderness, a place that seemed never to have known human habitation.”
― William Gay, Little Sister Death

“He was used to shotgun shacks with cracks you could have thrown a good-sized housecat through and floors through whose cracks a man could watch his chickens scratching for worms, if he was lucky enough to possess any chickens.”
― William Gay, Little Sister Death

“Hunkered there in the darkness, he felt before himself a door, madness already raising the hand to knock.”
― William Gay, Little Sister Death

“the history of any family is a history of death and misfortune.”
― William Gay, Little Sister Death

“He had dragged her good name through a hundred escapades, debauched her excellence, and thrown away her love, but she had never imagined that he would betray her in their plans for the end of the world.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever