Janette Rallison

“Esme gave me the impression of a vase full of cut roses. Beautiful. Elegant. But she was all for show and had absolutely no intention of ever growing again. And she had sharp thorns.”
Just One Wish, 83

Libba Bray

"And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found." Going Bovine, 411

Robert Ludlum

“I think we live by stories. We organize our lives around stories. You ask me who I am, I tell you a story. But stories change. I told myself one story about my mother. When that story started to fall apart, I started to fall apart. You have a story about Jared Rinehart, about all he’s done for you—and that story makes it imperative that you rescue him even at the cost of you own life. There’s no experience outside of narrative.”
The Bancroft Strategy, 296

Brunonia Barry

“But when the sixties finally did arrive in the old port of Salem, Ann Chase was one of the first to jump on board. And when that ship sailed away, Ann stayed behind waving from the beach. She had found her home port.”
The Lace Reader, 60

Daoud Hari

The statements were “set before us slowly and quietly like tea. These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own heart must supply it.”
The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur

Joseph Finder

She “must have fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Company Man, 28.

Matt Richtel

“When I was with him, it always felt like it was Sunday afternoon. . . . Safe enough to nap.”
Hooked, 48