“There was something cold and hard about her: if you set her afloat on the nighttime sea, she would probably sink any boat that happened to ram her.” “The heavy aroma of cooked chicken quickly filled the little elevator. It mingled with the smell of the rain. Water droplets dotted the floor, suggesting that someone…Continue reading “Birthday Girl,” by Haruki Murakami
Category: Litbits: excerpts from good books
getting to the other side
“He had always been awkward about crossing public space, and could not do it without feeling somehow cheesy and hucksterish, as though he were crossing a makeshift dais in a Legion Hall to accept a diploma from a bogus school of real estate…” “If you can still see how you could have once loved a…Continue reading getting to the other side
economy
Here is one of the most economical sentence pairings I’ve come across in a while: He couldn’t remember his wife clearly–only the hats she wore. How surprised she would be at hearing from him after this long while; there had been one letter written by each of them since the boy died. Graham Greene, The…Continue reading economy
graham greene on the importance of superficiality
“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from…Continue reading graham greene on the importance of superficiality
selection: the memoirist’s dilemma
“…a detective must find it as important as a novelist to amass his trivial material before picking out the right clue. But how difficult that picking out is–the release of the real subject…Now that I come to write my own story the problem is still the same, but worse–there are so many more facts, now…Continue reading selection: the memoirist’s dilemma