dennis scharnberg

“Damn you, Hastings!  Keep that gorilla of yours away from my fine cheeses.”

Pryce Cummings,  Rattle Box.

“I don’t like being lied to, Harry.  Especially in a novel.”

Hartley Spinks,  Along the River Run.

“So you do have an active interest in menswear culture?”

“Well, I think that is overstating it just a bit, Robin.”

Pryce Cummings,  Rattle Box.

What is most exciting about being alive today?  Waiting to see the postmodernist “rethinking” of this and that and the other!

Rollo Marquardt,  Dwelling in the Cupcake World.

Sam’s brutal mockery of television programs continued right through the summer.  Week after week.  Show after show.  “Write it all down, Sammy!”—that’s what his friends kept saying.

Will Southey,  Government Cheese, the Novel.

The current citizens of western civilization are adept at one thing in particular:  avoiding God.

Pamela Hrothgar,  No Stone Unturned.

Quentin:    But why do you idealize the world?

Michael:    Because I need to.

Amanda Willcoxen, ed.,  The Literary and Philosophical Fragments of Gregory James Sallust.

“…and the whole layout was like some sort of architectural pun,”  said Atkins, leaving his audience completely baffled but yearning for more.

Leighton Johns,  My Uncle Toby.

“Sounds are merely sounds, Cassandra.  They don’t mean anything.”

Timothy Waldo,  The Important Things.

Phillips claimed loud and long that he wanted to experience such-and-such.  To experience it first and, then, to write short stories about it all.  This would be followed by publication of the stories, and then seeing them written up in one of the better book reviews.  Then, of course, there would be the short list for a major literary prize.  These, he contended, would be the intentions of almost any sane person.

Anselm Bligh,  A Collection of Miniatures.