I was having grave difficulty with my trigonometry lesson. And I found myself drifting off. I found myself wondering, “Won’t someone admire my struggle? Admire it as though it were comparable to, say, the wondrous historical struggle of the Proletariat? Or some other glorious struggle? Won’t anyone? Anyone at all?”
Jason Starling, ed., Adventures in Narrative Parsimony.
“Trial and error,” muttered Jeff. “Trial and error.” But mostly error. Of course.
Charles Jeffrey Yett, Writing in Miniature—Vol. Three.
The “degree of wonderfulness” is the ratio of how wonderful something was to how wonderful it might have been.
Nathaniel Bumppo, The Final Word.
If you listen to what the people are saying, a simple inversion of that will always move us closer to the truth.
Tate LaBianca, Four and Twenty Blackbirds.
“What have I learned so far? That I should watch them. That I should watch them all the time.”
Clive Ennis, The Case of the Broken Handle.
Let’s face it, citizens, mourning can be crass.
Victoria Salt, A Compendium of Opening Lines.
.
“I’m done with it. I am done with it!” Eddie was more than satisfied with his ability to speak in the current idiotic way.
Anselm Bligh, A Collection of Miniatures.
A woman’s head, a very large one, seemed so assured. Self-confidence in two dimensions. Alongside the road. A colossus (but female). Not to be looked at. An enormous left eye singled me out. It followed me, inch by inch. Perhaps it still follows, haunting me. To this day. So majestic it was. And perched so high above the little world.
Chadwick Graves, One Damned Thing after Another.
More embarrassing words of our time: (1) eponymous, (2) sadly, (3) massive, (4) misplaced, (5) absolutely, (6) discredited, (7) taxonomy, (8) activist, (9) uncertainty.
Clifford O. Mounce, A Portable Darkness.
Aesthetics is essentially a series of smudges.
Ambrose Tulpp, All Manner of Things.
dennis scharnberg 