The Road to Tender Hearts
Some people will always ignore the sign, no matter how clear and direct it is.
The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
I asked him if he was going to British Honduras on vacation and he said, 'Vacation! Do you think I'm the kind of man who takes vacations?'
The Antidote by Karen Russel
The plow that broke these plains was the plow that broke my family back in German-occupied Poland: the plow of empire. The plow that displaces and murders people, tearing them from their homes. The plow that levels more than tallgrass. The plow pushed by people like me.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America by Kathleen DuVal
For too long, most Americans didn't take oral history seriously, creating a mystery where there never was one. The question of who built these places and where they went are no mystery, O'odham elders and historians repeat: 'We've always lived here.'
Go As A River by Shelley Read
I had also gathered along the way all the tiny pieces connecting me to everything else, and doing this had delivered me here, with two fists of forest soil in my palms and a heart still learning to be unafraid of itself.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?
Mammoth by Eva Baltasar
Reducing life to an Excel spreadsheet felt like a crime. I hated my tool, the specialist axe I used to cut up emotions and memories, the experience and suffering of those people who, at the end of the day, had somehow persuaded life to put up with them all those years.
Blood Test by Charles Baxter
Joe's lying on the floor and has got earbuds on and is listening to the Go-Fuck-Yourself-Electrocute-Me-Monster-Death-Metal music he likes, singers screaming as if they're being tasered.
Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York
YOU CAN'T IMAGINE how great I felt once I made the decision. I know it's strange, but I felt healthy. You don't know what a relief it is to finally ignore Dr. Stillman and his water diet, to say good-bye to Dr. Atkins and his low carbohydrates. Now I didn't even have to consider getting those pregnant women's urine shots. True. They help you lose weight. Yes, sir, the first thing I did when I made the decision to kill myself was to stop dieting. Let them dig a wider hole.
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
Two thousand more years of snail cream and you will see a woman's brain through her face.
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
As if words could not also be fists. Aren't often fists.
Margo's Got Money Problems by Rufi Thorpe
And we shook on it there under the glowing red hat of the Arby's, with Ric Flair and the Virgin Mary smiling down on us, willing the story to go on, to never end, to start over again, one adventure leading to the next, and we would never die, and we'd be young forever, and we would scream to the crowd, 'Look at me! Look at the beautiful, insane things I can do with my body! Look at me! Love me!' Because that's all art is, in the end.