Collection of Inspiration

Ashley's common place book.

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No one had anticipated that he would be wearing dentures by the time he was fifty. Who, while trapped in the fervour of match-making at the height of the wedding season, could imagine a toothless gummy mouth, morning after morning, greeting a woman in her absolute prime? No one. Certainly not Mehroo.

"Auspicious Occasion" from Tales from Firozsha Baag - Rohinton Mistry

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The nurse's face turned red and she was lavish with her apologies. Emily caught one of them as they flew around the room and added it to her collection.

Offerings by Marlene Buono

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In salt air and bright light, I watched my aunt revolve. Centrifugal force pressed her ample flesh against a padded wall. She screamed as the floor dropped slowly away, lipstick staining her teeth.

The Hurricane Ride by Bernard Cooper

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You're bound to think I'm a liar, but I've never felt hungry. I don't know what hunger means. As far back as I can remember I've never known what it was like. I eat, of course, but without appetite. I feel absolutely nothing, not even distaste. I just eat.

Feeding the Hungry by Roland Topor

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Who would expect the Embassy of Cambodia? Nobody. Nobody could have expected it, or be expecting it. It's a surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia!

The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith

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Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

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If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. ... It isn't a story I'm telling. ... But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

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"It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...."

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

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As a child I had been vastly impressed by the Boerum house. It was fairly new then, and glossy; a gigantic pile of Victorian rickrack, fretwork, and stained glass, flung together in such chaotic profusion that it was hard to encompass in one glance.

"Death on Christmas Eve" by Stanley Ellin

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Musical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind ... One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled "Solitude." It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the piece was something else, but she called it "Solitude." When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him.

"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin.

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What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

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[you] made his murder turn your brain into a cadaver and your heart's blood into formaldehyde.

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

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A city girl is quickly weary of the cardboard boredom of tiny rural towns.

God Help the Child by Toni Morrison

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"Please, God," she whispered into the palm of her hand. "Please make me disappear." She squeezed her eyes shut. Little parts of her body faded away. Now slowly, now with a rush. Slowly again. Her fingers went, one by one; then her arms disappeared all the way to the elbow. Her feet now. Yes, that was good. The legs all at once. It was hardest above the thighs. She had to be real still and pull. Her stomach would not go. But finally it, too, went away. Then her chest, her neck. The face was hard, too. Almost done, almost. Only her tight, tight eyes were left. They were always left.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

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When it came to love, wasn't believing the same as the real thing?

"Stone Mattress" by Margaret Atwood.

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He has so many tattoos up his forearms he looks upholstered.

"The Freeze-dried Groom" by Margaret Atwood.

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I was a thing, then. I considered this. In what way is a thing not a person?

"Lusus Naturae" by Margaret Atwood.