The base camp lay at the south-eastern edge of the Taunus, near Kronberg, just a few kilometres from the place of first contact. It had never been officially designated or planned, but instead gradually took form out of tents, containers an

The art, too, annoyed me – it was good, better than I had hoped. The show was called Self-Portrait, a title she had kept secret from me for the last year, and the arrangement of objects in the white-painted warehouse room was familiar and y

… Her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever. -Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The boy sat by what had been the foot of the wall. Only scattered rubble marked where the line once stood: nothing now prevented the poisonous bush spilling over from the neighbours’ garden. -The Blind By Ewan Gass

I pause only a moment; the twin slits of its pupils reflect back traffic, pedestrian and automobile alike, all seemingly uninterrupted by the wildlife. And though I can’t be sure, it almost seems as if people are passing straight through it

Wild guinea pigs, weasels, viscachas scurrying through the tall grass. El Negro moves with care, with respect, as if entering a church. Dainty as a guazuncho deer. But of course he ends up treading on a twig, a bunch of curupí pods, and the

A cloud stretches across the sky. Bright white like hotel sheets. Unbroken, so I can’t see anything below. The airport. Or where the sea turns into the Lagan. Farmhouses and their neat green fields. Wild patches of forest. The navy ikea war

Ender did not see Peter as the beautiful ten-year-old boy that grown-ups saw, with dark, tousled hair and a face that could have belonged to Alexander the Great. Ender looked at Peter only to detect anger or boredom, the dangerous moods tha

Inside the floating cloak he was tall, thin, and bony; and his hair was red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness. -Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table

He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world

The pavement was covered in snow that had been compressed by the weight of pedestrians and was now more like ice. It even creaked in an unsettling way as he walked on it. He didn’t particularly like winter, but he enjoyed inhaling the fresh

Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis’s breakfast fire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and cru