Her voice—full, sweet, and deliberate—proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be heard.
'Well, Mr Easton, if you will make me speak first, I suppose I must. Don’t you ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?'
– from “Hearts and Hands” by O. Henry
#booksky

‘What a letter! …Just what he needs…’
‘You know what, deacon? Don’t send it! … Forgive him, let him be! …If his own father will not forgive him, who will? And is he to live so, unforgiven?’
– from “The Letter” by Anton Chekhov
#booksky

‘But what is it, a show?’ …
‘Very good,' he said, 'You will see… You are coming?’
Oh yes, we were coming… It did seem a surprising restraint that could resist an unspecified local entertainment offered in the middle of a green nowhere.’
– from "The African Magician” by Nadine Gordimer
#booksky

"Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."

Unfortunately, in the story he's not such a good guy...

“I now felt myself completely out of place. But intrigued, oh yes…I seemed almost fettered by curiosity… The situation.. had advance so rapidly in such sideways directions: before his own mother arrived, he asked me..to meet the mother of his child.”
– from “Naturally” by Maria Luisa Puga
#booksky

“The thought that I would interfere in the life of someone else..did not occur to me…
My ethic is now the ethic of a nightingale.”
– from “Why I Transformed Myself into a Nightingale”
by Wolfgang Hildesheimer
#booksky

“Because you had not left in the proper way it seemed as though you had never left at all. You hung around, like a miasma—…Waiting to deflate my attempts at optimism.. with your own jaundiced view of my behavior.”
– from “Hair Jewelry” by Margaret Atwood
#booksky

He laughted. Short.
‘They want what you got but they don’t want you. They want what I got only it ain’t mine…’
‘You talking about your fans? …Don’t worry about your fans,’ I say.
– from “Nineteen Fifty-Five” by Alice Walker
#booksky

‘The problem is that many of these people don’t think we also dream,’ he said.
I stared at him, astonished.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, exactly.’ …
There is no elixir more potent than the genuine encouragement of a lovely person.
– from “Chuka” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#booksky

💙📚#booksky

💙📚#booksky

Honestly, this was one of the best books I read last year. Before starting it, I read 'David Copperfield' by Charles Dickens—which ended up helping me get through some of Kingsolver's story—the characters & situations were similiar enough I could see when help was coming for poor Demon!)