Good words

After a long, long pause, during which Luca breathed wetly into his fingers and refused to relinquish the kind blacks and sparkling browns that were dancing on his closed eyelids, Perse coughed.

Except one look at Thomas and anyone could see his mouth was crammed full of thorns and lies.

Without Beecher, true, there’d be no circus; but without Felix, there’d be no show.

Your kingdom, once small and unremarkable, had grown fat, spilling over its borders like flesh around a tourniquet.

This emboldens Adina to make the mistake countless writers before her have made. She attempts to write about New York City.

One of the most underwhelming human American expressions of support is: Congrats. Its brevity cancels its sentiment. If someone truly cared about their friend’s achievement, they would finish the word. Instead, congrats: You are not worth ulation.

Closed shoes seem strange and painful in the heat, and in Fetter’s eyes, the weight and solidity of those boots make it clear that they are not footwear but weapons. They are not for walking, but for kicking, for grinding down, for breaking doors, for bruising bodies and the earth.

In the end, Abbott Coburn had simply not been made for this world. He was one of those extra screws you find in the box after assembling a piece of furniture.

The walls had tumbled over at some point, the whole structure now just a tossed salad of boards and charcoal.