Good words

There was about him a concentrated focus, almost like a perfume.

“Professors,” Mr. Flogg murmured in a tone recognizable to anyone who has had an essay returned to them covered in red ink.

She struggled, she was struggling, and it felt real, more real than anything she’d experienced since she’d truly been alive, and for that she wondered at the irony. Because surely she was dying, wasn’t she? Surely only death could feel like this, like pain and panic and desperation alike, and surely only her death would give her this sense of antic

“The world’s an ugly place, loves. Unfortunately, I weren’t consulted when it were being made.

Now the years were in her, bent like a soft nail, and there was just no getting them out.

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

he loved her the way a bird-watcher’s heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves.

Each row home is designed like a cadaver lying flat on a table: at the prow of the apartment is an abbreviated entryway that normally holds Adina’s kicked-off boots and her mother’s neatly arranged work pumps, hallway like a throat leading to the open kitchen, the torso a family room big enough to hold a couch and a half-moon table covered in the o