Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Quite a strange man, thought James, watching him go – but what a relief to discover he still contained the capacity to be taken by surprise.
Sarah Perry • Enlightenment

Hitchcockian protagonist,
Haruki Murakami • 1Q84: Books 1 and 2
That Thomas had worked for the Chronicle since 1976 was easily established, as was the fact that he’d published three brief novels since that date. Out of a sense of delicacy Carleton never mentioned that he owned all three of these, and found them elegant and elliptical, couched in prose that had the cadence of the King James Bible, and concerned
... See moreSarah Perry • Enlightenment
He was short and sturdy and as a general thing uninspired, and Mr Coyle, who found no amusement in believing in him, had never thought him less exciting than as he stared now out of a face from which you could no more guess whether he had caught an idea than you could judge of your dinner by looking at a dish-cover. Young Lechmere concealed such ac
... See moreSusie Boyt • The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories
A moment later, wearing a corn-colored jacket over green velour pants and an orange-and-green-plaid tie, Jack Ashkenazy came in, followed by George Deasey, who, as ever, appeared to be in a testy mood. He was, as Anapol had mentioned, a graduate of Columbia, class of 1912. Over the course of his career, George Debevoise Deasey had published symboli
... See moreMichael Chabon • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
‘I don’t know where Travis Bickle is from or what made him do what he did. I don’t know and I don’t care. That’s what makes him
John Yorke • Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them
Briefly Carleton considered the other man, of whom he’d made such a study he might have been appointed professor of Thomas Studies at the University of Essex. He knew, for example, that Thomas was a confirmed bachelor, as they say, never seen in the company of a beautiful young person or a stately older one; that he had about him the melancholy rel
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