Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Chronicle of Death Foretold.

This guy has published so many stories that he even got the Noble Prize for Literature in 1982. Think of him as a Columbian Murakami.

1."She's well-named," he said.

2."When I wake up," he said, "remind me that I'm going to marry her."

3. Ever since they were still linked by a serious affection, but without the disorder of love.

4. A town that was an open wound.

5. Give me a prejudice and I will move the world.

6. I saw him many times and he was immense and spare...

Kenneth Bonert - Peace-Keepers, 1995

Kenneth is going from strength to strength. His first published work of fiction was a short story titled Packers and Movers, nominated for numerous awards. Then he wrote an acclaimed novella called A Spy in the Valley. He is now working on his first novel. This short story was included in the beautifully covered McSweeney's #25.



1. Villages with blackened walls and gaping spaces for roofs like gerat mouths calling out in perpetuity to a sky so silken it shone down like an inverted lake of brightest lacquer.

2. As if human history had in its immense trampling inflicted some tragic manner of subvisible bruising on all things.

3. Treading lightly on the stub of his own noon shadow.

4. Foreign diesel and steel roaring in his mountains.

David Hollander - The Naming of the Islands

Mr Hollander was in the New York Times Magazine, and he writes poetry that's actually good. Pretty cool.

1.Dazed and without compass, we wandered through an enormous geomotry of shadows, stopping only to sip our rationed water and to chew a bit of dried fish beneath squares and rhomboids of impossible dimension.

2.Twin-chisel teeth tearing madly into the pink flesh of a lover, a child, a parent.

Steven Millhauser - The Tower

Not really his picture, but funny regardless no? This is one of Steven's short stories, he has written many. Some of which are available in his collection Dangerous Laughter.

1.Far above the roofs of the temples and the royal palace, higher than the smoke of sacrificalfires, higher, it was said, than the dreams of young women fetching water from wells on rich blue summer afternoons.

Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Miriam has written a few books now including A Boy of Good Reading, and A Complicated Kindness. She has also written some great short stories. She grew up in Southern Manitoba. Its fun to say. Try it.

1.She could read book after book to them, sing song after song, soothe them for hours, tenderly and humorously cajole them out of their tantrums, build cities and empires with them in the sandbox for an entire day and answer a million questions in a row with out ever losing her cool.

2.Where are the gods?
3.I passed a panhandler sitting under a streetlight at an intersection and he had a sign that said Need 37 Million Dollars for Trip to Space. I could get behind that. I gave him two bucks.

4.I wrote down his number on the back of a lottery ticket that had let him down months ago.

5.Why would God want the sun stopped?

6.He smiled. A beautiful, heart-stopping smile, all badly disguised tenderness and tentative joy.

7.I miss everybody.

Margaret Atwood - The Year of the Flood

This is a woman that requires no introduction. I have included the cover as opposed to the authors photo because the cover-art for this book is immense.There are some absolute corkers in this prequal to Oryx and Crake. See for yourself:
1."Sleep easier, dear Toby. You're guarded by Angels."

2.It was because he had lore, and it was lore they respected.

3.Breathe, she tells herself. Move as if swimming. Don't smell like fear.

Emma Beck - Fridge

Since the inclusion of the Staying At Home's album, I thought we should broaden our horizons a little more. Be more open to great lines and less likely to dismiss them, even if they were found, say , on a fridge... These were found on Emma Beck's fridge. They were crafted with magnetic words. Consider the magnitude of them:

1.Some kids on bad wine sneak food.

2.Imagine him cute as a puff.

3.Wilbur hatched barrels of land

J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

Every time i watch almost famous I become depressed due to the sheer amount of conviction in all the characters thoughts and actions. This book is the same. And there are some great lines about girls. And life.

1.You felt like you were dissapearing every time you crossed a road.

2.I'm pretty sure he yelled "Good luck!" at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not.

3.Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.

3.Women kill me. They really do.

4.She's quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny.

5.I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down.

6.People always clap for the wrong things.

7.Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them.

8.You figure most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they got to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books.

9.He kept telling her she had aristocratic hands.

10."The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." (Wilhelm Stekel).

Staying At Home - Reaction Heroes

So far we've had some great lines from some great novels and some great short stories. Now it is time to hear some great lyrics. After breaking up in 2005 Staying At Home are reforming this weekend to support the soon-to-be-dead Horsell Common. Here are the great lines from their 2004 album Reaction Heroes.
Air Water and the Grave:
1.World weary already, writing fingers wearing down.

2.I didn't fall aflutter and shatter the schoolground.

3.What are we going to do with only ourselves to lose in multitudes?

Living Silver:
1.Just wait one weighted minute.

2.Your smile works wonders, it lights up so wonderfully.

Oh Five Hundred:
1.But when i got home at five and everything I said had died i felt more stupid than ever. And I'm sorry I phoned to tell you I'm lost with you, but without you I'm alone.

Chiswell Green:
1. It's the story of my life, when life was about living.

2.Measuring the height of a nervous wreck on my birthmarked neck.

3.Practicing grown-up size (sighs).

4.Tucking cheeky grins under frownings.

5.Asphalt-dimpled palms, gumtree cologne. We can smell the nostalgia of our burning homes.

Dendrite:
1.I heard an analogy about tree branches and growing together.

Axis and Atlas:
1.If you have blood in your veins worth its weight in Texas Tea.

Stopwatch:
1.Go forth creature of habit!

A Monologue in Two:
1. She won't take headlong to fall headlong.

2.Will our hearts and our heads always disagree in perfectly poetic misery?

Andrew Sean Greer - Newton Wicks

Andrew is the author of the American bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli. His youthfull appearance is also enough to induce jealousy when you consider the insights his writing offers.

1.They were too featureless to be loved - no child's mind could fold itself small enough to fit inside...

Dave Eggers - Theo

DAVE EGGERS IS A LITERARY GIANT AND THIS SHORT STORY IS ABOUT GIANTS, ONE OF WHICH IS NAMED THEO...GIANTS!

1.Their bodies connected in a dozen ruthless ways.

2.He walked north, the sun a rising friend at his side, and found that the trees dwindled as he strode.

3.And he caught flocks of birds from the sky and ate them with something like hunger.

Vendela Vida - Soleil

Vendela is co-editor of hip magazine The Believer, and editor of nerd-erection-inducing book The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. Little more needs to be said. Soleil is a short story.

1.Soleil looked at Keith intently, as if he were a full glass of wine she didn't want to spill.

Jonathan Safran Foer

He has entered the ranks of Ben Okri! Two features on this one tiny blog. JSF wrote a great short story called Rhoda. Horrible name. Great story. And its only 3 and a half pages long! (He looks frustratingly young, doesn't he? I mean to be so prolific and all).

1.It's good to hold your money in a fist.

ZZ Packer - Gideon

Firstly, her names ZZ, which is pretty cool. Secondly her first book was called Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which is an awesome title and it was a New York Times Notable Book. This is from a short story by her.

1.He had hair like an Afro wig and a nervous smile that kept unfolding quickly, like origami.

A.L. Kennedy - Frank

She has written heaps of things; non-fiction, short-fiction, long fiction. She even does stand up! This was from a short story. It's not funny.

1.It ran quickly to his wrist, gathered and then fell to the quarry tiles below, left large, symmetrically rounded drops indicative of low velocity and a perpendicular descent, and haloing every drop was a tiny flare of threads, of starring.

David Mitchell - Judith Castle

This is a short story by David. His longer stories are also good. Two of them have been shortlisted for the booker prize. Pwhoar!

1.Kettle after kettle i boiled, until their bodies covered the crazy paving like a spilt canister of commas.

2. Several 'Made in China' umbrellas were in the stand - left behind by forgetful guests, doubtless - but she picked me out a sturdy, Churchillian, raven-black affair.

Haruki Murakami - Dance Dance Dance

This is one of Murakami's countless novel's about strong women, work ethic and responsibility in Japan, dreams and of course, records. Cool cover though. And he does write fantastically, even if it becomes at times formulaic or franchised.

1.For three and a half years, I'd been making this kind of contribution to society. Shovelling snow. You know, cultural snow.

2.She looked up and smiled. An individual smile, i thought, not the professional variety.

3.We are an imperfect and unrepentant species.

4.So very imperfect, so utterly arbitrary, so wholly passive.

5."You're not such a bad cook," Yuki said.
"No, not true. I just put my heart into it."

Ben Okri - The Famished Road

This is Ben Okri's 1991 Man Booker Prize Winning Novel. It has a sequel titled Songs of Enchantment.

1.We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world,, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe.

2.We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see.

3.So much of the dust of living was in me.

4.When it was so dark that one couldn't see the far corners of the sky and the forest lacked all definition...

5.He put his hand on my head and, with the voice of a sad giant, he said:

6."I fight fire and become fire. Anyone who fights me fights the sun."

7."I fell into mud," said Dad. "I was coming down the road, drinking, singing, and then the road said to me: 'Watch yourself.' So I abused the road. Then it turned into a river and i swam. It changed into fire and i sweated. It transformed into a tiger, and i killed it with one blow. And then it shrunk into a big rat and i shouted at it and it ran, like the creditors. And then it dissolved into mud, and I lost my shoe. If I had money I would be a great man."

8.He did not sit down but stood regarding the chair as if it were an enemy.

9.He slept with his suffering still on his face.

10.He went around with a strange enw air of myth about him, as if he had conceived heroic roles for himself during the short time he had been away.

11.Even the dead played with my name that night.

12.Mum was alone in the room, praying to our ancestors and to God in three different languages.

13.And for the first time isaw how the world had sharpened her features.

14."Your father is going to become a world champion."

15."My son," he said, gently, "there is a wonderful wind blowing in my mind. I drank the moon tonight. The stars are playing on a flute. The air is sweet with the music of an invisible genius. Love is crying in my flesh, singing strange songs. The rain is full of flowers and their scent makes me tremnble as if I am becoming a real man. I see great happiness in our future. I see joy. I see you waling out of the sun. I see gold in your eyes. Your flesh glitters with the dust of diamonds. I see your mother as the most beautiful woman in the world."

16.The ocean is full of songs.

17.I was lightning-struck by life.

18.When they left, my brain fairly combusted with the realities they had conjured in low voices.

19.They glowed with an almost spectral radiance.

20.I wanted to see the world again.

21.Later i heard them moving and whispering, moving and shaking the floor, as if they were in a hurry to fill the world with glories.

22."To be a man is not a small thing," he would say to me.

23.He always fought several imaginary foes, as if the world were against him.

24."Black Tyger, USE YOUR POWER!" I cried.

25.For three days Mum prayed on borrowed wine.

Ben Okri - Incidents At the Shrine

This is a collection of eight short stories by Ben Okri. The lines are arranged according to the story they featured in.

Laughter Beneath The Bridge
1.They were under the double-decked beds and on the cupboards, in such greats numbers, in such relaxed occupation, that we couldn't bare to sleep there anymore.

2.It had an enduring, asthmatic engine.

Masquerades
1.The driver stuck his head out of the window and asked them to help push the car.
"Where are you going?" said the man with the limp.
"Down that slope."
"How much?"
"Help me push it. Out of charity."
"Charity is not free."

Jonathon Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated

This was his first novel. Nothing more really needs to be said. The dudes incredible.
1.It was only four days previous that he made his eye blue from a mismanagement with a brick wall.

2.If you want to know why so many girls want to be with me, it is because I am a very premium person to be with. I am homely, and also severely funny, and these are winning things.

3.I had performed recklessly well in my second year of English at university.

4."One day you will do things for me that you hate. That is what it means to be a family."

5.We do not speak in volumes...

6.I will describe my eyes and then begin the story. My eyes are blue and resplendent. Now I will begin the story.

7.We are all too good for each other.

8.Father removed three pieces of ice from the refrigerator, and punched me. "Put these on your face," he said, giving the ice to me, "so you do not look terrible and manufacture a disaster in Lvov."

9.Sometimes he would rock her to sleep in his arms, and read her left to right, and know everything he needed to know about the world. If it wasn't written on her, it wasn't important to him.

10."His name, though." "Her name," I rectified him, because I am first rate with pronouns.

11.They pulled at one another in the grass: brassy young men driven with lust, jaded women less wet than breath on glass, virgin boys moving like blind boys, widows lifting their veils, spreading their legs, pleading - to whom?

12.I observed that the hero had small rivers descending his face, and i wanted to put my hand on his face, to be architecture for him.

13.(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(What are your ghosts like?)
(They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.)
(This is also where my ghosts reside.)
(You have ghosts?)
(Of course I have ghosts.)
(But you are a child.)
(I am not a child.)
(But you have not known love.)
(These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.)

Adam Levin - Hot Pink

Adam Levin's first novel will be published in late 2010 by McSweeney's. While you wait, masticate on these juicy one liners.
1.Five minutes later, Cojo and myself were feared, and soon after that, i learned something new about talking and how to use it to intimidate people.

2. The street got narrow compared to me.

3.He could slap your face from across the country.

Alan Ackman - No Cry of Distress in Our Streets

Alan Ackman is the former editor of the Evansville review. This is his first published story and it was published in McSweeney's 18, the puzzle cover edition.
1.We are at war, you know.

2."Your major problem," doctors tell him, periodically, "is that you're still enthralled with notions of concoction, plans. You have the gall, in fact, to believe that something cares enough to be against you."

Daniel Sorozco - Somoza's Dream

Daniel's writing has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, Best American Mysteries and Pushcart Prize collection, among other publications.
1.Bestia amor, mi corazon feroz. My beast, my beloved. My savage, my heart.

2.She gives it all to him so he does not have to fish for the details. It is her gift to him.

Chris Adrian - The Stepfather

Chris Adrian has written a heap of short stories and an incredible novel called The Children's Hospital. Here are the one-liners from his short story The Stepfather.

1."Mother, he is a man without any redeeming qualities."

2.It meant that the mind was changing, the heart was looking with altered eyes.

3.There was something tired and sad about the way she do-si-do'd.

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

This is from the short story titled The First Person.
1. It was a music I knew in my bones. It caught me out. It changed the air. It came into my house and made the room I was in a completely different place. It was you.

Corinna Vallianatos - Celebrants

1.Kissing as if we were mouthing words, speaking with crushed deliberateness. Undressing, hands running over each other's bodies, temporary acts set against a permanent backdrop.

2."You mean alive?"
I'd had a vision too. "No, like they've got life," I insisted. An artifical state, a temporary and uncanny endowment.

Roderick White - Elsewhere

This short story was found in McSweeney's #20.

1."This is a fountain," she tells me. "Do you know why fountains have pennies?"
"Because people are desperate," I hear myself say.
"No." She turns around to smile at me. "It's because people are cheap."

2.Like a leading man he winks.

3.I run like i ran the bases as a child.

4.Her hair rests across her breasts like Audrey Hepburn's hands.

Tony D'Souza - The Man Who Married A Tree

1.When he was little, before he could talk, he'd stand out in the yard with his arms up and his eyes closed, stock still for hours, acting like a full-grown sycamore, like he'd been charged with holding up the sky.