“It seemed to her like that moment when a toddler crashes in the next room, and nothing follows but an eerie silence. Experienced parents know that the child is busy gathering up all the available oxygen in the room, and a wail of wails may be expected presently.”
Nice Having a Friend
“Nevertheless, the sun shone in a way that promised a good friendship for the rest of the day. Savannah promised her friendship in return, and set out confidently.”
As Heathen as That
“But whatever church he wound up joining, the pastor of it would have his hands full—Mr. Lambeth is as fully heathen as the king of the Amalekites.”
The Way Things Ought to Be
“Mrs. Fuller was a true boardinghouse cook—cheerful, plump, a feminine mechanic among the pans, and a mysterious force of nature among the sauces.”
The Man in the Dark, p. 7
Unstrung Pearls
“The sermon began mysteriously to meander, and though many good things were still said, they all seemed like pearls rolling around on a table without any thread to make them into a necklace.”
The Man in the Dark, p. 3
Truly Centered, In Other Words
“He admired his abilities and cheerfulness, and yet he was put off somewhat by Trevor’s moral center apparently having nothing whatever to do with any procedure manuals.”
Standing Straight in the Corner
“He had gotten the internship because of the pull his grandmother had, and her convictions and demeanor were of a similar nature to his. If she had been a piano, she would have been a nineteenth-century upright.”
Like They Were Legos
“When enough of a staff assembled to constitute a quorum for getting yelled at, in the presence of his secretary Susan, Parker Parkson, and two interns, he dumped out two buckets of cuss words onto the carpet, and then spent a good ten minutes kicking them around the room with his cowboy boots.”
In Order to Say Hi
“The sun had barely gotten one elbow on the edge of the world that constituted the top of his garden wall.”
Which Can Be Pretty Aggrieved
“Prater, filled with the kind of aggrieved righteousness that you usually see in a cat that has been hosed down by a ten-year-old boy, had decided that it was time to act.”