“A friend of Trevor’s from the gym downtown was a cop with the reserves, and, of course, if it comes to that, why shouldn’t he have been?”
Trimmers
“These were people who just hated being led by trimmers and compromisers, and whose leaders always trimmed and compromised because that is what they thought the people were demanding. They had been let down time and over again by countless leaders who either drifted off into neo-evangelical liberalism like a child’s lost carnival balloon, or who blew up in the old-school conservative fashion via sexual scandals.”
Or One Ten Pound Plate
“Tom showed him to the door, said good night with little or no enthusiasm, and when the door was closed, sat down on the bench by the door. He felt as though he had just eaten a couple of the five-pound plates from his weight-lifting gear in the basement.”
That Kind of Presbyterian
“‘Is he a believer?’ Dawn asked. ‘Well, he is a Presbyterian. But he is the kind that believes the Bible. And as an attorney, I get the impression he is the kind of lawyer who goes home and sharpens his incisors at night.’”
A Full Crankcase
“Governor Fawgee Prater was the kind of politician who was telegenic enough, but who, if you got closer than ten yards or so, was revealed to be as unctuous and oily as they come. A full crankcase had nothing on him.”
Mood Swings
“And thus the stage was set for Maria to go through several days of dark anguish and exquisite joy, alternating back and forth like a small reciprocating two-cycle engine.”
The Deep Feels
“This poor woman’s poetry . . . was the kind of poetry that focused on how the poet felt. True, there was not much here to distinguish it from the vast watery sea of how all the other poets felt, but Taki-Smith had a peculiar genius for it. Her volume of verse that had won the Pulitzer Prize was not titled The Pale Parabola of Joy, but it might as well have been.”
About Twenty Yards Wide, to be Exact
“His grandfather was a revival preacher named Stump Hutchins from the Tupelo old school, and was capable, whenever he got going good, of preaching a pretty wide swath of blue ruin.”
Deadly, But Hard to See
“If that conversation had been the North Atlantic just several generations back, there would have been U-boats everywhere.” Flags Out Front, p. 117 ...
Priced to Move
“Maria could see at a glance that Willow must have settled in on some peculiar kind of feminasty revenge and that she needed to be near Tom to do it. Her outfit was like a sale at Macy’s—forty percent off—and Maria started to fume, but then checked herself. No need, no need.”