Keith Allison

“The stinging nettles that we must have got into are more insignificant plants, with a paler purple flower, and stalks wickedly outfitted with fine, fierce, skin-piercing and inflaming spines. Those would be present too, unnoticed, in all the flourishing of the waste meadow.”
― Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

“Her chest feels very tight, as if she's suddenly full of poison. You have to keep it all inside. Like throwing yourself on a bomb to save everyone else. Except you're the bomb.”
― Kelly Link, Get in Trouble

“I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“By the time we get out of the car in the parking lot, the birds have turned north, fluttered over the horizon. I hear the tail end of their chatter, of all these voices calling at once, and I wish I could feel their excitement, feel their joy of the rising, the swinging into the blue, the great flight, the return home, but all I feel is a solid ball of something in my gut, heavy as the head of a hammer.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing