Keri Smith

“Miss Pinch came visiting, and asked me what I intended to do with my Future. She spoke about it as though it were an incurable disease.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

“Occasionally, she drank a second glass of wine in the evenings, which made her feel rather giddy and amused, and which one night led to her poking the Beast with one bare toe when she thought he wasn’t looking up from his book fast enough. (A week ago, the notion of touching the Beast voluntarily would have made her tremble, but there was something deeply unthreatening about him when he was reading. He had to fold himself into the chair for one thing. For another, he was desperately near-sighted and had to hold the book a few inches past the end of his muzzle when reading. Apparently House could not provide adequate reading glasses.)”
― T. Kingfisher, Bryony and Roses

“My heart settled as I walked in, breathing coffee and paper and sunburnt dust. Like all good bookshops, Edgar's was a pocket universe, where time moved slow as clouds.”
― Melissa Albert, The Night Country

“Dodge looked up and saw me in the window, then lay down in front of the door. Protecting me, I realized.


After that, I started watching Dodge all the time. I saw the way he knew by scent alone when Colette's bread was done cooking, or a squirrel was a hundred feet away, or the wind had changed direction. Before he even saw them, he recognized each of the five fishermen who kept their boats in the cove. Most he would go greet, tail wagging, but one he stayed away from.
Over the following days, Dodge became my translator of the world outside the house. Through his nose it became safer, and soon I found myself wanting to inhale the air around me as he did, as something pure and alive and full of messages.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper