Monte Peters

“The traffic was atrocious and shaming, of that pantheon of traffic encountered when one is late to a wedding or other monumental event of fleeting import. Surely an accident unraveled its miserable inevitabilities ahead and now all was fouled, decelerated, the vehicles syllables in an incantation of misfortune.”
― Colson Whitehead, Zone One

“He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“I miss when my future was more interesting to me than my past,”
― Andrew Sean Greer, The Best American Short Stories 2022

“The atmosphere in Nightbirds was ever five minutes after a big argument and no one telling you what happened. Everyone in their neutral corners replaying KO’s and low blows and devising too-late parries. You didn’t know what it had been about or who’d won, just that nobody wanted to talk about it, they glance around and knead grudges in their fists.”
― Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle