Norm Jenson

“Nadja, who is always hunting for a man, but always the wrong one, is trying to get together with Ebbe’s brother Karsten, who she would fit like a ring in his nose.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood – Youth – Dependency

“The single drop of pee made a pitiful splash. Fred sighed as he stood over the cracked toilet bowl that, like him, had seen better days. The public restrooms at Wattle River Reserve weren’t as dirty as he’d feared, though the walls hosted a colorful array of aging graffiti. Another couple of measly drips. Was there a job in the armed forces for people who could urinate in Morse code? If so, he’d be an ideal candidate, though it was unlikely they’d accept eighty-two-year-olds.”
― Anna Johnston, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

“Nearby was a box of thick seventy-eights, grackle black and grackle brilliant. Thea thought the cliff might come down. But the woman was goat-footed; she got to the top and came back down and handed over the doll.”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Souvenir Museum

“Look at the evening grackles strung on their overhead wires like Morse code! Impossible not to believe they spelled out something. But they didn’t; they were meaningless, in their numbers and their prattle. The call of a grackle is known as a grackle: in the gloaming, the grackles grackle. Maybe they don’t want anything. Maybe they stare because they wonder what you signify. What brought you here, to their front lawn?”
― Elizabeth McCracken, The Souvenir Museum