Ann Birner

“she scrubbed floors on her knees with a contemptuous hissing noise which must have come from her brush, though it seemed to come out of herself.”
― Tessa Hadley, The Past

“the cow crossly shook her head and craned her neck, mooing plaintively, and beyond the black barns of Meliuzeievo the stars twinkled, and invisible threads of sympathy stretched between them and the cow as if there were cattle sheds in other worlds where she was pitied. Everything”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“You crushed sofa! You crumpled bedsheet!" Khrapugina screamed,”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“knew with absolute certainty that small problems in a country can become immense tragedies when left unchecked. It started small in Germany. It even started small in Poland, long before the occupation. It started with a small group of people harassing and vandalizing and desecrating, and it ended with trainloads of my countrymen shipped to furnaces and dumped into a river.”
― Kelly Rimmer, The Things We Cannot Say