Peter Swanson

“Mrs Pitt shouted up the stairs for her daughter with a voice like a foghorn, then smiled cheerfully at Calvin. "She'll be down in a mo," she said, and showed him in to the front room, which was a colourful sea of Lego bricks with a small child bobbing in it.”
― Belinda Bauer, Exit

“What's everyone talking about?"
"The end of The Iliad."
"That's the best part," Marx said.
"Why is it the best part?" Sadie asked.
"Because it's perfect," Marx said. "'Tamer of horses' is an honest profession. The lines mean that one doesn't have to be a god or a king for your life to have meaning.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Zadie Smith, White Teeth Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column Ali Smith, There But For The These books found me at just the right time in my life. I can remember each of them so vividly, I remember the characters as though they were friends, sometimes even family, I can remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I turned that final page. They’ve stayed with me ever since.”
― Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List

“influenza means, she said. Influenza delle stelle—the influence of the stars. Medieval Italians thought the illness proved that the heavens were governing their fates, that people were quite literally star-crossed.”
― Emma Donoghue, The Pull of the Stars