Irina

“Grip’s favorite painting didn’t contain a single figure. 'Seven A.M.' showed distant trees on one side, and on the other a storefront that time had passed by. So still. Some kind of story could probably be told, but one refrained from asking questions. The light and shadows convinced the viewer to exist in the moment. Hopper had drawn sharp lines where the sun cast shadows on the white walls inside the window, while outside the ground gleamed like warm sand. The hands of an old wall clock suggested that the time was seven. Someone who should have been there was somewhere else. Yet nothing was missing. With the morning light streaming down on the ground and in through the window, time might as well have stopped—so the clock always stood at seven.
Just like that, a place where nothing ever changes.”
― Robert Karjel, The Swede

“Most people, they agreed, could either love or be loved, for these two were like rubbing your stomach and patting your head—nearly impossible to accomplish simultaneously.”
― Lori Ostlund, After the Parade

“Perhaps that was the nature of love: either a person was not in it enough to care, or was in it too deeply to make anything but mistakes.”
― Lori Ostlund, After the Parade

“My parents were high school sweethearts, which is a term that means “too stupid to use a condom.”
― John Goode, Tales from Foster High