Gail

“The Outing

An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes.”
― Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

“The redemptive power of the crossing was, nonetheless, the fixed idea of the California settlement, and one that raised a further question: for what exactly, and at what cost, had one been redeemed? When you jettison others so as not be “caught by winter in the Sierra Nevada mountains,” do you deserve not to be caught? When you survive at the cost of Miss Gilmore and her brother, do you survive at all?”
― Joan Didion, Where I Was From

“It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it.”
― Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

“Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become ‘better organized.”
― Lydia Davis, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis