Donya Guffin

“I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swatter poised in midair and I was all set. There was a patch of bright sunlight on the corner of the desk and I knew that sooner or later that was where he was going to light. But when he did, I didn't even see him at first. The buzzing stopped and there he was. And then the phone rang.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister

“(Really, thought Lib, who ever died exultingly? Whatever fool penned that phrase had never sat by a bed with his ears pricked for the last rasp.) Aged”
― Emma Donoghue, The Wonder

“Margeaux? Everything okay?”
All I could hear was her crying on the other end.
“Margeaux? Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“It’s…It’s Deloris! Jack, she came down with the virus several days ago. It turned serious very quickly. I called for an ambulance, but they wouldn’t even let me go to the hospital with her.”
― Behcet Kaya, Deception: A Jack Ludefance Novel

“White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps open in the sky. The air brightens.
A cold silvery evening. The moon is overhead, and down below, in the water; and all around it-a wide frame of old, hammered, scaly silver. Etched on the silver-silent black fishing boats, tiny black needles of masts, little black men casting invisible lines into the silver. And the only sounds are the occasional plashing of an oar, the creaking of an oarlock, the springlike leap and flip-flop of a fish. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories