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Her picture looked back at him with lips gently closed, curving in a calm smile that also seemed to have a deeper meaning, as if it had understood every word of what was going on inside him.

Stefan Zweig, Journey Into the Past

(translated from the German by Anthea Bell)

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A man in a crouch chased a dropped coin that rolled on edge along the wooden planks faster than he could chase to a cracked place and fell through to the ocean.

—Daniel Woodrell, “Oceanside”

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It was not that he lacked pity for people, but he was more of a doctor than a human being; first and foremost he was a specialist.

—Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

(Translated from the Russian by John Glad)

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One doesn’t like to consider it, but the baby will die.

—David James Poissant, “The Baby Glows”

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Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but after dinner they walked side by side; and there sprang up between them the light jesting conversation of people who are free and satisfied, to whom it does not matter where they go or what they talk about.

—Anton Chekhov, “The Lady with the Dog”

(Translated by Constance Garnett)

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Only the shorter twisted trees, tormented from following a constantly shifting sun and warmth, manage to stand firm and distant from each other.

Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

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Unable to reply, he shut his eyes, but when—years later—he opened them, he saw that Mr. Cattanzara had, out of pity, gone away, but in his ears he still heard the words he had said when he had left: “ George, don’t do what I did.”

—Bernard Malamud, “A Summer’s Reading”

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Bucky is running when he can, Bucky is crawling when he has to, he is scrambling, he is falling, he is picking himself up without stopping, he is scratched, pulled, tripped, bumped, scraped, he no longer worries about finding the most open way, no, Bucky heads for the hills in a crow-flies line.

—Ann Pancake, “The End of the World in Slow Motion”

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Avery waited a little longer, burrowed there in the cave of his booth, the booth, in turn, buried in the bar, the bar also a close dark cave, and finally, without buying anything, he stuffed the book in his backpack and left.

—Ann Pancake, “The End of the World in Slow Motion”

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I'm making up a memory I'll soon enough need.

Ron Rash, “Falling Star”

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She made him the kind of jollof rice he liked, flecked with bits of red and green peppers, and as he ate, fork moving from the plate to his mouth, saying, “This is pretty good,” as he always had in the past, she felt her tears and her questions gathering.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

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The bruises fall from her the way rain, gathered in the large folds of banana leaves, pours off in a rush when it becomes too heavy to hold.

Amina Gautier, “Now We Will Be Happy”

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I was thinking it was funny I could giggle like that because in my heart I was always sad, with the same sort of hurt that the cold gave me in my chest.

Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

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When you have fever you are heavy and light, you are small and swollen, you climb endlessly a ladder which turns like a wheel.

Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

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The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.

Jean Rhys, Voyage in the Dark

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-- Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

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In the lamplight she read, and she was opened to the world by imagined women and men and children, on pages she held in her hands, and the sorrow in the darkness remained, but she was consoled, as she became one with the earth and its creatures: its dead, its living, its living after her own death; one with the sky and water, and with a single leaf falling from a tree.

Andre Dubus, "Dancing After Hours"