Robert Walser, "Response to a Request," Selected Stories

You ask me if I have an idea for you, a sort of sketch I might write, a spectacle, a dance, a pantomime, or anything else that you could use as an outline to follow. My idea is roughly the following.

David Wojnarowicz, "Spiral," Vital Signs: Essential AIDS Fiction

I can't abstract my own dying any longer. I am a stranger to others and to myself and I refuse to pretend that I am familiar or that I have history attached to my heels. I am glass, clear empty glass. I see the world spinning behind me and through me. I see casualness and mundane effects of gesture made by constant populations.

Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire

The gene gun is a strangely high-low piece of technology, but the main thing you need to know about it is that the gun here is not a metaphor: a .22 shell is used to fire stainless-steel projectiles dipped in a DNA solution at a stem or leaf of the target plant. If all goes well, some of the DNA will pierce the wall of some of the cells' nuclei and elbow its way into a double helix.

Sara Levine, "The Fainting Couch," Caketrain #6

I have wanted to lie down in the middle of a crowd before, but there were no excuses.

Miranda July, "The Shared Patio," No One Belongs Here More Than You

Most people don't know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first.

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Simone Weil wrote to a friend on another continent, "Let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated."

Karyna McGlynn, "why it slides down the adder," Caketrain #6

This is for his head     this water on it
                                                            this knot bag body
a woolen stocking

                                        slung on a low snowed fence

Norman Lebrecht, The Song of Names

'Is like music. You play good, the notes form structure, make sense. Is good ice-cream.'

Between spoonfuls, his eyes darted round my room like searchlights. He had yet to utter a superfluous word, let alone a definite or indefinite article. He must have had a vocabulary of a hundred useful nouns and verbs, but he used each word like a naked sword, unsheathed of social nicety.

Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

Diane Williams, "The Limits of the World," Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear

Whoever reads this, write to me if I am still alive, or please write to my children, or to my children's children, who may yet be even still deeper into the farther reaches of our common history. Give us your opinion. Provide please credentials for yourself, who you are doing the talking.

Salvatore Scibona, The End

Why was she not once in her rotten, betrayed life to be taken by her spouse to see Niagara Falls? Loveypants had lamented. She made the preposterous allegation, so it seemed, that you could board the six o' clock train and arrive there by lunchtime.

Kevin Miller, "In the One," Home & Away

[In the one] where they make you president,
your wife suggests the striped tie,
one brother writes a speech
to end the war. Your mother
thinks now you should apply
to Notre Dame. Pop wants a game
of catch in the Rose Garden.
Your sisters rearrange furniture,
take down all the flags.

Walt Whitman, "Election Day, November, 1884," Leaves of Grass

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones—nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes—nor
Mississippi's stream:
—This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name—the still
small voice vibrating—America's choosing day....

Flannery O'Connor, "The Barber," Complete Stories

"He can hear," the barber said. "He can hear back where he is."
     "I just thought he might be interested," Rayber said.
     "He can hear," the barber repeated. "He can hear what he hears and he can hear two times that much. He can hear what you don't say as well as what you do."