the well written - louise erdrich

A simple, beautiful sentence:

Our little house yawns, its careful air plays through the walls, and
I'm restless.    - The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich

the well written - patrick suskind

He was delighted only by moonlight.  Moonlight knew no colors and
traced the contours of the terrain only very softly.  It covered the
land with a dirty grey, strangling life all night long.  This world
molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes
like a shadow over the grey forests, and where nothing lived but the
scent of the naked earth, was the only world that he accepted, for it
was much like the world of his soul.

- Perfume, Patrick Suskind

the well written - catherynne m. valente

And so he made his way home, discovering the second truth of
Quests, which is that, mysteriously enough, the path homeward is a
great deal shorter than the path deedward.  The sun slips easily
through the sky, as if on a golden rail, and earth seems to positively
skip by under one's feet.

- Catherynne M. Valente, In the Night Garden

By LaLaMiMiSaSa

the well written - oscar wilde

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an
individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make
Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our
laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust
into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

the well written - orson scott card

I carry the seeds of death within me and plant them wherever I linger
long enough to love.  - Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

By Edel Rodriguez

the well written - jonathan stroud

The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the
boy watched them disappear under the hanging thatch of white hair.
There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment,
before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight.

- Jonathan Stroud, The Amulet of Samarkand

By Sarah Gordon (Rather Lemony)

the well written - john fowles

Between skin and skin, there is only light.

- John Fowles, The Magus

By Cathryn Boch

the well written - john updike

The clangor of the body shop comes up softly. It's noise comforts
him, tells him he is hidden and safe, that while he hides men are
busy nailing the world down, and toward the disembodied sounds
his heart makes in darkness a motion of love.

- John Updike, Rabbit, Run

the well written - e.m. forster

She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the
purple of the surrounding sky.  In England the moon had seemed
dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together
with earth and all the other stars.  A sudden sense of unity, of
kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and
out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind.

- E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

By Riccardo Testolin

the well written - william faulkner

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with
the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like
spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath
himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness
and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted,"
he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty
years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years.

- William Faulkner, Light in August

By Me

the well written - caitlin r. kiernan

And across the space within her, as my arm bridges countless
light years, something brushes against my hand. Something wet,
and soft, something indescribably abhorrent. Charlotte pushed
me, and I was falling backwards, and now I’m not. It has seized
my hand in its own—or wrapped some celestial tendril about my
wrist—and for a single heartbeat it holds me before letting go.
…whatever it is, it’s been there since before there was time. It’s
been there alone since before the universe was born.

- Caitlin R. Kiernan, "Tidal Forces"
(Full - and amazing - short story available here.)

By Brett Marlin

the well written - thomas pynchon

Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried.
No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a
moment she’d wondered if the seal around her sockets were
tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the
entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of
the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted
through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet
unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry.

- Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

By Yoda Navarrete (Lady Orlando)

the well written - catherynne m. valente

She stayed in the ground for no more than a quarter of an hour -
but in her memory it was all day, hours upon hours, and her father
didn't come until it was dark.  Memory is like that.  It alters itself
so that girls are always trapped under the earth, waiting in the dark.

- Catherynne M. Valente, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time"

By Mao Hamaguchi

the well written - nnedi okorafor

"If you spend enough time in the desert, you will hear it speak."

"Of course," I said.  "It speaks loudest in wind."

"Right," Mwita said.  "Butterflies understand the desert well.
That's why they move this way and that.  They're always
Holding Conversation with the land.  They talk as much as
they listen."

- Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

By Hadley Hutton

the well written - flannery o'connor

The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked
like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of
stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were
about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe
and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to
the sky.

- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood / The Violent Bear It Away / The Complete Stories

the well written - ray bradbury

I went to bed and woke in the middle of the night thinking I heard
someone cry, thinking I myself was weeping, and I felt my face
and it was dry.

Then I looked at the window and thought: Why, yes, it's just the
rain, the rain, always the rain, and turned over, sadder still, and
fumbled about for my dripping sleep and tried to slip it back on.

- Ray Bradbury, Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury's 
Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland

By Chris Buzelli

the well written - hilary mantel

Anne's lovers are phantom gentlemen, flitting by night with
adulterous intent. They come and go by night, unchallenged.
They skim over the river like midges, flicker against the dark,
their doublets sewn with diamonds. The moon sees them,
peering from her hood of bone, and Thames water reflects
them, glimmering like fish, like pearls.

- Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

By Charles Warren Eaton

the well written - carol rifka brunt

The bed was warm and ordinary and perfect, and it had been
such a long, long day. Probably the longest day of my life. I felt
like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all
time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and
worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.

- Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

By Mafalda Silva

illustration - the well written - a dose of holday

Below are offerings from deviant artists spanning many genres -
fantasy, science fiction, high fantasy, adventurer, and even a
little horror.  Enjoy and happy holidays!

Something woke him up – a strange noise in the living room.
For a moment he lay in bed wondering if Santa Claus might
have come, but then he remembered it was still three days until
Christmas.  Still, he could definitely hear something moving, a
kind of quiet fluttery sound.   His brothers were both sprawled in
boneless, little-boy sleep across the mattress they shared, so he
climbed carefully over them and made his way out to the living
room.  At first he saw nothing more unusual than the small
Christmas tree on top of the coffee table, but as he stared, his
eyes trying to get used to the dark, he saw the tree was…moving?
Yes, moving, the top of the pine wagging like a dog’s tail.
- Tad Williams, The Sugarplum Flavor

Myth became life. No one really believed in the Santaman until
he came with his tattered red robe and his dripping red sword. No
one really believed in his undying love until he burst into our
direst need to carve us a new home from the bones of the world.

We looked up at the whistle of his wolf-stallion. “Why do you
weep and whimper?” the Santaman asked from the back of his
mount.  “We whimper for the end of our world,” one of us said.
- Ken Scholes, If Dragon's Mass Eve be Cold and Clear

By Guilherme Maueler

By Andrew Mar

the well written - boris pasternak

About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of
something that has made a particularly strong impression on you
during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often
it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague
thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words
spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are
the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they
become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been
ignored during waking hours.

- Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

By Paolo Domeniconi