"The book didn’t want anyone to know it was there. If it were destroyed, everyone who’d survived in the story would be gone too. There would be no one left to remember the ones who had died. The balance of the world goes horribly askew when a story is confiscated; it becomes a darker, more ominous place." -- from 'The Book Censor's Library' by Bothayna Al-Essa; trans. Ranya Abdeirahman, Sawad Hussain
"Only when I was young did I believe that it was important to remember what happened in every novel I read. Now I know the truth: what matters is what you experience while reading, the states of feeling that the story evokes, the questions that rise to your mind, rather than the fictional events described." -- from 'The Vulnerables' by Sigrid Nunez
"In dreams, he could perceive the vast spider’s web of souls, the wool ball of existences interleaved in time, and he could follow a single life as one might pull on a thread, jump from one moment to another and, from the infinite heavens, even observe the forces that cause the stars to move, immense dark flows like streams of nothingness." -- from 'The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild' by Mathias Énard, trans. by Frank Wynne
"Many tried to describe her indescribable aura. Some said it was akin to fine filaments of strummed silver that hovered over her dark cascading hair. Others were reminded of the southern lights, brilliant streaks that hissed across her deep-sky eyes. Still others said her fingers were like holy spinnerets, that her every nimble gesture was an act of brilliant, captivating love." -- from 'The Extinction of Irena Rey' by Jennifer Croft