"He looked homemade. As through his wife had self-consciously knitted or somehow contrived a husband when she sat alone at night."

The Key by Eudora Welty

"'God, I miss Allechka,' I said to Misha. 'Can you smell her?' I asked, holding the skirt up to his nose.

He leaned in and smelled the proffered green corduroy. 'I never knew her,' he said, shaking his head in regret."

from "Alechka" by Deborah Kaple, runner-up in the first round of NPR's Three-Minute Fiction series

"The first 12 years are the worst."

Anne Enright's first of ten rules for writing fiction as published in The Guardian

"You should want the moon. Don't do it. Don't go for a 40 watt bulb just because it looks pretty. You'll get stuck with it when it goes out."

The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardem, reviewed on Fresh Air

"Still, it's interesting to read, if only for the chance to experience a blind date between J.D. Salinger and Sarah Orne Jewett."

online comment about Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge

"'Be kind and then be kind and then be kind,' sagte sie auf Englisch."

Paola Brunetti quoting Henry James.

Acqua alta by Donna Leon

"Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she's covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary - and terribly elegant."

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery