From the books that have captivated my imagination, here are a few of my favorite descriptive quotes:

“The blinding afternoon sunlight gave way to honey-gold, and at last to amber and rust. A faint half-moon showed just above a line of pale yellow sky. The heat of the day went with the light, and the men in the barley-field shivered in their cooling sweat.”

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (p. 141)

“The Point is the easternmost end of the island, a slim finger of shingle bounded by the open sea on one side and mudflats on the other. When the tide is out you can see the remains of ancient boats that have been sucked down and lost in the depths. Like skeletons of long-dead beasts, their stripped and blackened frames emerge from the ooze, giving stark warning of the dangers that lurk in the mud. Beyond the mudflats, a tangle of stunted woodland darkens a rugged islet in the mouth of the estuary. The tiny island overlooks the shore with a haunting blend of beauty and menace, the limbs of its wizened trees twisted by the wind and tide into strange grasping shapes, like malformed hands reaching out for help.”

Lucas by Kevin Brooks (p. 19-20)

“Swift as thought, he slipped away from me, running down the hillside like a cloud’s shadow when the wind blows. My connection to him frayed away as he went, scattering and floating like dandelion fluff in the wind. Instead of small and secret, I felt our bond go wide and open, as if he had invited all the Witted creatures in the world in to share our joining. All the web of life on the whole hillside suddenly swelled within my heart, linked and meshed and woven through with one another. It was too glorious to contain. I had to go with him; a morning this wondrous must be shared.”

Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb (p. 606-607)

“The storm comes in like a finger snap. That’s how they’ll speak in the months and years after, when it stops being only an ache behind their eyes and a crushing at the base of their throats. When it finally fits into stories.”

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (p. 9)

“And then the sea rises up and the sky swings down and greenish lightning slings itself across everything, flashing the black into an instantaneous, terrible brightness. Mama is fetched to the window by the light and the noise, the sea and the sky clashing like a mountain splitting so they feel it through their soles and spines sending Maren’s teeth into her tongue and hot salt down her gullet. And then maybe both of them are screaming but there is no sound save the sea and the sky and all the boat lights swallowed and the boats flashing and the boats spinning, the boats flying, turning, gone.

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (p.12)

“Nothing stinks quite like a corpse. It takes a while for them to really start reeking. O, chances are good if you don’t soil your britches before you die, you’ll soil them soon afterward—your human bodies work that way, I’m afraid. But I don’t mean the pedestrian stink of shit, gentlefriends. I speak of the eye-watering perfume of simple mortality. It takes a turn or two to really warm up, but once the gala gets into full swing, it’s not one soon forgot. Before the skin starts to black and the eyes turn to white and the belly bloats like some horrible balloon, it begins. There’s a sweetness to it, creeping down your throat and rolling your belly like a butter churn.”

Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff (p.3)

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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