Debbie Roth

“Among the latest follies in fiction is the perpetual demand for stories shorter and shorter still. The only thing to do is to meet this demand at the source and check it. Any of the stories below, if left to soak overnight in a barrel of rainwater, will swell to the dimensions of a dollar-fifty novel.”
― Stephen Leacock, Further Foolishness

“September
the golden threshold
between summer and winter”
― Meeta Ahluwalia

“Enough of this nonsense,” Fern Hampton interrupted. “What this church needs is a vanity table in the women’s rest room.” Sam sat in his folding chair, thinking of churches that had homeless shelters and soup kitchens and raised money to send doctors to Africa to help lepers. He wished there was a leper in Harmony they could help. There’s nothing like a leper to stir up a church, he thought.”
― Philip Gulley, Just Shy of Harmony: A Harmony Novel

“Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say “Ay.” These discontinuous fragments, glittering and dark, coalesced in a bewildering lunar brilliance. Fever and a silver chill contended within the child; he had become both voices crying against each other amid the fruit trees. His tight dark home, so crammed with love of him, had broken open, released him into the infinite freedom, the total coolness, of impersonation. As the light in the living room failed, he blindly faced his life, discovering himself to be, to have been since birth, an actor, an excuse for the emotions of others.”
― John Updike, Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism