"I was sitting with my mother, helping her boil water. I had found kindling and was feeding the fire, and she was approving of the help I was providing. It was unusual for a boy of any age to be as helpful as I was. There is an intimacy between mother and son, a son of six or seven. At that age a boy can still be a boy, can be weak and melt into his mother's arms. For me, though, this is the last time, for tomorrow I will not be a boy. I will be something else--an animal desperate only to survive. I know I cannot turn back and so I savor these days, these moments when I can be small, can do small favors, can crawl beneath my mother and blow on the dinner fire. I like to think I was luxuriating in the final moment of childhood when the sound came."

                     --David Eggers, What is the What, 2007

"THAT'S GREAT, EDDIE! MAYBE YOU CAN HELP US FIND A CERTAIN RUNAWAY KID...NAME OF KEN MATTHEWS! HIS PARENTS CONTACTED US AND ASKED FOR OUR HELP! HERE'S HIS PHOTO...!"
"HMMM, CAN'T SAY I'VE GLIMMED HIM AROUND HERE! BUT LET THE OLD GURU BECOME ONE WITH THE GREAT, GROOVY MARMALADE SKIES AND MAYBE I CAN GET A CLUE!"

                     --Bob Haney, TEEN TITANS, Vol. 1, No. 15, 
                            "Captain Rumble Blasts the Scene!," 1968

"I woke alone. The room was small, with a single bed and a dresser. Anna Kristine's daughter's room. Old dolls sat bowed and tilted in the corner, like paralyzed children robbed of their wheelchairs. A silver thimble and brooch lay on the bedside table, next to a clock that had stopped. It was the kind of room from which everything important has been packed up, shipped off."

                     --Vendela Vida, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, 2007

"FAR AWAY FROM EARTH--AT A DISTANCE PAST IMAGINING--LIES THE GEMWORLD! HERE THERE ARE COLORS SO RICH AND BRIGHT AS TO BOGGLE THE SENSES...AND AT THE DIAMOND TEMPLE THOSE COLORS BLEND TOGETHER IN THE WHITE LIGHT OF THE NOBLEST GEM OF ALL! BUT ALL IS NOT HARMONIOUS THIS DAY..."

                     --Dan Mishkin & Gary Cohn, AMETHYST, Vol. 1, No. 1, 
                       "The Long Way Home," 1984

"The rack stood as if it had been there forever across the landscape and lit by the sun with its long shadow behind it, and in harmony with every fold of the field and finally turned into a mere form, a primordial form, even if that was not the word I used then, and it gave me huge pleasure just to look at it. I can still feel the same thing today when I see a hayrack in a photograph from a book, but all that is a thing of the past now. No-one makes hay this way any more in this part of the country; today there is one man alone on a tractor, and then the drying on the ground and the mechanical turner and wrapping machines and huge plasticwhite cubes of stinking silage. So the feeling of pleasure slips into the feeling that time has passed, that it is very long ago, and the sudden feeling of being old."

                     --Per Petterson (as translated by Anne Born), Out Stealing Horses, 2003

"I'VE GOT A CRICK IN MY NECK FROM PUNCHING OUT THAT ARMY OF BEHEMOTHS! THIS GALAXY-HOPPING IS BEGINNING TO BUG ME! I'M SICK OF LOOKING AT TOAD-WOMEN, SQUIRREL-MEN, ROBOT-SOLDIERS, AND--OH YEAH--STAN'S CRAZY MACHINERY--!!"

                     --Jack Kirby, WHAT IF?, Vol. 1, No. 11, 
                       "What If The Fantastic Four Were The Original Marvel Bullpen?" 1978

"Anything for Jamie. So much devotion, and such pleasure in providing it. What does Billy want? Whatever Jamie wants. What pleases Billy? Whatever pleases Jamie. What absorbs attentive Billy? Jamie! Jamie! Delighting Jamie! Should that worshipful accord unbelievably never lose its power, lucky pair! But should she one day spurn his close attention, withhold her approbation, resist arousal by his passion, miserable, vulnerable, tenderized man! He'll never spend a day without her without thinking of her fifty times. She'll ride roughshod over her successors forever. He'll think about her till he dies. He'll think about her while he dies."

                     --Philip Roth, Exit Ghost, 2007

"BUT THERE'S NO LONGER ANY REASON WE CAN'T MARRY, SUPERMAN! NOW THAT LANA'S BIO-RING HAS ENABLED ME TO TURN INTO A KRYPTONIAN INSECT QUEEN, I'M AS INVULNERABLE AS YOU ARE!"

                     -- E. Nelson Bridwell, SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND, LOIS LANE, Vol. 1, No. 69,
                       "Beware of the Bug-Belle!," 1966

"The room was furnished in what he had once heard her describe as Buckingham Palace style: thick mustard-yellow carpets, big dusty-pink sofas and armchairs with raised patterns of vines and scrolls, brown oil paintings of racehorses at grass and reproduction Fragonards of bucolic ladies on swings in immense gilt frames, and the whole opulent emptiness overlit by lacquered brass lamps."

                     --Ian McEwan, Amsterdam, 1998

"REMIND ME NOT OF THINGS I ALREADY KNOW! IT IS TRUE THE BLOOD SACRIFICE OF THE ATLANTEAN RACE WAS PART OF MY ORIGINAL PLAN...AND WITHOUT IT THE PLAN WAVERS ON THE BRINK OF OBLITERATION...BUT THERE REMAINS ONE TINY SPARK OF HOPE...AND THE SEVEN BRIDES SHALL SERVE IN FANNING IT INTO A RAGING INFERNO!"

                     --John Byrne, AVENGERS WEST COAST ANNUAL, Vol. 1, No. 4, 
                       "Gather Now Ye 7 Brides!" 1989

"But what she loved to watch was the way he blew the microscopic shavings off the pencil point after he finished sharpening. If he were to do it all day, she'd watch all day, pencil after pencil. He'd crank and blow, crank and blow, a ritual more thorough and righteous than the formal signing of some document of state by eleven men with medals."

                     --Don DeLillo, Falling Man, 2007

"HE COULD FEEL THE SOLAR WINDS STREAMING PAST HIS SILVERED FORM--TO THE FORM SO SLIM--AND SEEMINGLY LOST IN THE ABYSS OPENING UP AROUND HIM! IT HAD BEEN SO LONG SINCE HE HAD FELT INFINITY--FOR A MOMENT HE FELT THE UNFAMILIAR STAB OF TERROR--BUT THE MOMENT PASSED AS SWIFTLY AS HE PASSED OUT OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM--AND HE SLIPPED DEEP INTO THE SENSUOUS ACT OF...SURFING!

                     --Steve Englehart, SILVER SURFER, Vol. 3, No. 1, "--Free--," 1987

"'No, you're not prying. I'm just kinda tired. Like a monkey in the rain.'"

                     --Haruki Murakami (as translated by Jay Rubin), Norwegian Wood, 2000

"REPTISAURUS THE HORRENDOUSLY HUGE MONSTER THAT EMERGED INTO MODERN TIME FROM THE HIDEOUSLY DISTANT PAST, HAD VANISHED INTO A BOTTOMLESS CAVERN THAT LED DEEP INTO THE EARTH, NEVER, PRAYED THE PEOPLE WHO HAD SEEN IT ALIVE, TO BE SEEN AGAIN! TIME PASSED...THE MILITARY AND CIVIL AUTHORITIES WHO WATCHED AND WAITED FOR THE CREATURE TO EMERGE BEGAN TO RELAX THEIR GUARD! REPTISAURUS BECAME A LEGEND THAT FEW WHO HADN'T ACTUALLY SEEN DIDN'T BELIEVE! THEN, THE DARK JUNGLES TREMBLED, THE SOGGY GROUND SHUDDERED...ANIMALS, UNEQUIPPED TO REASON BUT GIFTED WITH UNFAILING INSTINCTS, FLED...AND ALL OF NATURE SEEMED TO GATHER ITSELF FOR A COMING DISASTER! WINDS SHRIEKED FROM A TURGID SKY, AND REPTISAURUS RETURNED TO THE WORLD OF MAN!"

                     --unknown, REPTISAURUS, Vol. 2, No. 4, "Reptisaurus Meets His Mate," 1962

"I learned about religion the way most children then learned about sex, not in the gutter but in the gravel-and-cement schoolyard, during the winter months of real school. They would cluster in groups, holding each other's mittened hands and whispering. They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliated by explaining where babies came from. Some of the mothers phoned mine to complain, though I think I was more upset than they were: they didn't believe me but I believed them."

                     --Margaret Atwood, Surfacing, 1972

"YOU ARE A FOOL, CAPED ONE--TO THINK SKULL-FACE COULD BE STOPPED BY YOUR LIGHT! OR HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN--THAT TO BE BLINDED, ONE MUST FIRST HAVE EYES...AND NOT THE EMPTY SOCKETS OF A FLESHLESS SKULL! "

                     --Don Glut, WHAT IF, Vol. 1, No. 9, 
                       "What If...The Avengers Had Been Formed During the 1950's?" 1978

"There were books everywhere. There were pens, and a blue glass vase, an ashtray from the Dolder Grand in Zurich, the rusted arrow of a weather vane, a little brass hourglass, sand dollars on the windowsill, a pair of binoculars, an empty wine bottle that served as a candle holder, wax melted down the neck. I touched this thing and that. At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world; with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived."

                     --Nicole Krauss, The History of Love, 2005

"YOU STUMBLE AS YOU RUSH BLINDLY AHEAD! THERE'S A WILD JOY IN YOUR HEART AS YOU NEAR YOUR LONG-SOUGHT GOAL! YOU DON'T EVEN STOP TO THINK WHY OR HOW...ALL YOU KNOW IS THAT THE TRIUMPHANT SCREAM OF THE GORILLA MAN IS BRINGING YOU CLOSER AND CLOSER TO HIM AT LAST! THEN, YOUR HEART BEATING LIKE A HEAVY TRIP-HAMMER, YOU COME UPON A CLEARING...AND THERE HE IS...EXACTLY AS IN YOUR NIGHTMARE! WELL, KEN HALE, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW? YOU FOUND HIM! NOW RAISE YOUR RIFLE AND SHOOT! THAT'S WHY YOU CAME HERE ISN'T IT...TO KILL HIM AND GET RID OF HIM? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, MAN? SHOOT! SHOOT! SHOOT!"

                     --unknown, MEN'S ADVENTURES, Vol. 1, No. 26, "Gorilla Man," 1954

"The way she looks reminds Landsman of an engagement party they went to years ago, for a friend of Bina's. The bride-to-be was marrying a mexican, and as a kind of joke, the party had a Cinco de Mayo theme. They hung a papier-mache penguin from a tree in a yard. Children were blindfolded and set forth, armed with a stick, to deal the penguin blows until it broke open. The children beat the penguin with savagery, and then the candy came showering down. It was just a bunch of wrapped toffees, peppermint, butterscotch, the kind your great-aunt could be relied upon to supply from a dusty crevice of her handbag. But as it rained from the sky, the children swarmed with a bestial joy. And Bina stood there watching them with her arms folded and a pleat at the corner of her eyes."

                     --Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, 2007

"EXPECTING LITTLE RESISTANCE, THE INVADERS THUNDER FORTH--INTO THE LUSTY JAWS OF A BALUURIAN ARMY WHICH GREATLY OUTNUMBERS THEIR RECENTLY DEPLETED RANKS! HOT GORE REIGNS FROM THE SUBTERRANEAN SKIES--AS THE FIRST WAVE OF DEVIL-BORN RAIDERS IS SWEPT AWAY! MISTAKING ANGUISHED CRIES FOR SHOUTS OF VICTORY, THOSE BEHIND ANXIOUSLY RUSH FORWARD...TO JOIN THEIR DEMON-BROTHERS IN INGLORIOUS DEFEAT!"

                     --Tom DeFalco, MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, Vol. 1, No. 75, 
                       "By Blastaar--Betrayed!," 1981