The thick, sugary covering of the snow. — Jane Smiley

How could she pursue the transcendence and virtue of the intellectual life when her mind had disappeared into her body like a sponge into a basin of ink?

It was the exact combination of the ephemeral and the eternal that a dying man needed to know about.

Eavesdropping is a habit fiction writers get into. Fiction writing will lead you into a number of socially unacceptable practices.