From the many-roomed black temple, he had stepped into a universe of fractured patterns. There was no relief from their implacable mathematics. Designs formed and re-formed. Hard-edged triangles joined and split in an endless geometry. If this was death, it was visually exhausting.

“The Flower” by Louise Erdrich (2015)

You’re in love with her. It’s probably the hopeless ferocity of your love that impels you to stand firm, to refuse her refusal–she who has, on the one hand, succeeded spectacularly and, on the other, consented to what must be, at best, a chilly and brutal marriage. You can’t simply relent and walk back out of the room. You can’t bring yourself to be so debased.

“Little Man” by Michael Cunningham (2015)

You’re in love with her. It’s probably the hopeless ferocity of your love that impels you to stand firm, to refuse her refusal–she who has, on the one hand, succeeded spectacularly and, on the other, consented to what must be, at best, a chilly and brutal marriage. You can’t simply relent and walk back out of the room. You can’t bring yourself to be so debased.

“Little Man” by Michael Cunningham (2015)

The miller, poor, foolish, doting father that he is, never expected his daughter to be locked into a room full of straw and commanded to spin it all into gold by morning, any more than most fathers expect their daughters to be unsought after by boys, or rejected by colleges, or abused by the men they eventually marry. Such notions rarely appear on the spectrum of paternal possibility.

“Little Man” by Michael Cunningham (2015)

The miller, poor, foolish, doting father that he is, never expected his daughter to be locked into a room full of straw and commanded to spin it all into gold by morning, any more than most fathers expect their daughters to be unsought after by boys, or rejected by colleges, or abused by the men they eventually marry. Such notions rarely appear on the spectrum of paternal possibility.

“Little Man” by Michael Cunningham (2015)