Art and culture

“Strange people often came to the farm, but they tended to be late risers, so Mad knew the first few hours would be easy…Now she looked up to see a car driving down the dirt road, a PT Cruiser, which was not a car that you saw in this area."

“It’s one of the last days before Easter. Very soon Louisa is going to be thrown out of an art auction for vandalizing a valuable painting. Old ladies will shriek and the police will come and it really wasn’t planned.”

“It is three p.m., and Elizabeth is carrying flowers for Marcus Carmichael. The dead man. That drowned body, suddenly alive as you like and living at 14 Ruskin Court. The man she saw lowered into a grave in a Hampshire churchyard, now unpacking boxes and struggling with his new Wi-Fi.”

“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead…Article One, Section One, The Dragon Rider’s Codex...."

“Later that day the cops would crawl over the intricacies of his life and discover he was into pirates because he had been born with only one eye."

“Killing someone is easy. Hiding the body, now, that’s usually the hard part. That’s how you get caught."

“Santa Monica, 1923. The plane rattled, as if with fever. The engine spit once, and then, like a ruptured heart, my Curtiss OX-5 engine burst, spewing hot oil from both sides of its chest."

“Louise. August 1975. The bed is empty. Louise, the counselor— twenty-three, short-limbed, rasp-voiced, jolly—stands barefoot on the warm rough planks of the cabin."

“The events of September 11 were historic for many reasons. One of them was that the airspace over the United States was shut down, and every plane in the sky was ordered to land immediately at the nearest available airport.”

“1 August 2023 4:34 p.m. There were only five minutes left for Joy Moody and her twin daughters."