Dead Serious

"Serious as a body bag." --James Patterson, NYPD Red

Magic Time

Gary and this fellow Val kept looking at car keys like old magicians studying old dried herbs, weird! (The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer)

Utah Colors

In the mountains, the snow was iron gray and purple in the hollows, and glowed like gold on every slope that faced the sun. (The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer)

Prison Cliff

Being here is like walking up to the edge and looking over 24 hours a day for more days then you care to recall (Gary Gilmore on prison life, from The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer).

Twofer

Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like a rabbit's ears. (A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor)

Shackled and Drunk

The only sound in the messhall was Harrogate struggling to free himself from the table. Wilson was standing over him like a faith healer over a paraplegic. (Suttree by Cormac McCarthy)

Roofing

Slusser turned toward the guards in a half crouch and they fell upon him with slapsticks flailing...The slapsticks were going whop whop whop, Slusser on the floor with just the pick sticking out, the guards hammering away from kneeling positions like carpenters on a roof. (Suttree by Cormac McCarthy)

I Thought We Grow To Be Old Farts In Phoenix

But I've been here since the beginning like a prefix (Thug Love Story 2012 by Action Bronson)

City Moon

Above the heat and the improbable skyline of the city a brass moon has risen and the clouds run before it like watered ink. (Suttree by Cormac McCarthy)

Jumpin' Bean

"Well, Pa seen him, an' Pa, he figgers he's the bes' Jesus-jumper in these parts. So Pa picks out a feeny bush 'bout twicet as big as Uncle John's feeny bush, and Pa lets out a squawk like a sow litterin' broken bottles, an' he takes a run at that feeny bush an' clears her an' bust his right leg." (Character speaking: Casy, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath)

Lee the Wiser

"All right then--I'm going to try to pull out your thoughts like egg noodles and let them dry in the sun." (John Steinbeck from East of Eden)

All Shook Up

The fact of his eventual death shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. He could only squeal in pain. (Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.) 

Picture Perfect

Her blond hair framed her face like crabgrass does flagstone. (The Bayou Trilogy by Daniel Woodrell.) 

The Big Gulp

The back of his head and his sternum ached, the wolfed-down Egg McMuffin shifted at the bottom of his stomach like a shipwreck on the ocean floor. (The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith.)  

I Do It For The Glory

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning towards dynamite. (John Steinbeck from East of Eden)

Slipping Away

And he lay very quietly and tried to hold onto himself that he felt slipping away from himself as you feel snow starting to slip sometimes on a mountain slope . . . (Ernest Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls)

Painting a Political Picture

The lioness of Chappaqua is hot on the trail of the Chicago gazelle, eager to gnaw him to pieces, like a harrowing scene out of a George Stubbs painting. (Maureen Dowd in The NYT).

The Devils Made Him Do It

“Sean Avery is like a case of jock rash. It’s there, it bothers you, and eventually you have to just play through it.” (The New Yorker quoting a retired NHL referee, Paul Stewart, on Avery's playoff antics.

A Different Sort of Buzz

Reality Stars Are Dropping Like Flies! (TMZ.com).

In Surgery, Checking the Light Upstairs

My surgery lasted nine hours, and for most of it I had to be awake, so that the doctors could test the connection, like asking somebody to go upstairs and see if the light in the bedroom comes back on while you fiddle with the circuit-breaker box in the basement.(Michael Kinsley in The New Yorker).