In order to grab their attention, she needed to catch their eyes from the moment she got on the subway.

He was a famous poet, so they almost all submitted.

My wife and I were sitting on our porch when a man engulfed in flames entered our garden.

Then, for the first time, the strange thought occurred to me that our carpet frame had become a gallows.

Finally they dismembered him and hung his head on the city walls for a week.

From the heavens black gold pours down.

Perhaps I will poison a petrol engineer’s coffee.

No one seriously considered the idea that the world’s oil deposits might be limited.

You always talked about Crevalcore when it rained.

For six years Arabian Drilling has clocked my time.

It was a winter morning when the Tangerine King rolled into my room.

“Orange is for another country. The color for our revolution is yellow.”

“God’s punishment comes through the hands of the insulted,” said Fazyl, sighing.

Who wants a disabled girlfriend?

“Even if we were to remove the crow’s feet, there's still the overall balance of your face to consider.”

I began to realize how disgracefully I was behaving.

Just as I’m thinking it’s about time to get out, she suddenly whips off her towel and shows me her own breasts.

And if you ask what I was doing, I was lying in the garbage like this pretending to be a nonconformist.

I can’t say I wouldn’t have sex with him if, after a few drinks, the mood felt right.

Just then my right arm hit something and pain pierced my flesh.

It required a certain focus and concentration in order to vaporize.

For the time being I set the head in a shallow porcelain bowl, the kind used for flower arrangements.

Galactic Empire, you're my only hope.

“Please kill me. Kill me, like you killed your wife.”

The girl finally grew incredibly small, about one centimeter wide.

The next afternoon I saw Granny Nabi pushing a dog in a stroller.

A girl will head toward the taxi stand, dragging a noisy suitcase far too small for her hopes.

And the woman who died—the victim, I mean—looked just like you.

There are riot police trucks blockading the street, not even a mosquito could squeeze by.

Today we have with us the woman who toppled the government.

Seventeen years old: a terrible age for studying. A terrible age for anything other than fornicating.

If a queen cries an entire sea, she has to cry the Mediterranean or, at least, the Aegean

She wished she were blind so she couldn’t see the man mincing around, mimicking her father in a skirt.

The rest of the night we refold our spread-open bodies dreaming snake-dreams.

We’re in a strange land and Christmas is nearing.

The voice seemed to be coming from the pig.

Flacq during the day is nothing more than a vast market; buy, sell, pound the pavements, work the sidewalks.

He had the sense of a giant creature slithering within the tunnel.

The prairies of Brittany have sugarcane in their memory.

So you come from there, it must be so beautiful so wonderful; why do you live here when your island is so lovely.

She answered, listening to the detailed instructions of the fabric against her skin.

It’s raining bullets over Mutsamudu.

“Adolf, it's you, I didn't recognize you at first without the ridiculous mustache.”

The plane crashes . . . on the island of troubling roosters.

Slowly, as we made our way up to the village, the air became crystal clear, rid itself of the city’s impurities, and we, too, shed our masks.

“You expect me to believe you dug a hole just for the fun of it?”

It's just a dead kid, what are you making such a fuss about?

The majority of women can’t bear the idea of sleeping with someone they can’t see.

The tongues of flesh were captivating as they rose and fell, row by row, like a wave, the wings moving only slightly.

She had undressed me then as if she were peeling a piece of fruit.

A hunchback either becomes impotent or burns in a fire of lasciviousness that never cools for a single instant, like the heat of hell.

I was three and he was four.

I’m passionately in love with your voice . . . only your voice.

I am a thief of strong emotions. I listen to the moans and shouts of others.

I want to know where you got this filth.

What was better: to lie in the ground with a uterus or to live above it without one?

They plumb in crude terms the physical attributes of her desired but unobtainable physique.

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates.

Did you know that your husband is cheating on you?

With even more refined manners I propose she sticks a ballpoint up the cat’s rectum.