“The central server is under attack and receiving commands to self-destruct.”

Listen, all of you, to what will later be said of the Forsaken by one of their descendants.

Their nayffara is a flutelike instrument heavy with history, deeply immersed in sorrow.

Depleted as they were, they realized that they had to either team up or go under.

What you are witnessing is the last face of the Earth.

Karen says she’s seen it when the souls begin their perambulations.

This last shift, the boats came in all night and we ran out of everything.

That same month, she realizes that she’s never going to stop striving as long as she’s in Reykjavik.

When Böddi came back to Iceland a month later, he was engaged.

He gets irritated, even seems hurt, if I put on makeup, and he asks accusingly, “Who are you doing that for?”

i come from a family built on longing.

Even though I hate her, my mother probably wrote me letters that she never sent.

So began many long months of conversation between Alberte and his horse.

“I don’t know where to start.”

He can run from this business but he can’t hide.

The troika was the Holy Trinity of its time.

People get killed for less nowadays . . .

You’ve got to act fast in this city.

Driving here, did you know you'd die today?

I am the same sort of export as a Kalashnikov rifle or our great suicidal writers.

It wasn’t a plane at all, but a car flying through the sky.

At that moment, there was another whistling sound, followed by a huge explosion.

She could not have known that the caller at the other end of the phone was about to faint.

It is one of those days when the winter sun is gorgeous, and you don’t want to even think of death.

Is it a boy or a girl?

This man must be high on something, I thought.

She is a woman I have watched for many years, and for as many years she has been unaware of me.

Women are forbidden from setting foot in the swamp.

She hovers overhead, aimless, surrendering herself to fate.

I didn’t go to the dorms as I had planned; my feet led me to the river.

Rain was no longer rain!

The shock that was yet to come had long ago passed her by.

“Get it through your head: God and me, we’re the same person.”

What use is it for us humans to cling to our freedom in the midst of all this trash?

Nobody knows why he went to such great lengths.

The old woman refused to wear any clothing she had not sewn herself.

Ever since our orgasms became supernatural, we’ve been taking better care of our energies.

The wars never ceased, the surveillance and control wrought by our digital world eroded our liberties, unemployment and poverty grew.

Being with you is like being on an island, a quarantine island.

Silvio wanted to escape, race across the sown fields with his long rhea legs until he reached some place where no one could see him.

They looked at me like I was sick.

Aren’t you the one with the tattoos?

The señora is not going to back down.

She smelled of Schubert.

I’ve been married almost twenty-five years, and I’ve never gotten carried away on an adventure like this before.

Are all of us accidents wandering through other people’s lives?

I was overcome by the unshakeable conviction that it was the end of the world.

As soon as he came around the bend at Passo Preto, he raised his pistol and fired into the air.

It’s everybody versus corona.

Who ever heard of a fisherwoman in Gaza, much less a young girl?

“It seems that Noor set fire to another student’s backpack.”

Soothsayers tell the truth even when they’re lying.

“And it was there, in the half-dark kitchen of the priest’s house, while finishing his second bowl of soup, that Damyan suddenly realized something was wrong.”

“How am I supposed to be nice when nobody’s nice to me?”

Firstclaw’s love spells were rumored to be unusually effective.

Khidr stepped out onto the street and was filled with an extraordinary horror.

But it’s not surprising—with everything you hear on the news, how can anyone be expected to think well of the Chinese?

“Look, this forklift even has an electric motor.”

The wooden ring looked antique, because, as Mr. Gimbal explained, it was a centuries-old stereoscopic theater.

“The Devil at your service!” it announced in perfect Italian.