To think that by just using her imagination, they could all be hers, bores her stiff.

Him. You. The same pauses.

The couple stopped in the middle of the way to rest.

I do not like parties. The idle chat, the smoke, the fatuous talk of drunks, I find them all tiresome.

She reclined on her bed cylindrically, unable to move, filling the feathery fabric with fluff.

I smiled to myself when I saw just where I had ended up, thanks to this lack of efficiency, a lack which the manager appeared to attribute to the workings of fate or chance.

Today, for some unknown reason, I've decided to share with you certain indiscretions that even my wife is unaware of.

A huge army clad in black suddenly spreads over the horizon; it approaches at a gallop, full speed, and attacks just like that, without warning.

But Comrade António, don't you prefer to live in a free country?

Every day the interdental brush probed into hard corners.

I was White and had fianchettoed my bishop. Berta was mounting a strong center pawn position.

I wanted to get out of there.

Ceremonious, humble, weighing each word, he extended almost fearfully a timid hand.

Rather formal, modest, weighing every word, almost fearful, he held his hand out to me hesitantly.

I am a reader and I came to settle accounts with you.

I must involuntarily live in a world that the old woman has dragged back from nonexistence.

I wake up at eight a.m. On the sixteenth floor every day at eight a.m. Sorokin sneezes.

So the seamstress is out, and Mom must save the situation somehow, except here's the thing: there's no money.

An orchard owner categorizes pears and people in this short story by the Russian writer Ludmila Ulitskaya.

The barmaid poured him vodka, and Sergei Ilyich took it up with an accustomed, firm grip that was even elegant in its way.

Her knees were trembling a bit, and she thought: That's the shock.

One morning when she and her mother were making the bed--she was on one side, her mother on the other--Cecilia showed the first sign of madness.

My name is Akiko. What glorious name do you bear? Type it and press enter and Akiko will unlock her door.

Good God, what criminals? They're ordinary people.

He just loved that little gizmo.

Something suggested to Nina Alexandrovna that in this halted time there was no important difference between order and disorder.

The tracheotomy left him hoarse for a long time but in the end he got his normal voice back.

We were going out stealing horses.

All female psychiatric computers are named Eliza, in accordance with a fine old tradition.

So now we've begun packing. I've carried empty cardboard boxes home from the supermarket.

But mostly it nested inside his chest, stirring in there like something alive.

I'm lying on my back in the ambulance, firmly strapped to the stretcher and we're driving very fast through town...

The moment Patrik Ohlsson unfolded the raffle ticket and saw the number for the first time, he noticed the intriguing ambiguity.

I’ve had a lot of time lately, and I’ve been thinking about the King and Queen.

You're not going to cause me any trouble now, are you, the conductor said.

A warden takes me by the arm as I slip on my blindfold and step out of the cell.

The departure came in the month of March, when the thaw opened up the passes, which in our mountains were like gateways toward the countries of central Europe.

That prisoner dreamed that he was in prison. Naturally, the dreams had details and patterns.

Nevertheless this howling struck terror to the heart, especially in that bitter weather.

It took me some long months to realize that I was incarcerated.

I am writing to you from the Ruukkijoki prison barracks because the guard gave me paper and told me to write my last letter ever, home or to a lover.

My angel . . . Were you ever a Communist?

There, where my body seemed to lay a great distance from me, I put my hand on my leg, on my fingers, and I couldn't tell they were mine.

Bare chests will be covered up, pretentious laughter gasps its last; late nights, idleness, sleeping late-gone!

When they reached Via Merulana: the crowd. Outside the entrance, the black of the crowd, with its wreath of bicycle wheels.

Sit down and listen. And write everything down.

Don't say a word to anyone. Come alone. Make sure that you're not being followed.

Feverish, tense, you try to calm your rapid breathing.

Knowing this-that the doctor appeared deep in his Sunday routine-the woman hesitated.

He forced himself to take shallow breaths, even though his instinct was to swallow huge heaving gulps to relieve the sense of suffocation he felt in the crowds and the alleyways.

So, I guess it's time to get a divorce and become a janitor? Personov asks him.

Did you hear? Pavel Petrovich asked Tatyana Ivanovna. It's incomprehensible. I still can't believe it!

Celebrated Chinese writer Can Xue depicts a loner who takes in a decidedly ungrateful stray cat in this short story.

“Akin Isola remains one of our most versatile Nigerian writers.”—Wole Soyinka

My hiccups won't stop.

“The most important Arab novelist today.”—Naguib Mahfouz

Why doesn't your mother come back to look for you, constantly asked the woman.

He hugged me, baptizing me with his sweat.

My dear boy, how capital to find you here!

Fridays I go to church. I do not go to pray.