REBECCA

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate, leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate, I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.
Daphne DuMauier

THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER

We are a family that has always been very close in spirit. Our father was drowned in a sailing accident when we were young, and our mother had always stressed the fact that our familial relationships have a kind of permanence that we will never meet with again. I don't think about the family much, but when I remember its members and the coast where they lived and the sea salt that I think is in our blood, I am happy to recall that I am a Pommerory--that  I have the nose, the coloring, and the promise of longevity--and that while we are not a distinguished family, we enjoy the illusion, when we are together, that the Pommeroys are unique...
John Cheever

FOR LOVE

It isn't until several days after the accident that Lottie lets herself--makes herself--think about it. Think about how it was for all of them, for Cameron and Elizabeth, and for Jessica.

What she imagines is that Cameron must have been certain, right up until the moment he turned the car into the driveway, that he could get control again, that he could win Elizabeth back.
Sue Miller

EVENING

A new lens passed over everything she saw, the shadows moved on the wall like skeletons handing things to each other. Her body was flung back over a thousand beds in a thousand other rooms. She was undergoing a revolution, she felt split open. In her mattress there beat the feather of a wild bird.

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been?

I guess far away.

Yes you were. Too far away.

They sat in silence.

You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning.

No.

You did.

He smiled at that.
Evening
Susan Minot

The book is SO much better than the movie, although the movie was good...

THE LOST VAN GOGH

Neither of the two men trusted the other, but that, after all, was the nature of the business.

Anxious to get started, uncomfortably close, they faced one another in the semidarkness, each with a shoulder pressed against the exit door to the roof. The tight, airless space at the top of the fire stairs barely concealed them, and they strained to keep apart, to maintain the few inches separating them during the long wait.
A.J.  Zerries

DELUSIONS OF GRANDMA

The Chinese have a curse, "May you live in interesting times." As curses went, Cora felt that this was truly the best she'd every heard. Not that she was particularly fond of curses, but in her opinion this one was eminently applicable, far superior to the generic "Go to hell" or the cheery "Break a leg" or even the medieval "A pox on your house." For many years she had thought that this first, favorite curse had actually gone, "May you have an interesting life," and she had like that version also, but then, an interesting life didn't encompass as large a radius as these interesting times...
Carrie Fisher

ALMOST

I have this boyfriend who comes to visit me--it's mostly a sex thing. Unless I visit him, in which case it's mostly a babysitting thing. I'm not sure which turns me on more. You don't think of British Jews, if you happen to know any--and I didn't until Daniel Jacobs--as world-class lovers, but he must be an exception, or it could be the antidepressants he takes, which not only keep the blues at bay...
Elizabeth Benedict