From personal experience, I completely agree that it is often easier to go for monotone sadness. When I was starting out, I wrote a gazillion short stories that ran the gamut of human suffering - drug addiction, child abuse, terminal… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
We all know to feel sympathy for those who've suffered from drug addiction, child abuse, and terminal illness, so the set up elicits an emotional response that the story itself very well may not earn. Energy generated by the fiction… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“Carrying that lumber the forty meters from the forest had left his knuckles blistered, his underarms sopping, but now a few hours of flames… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“The previous night, for the first time in a long time, he had felt whole, and his eyes returned to the rearview, where his… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“At the kitchen table she examined the glass of ice. Each cube was rounded by room temperature, dissolving in its own remains, and belatedly she understood that this was how a loved one disappeared. Despite the shock wave of walking into an empty flat, the absence isn’t immediate, more a fade from the present tense you shared, a melting into… — Anthony Marra Copy Share
“The television dramas we grew up on, stories of star-crossed lovers, stories of love overcoming all obstacles, well, they’re all fairy tales, obviously, like… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“He had always tried to treat Havaa as a child and she always went along with it, as though childhood and innocence were fantastical… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“He asked them to close their eyes, and hoped their mouths would follow suit.” p. 137” — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“Don't insult me. Everyone knows a turtle is a crustacean on its mother's side.” — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“Those smooth, spit-cleaned cheeks gave no indication of the dreams crowding her skull. Should she make it to adulthood, the girl would arrive with two hundred and six bones. Two and a half million sweat glands. Ninety-six thousand kilometers of blood vessels. Forty-six chromosomes. Seven meters of small intestines. Six hundred and six discrete muscles. One hundred billion cerebral neurons.… — anthony marra Copy Share
“In all likelihood, Sonja had more academic journal subscriptions than friends. She could explain advanced calculus to her fifth-form algebra teacher but couldn't tell… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
“Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more… — Anthony Marra Copy Share Image
