...as vivid and fabulous as a unicorn...

Nanny's words made Janie's kiss across the gatepost seem like a manure pile after a rain

Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a
red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of
someone who was annoyed by it.

Didn't I say I'd always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.

I don't think you ever think of a big city as sweet or community, but there are cities that I think of as charming and particular and interesting cities. I live in one now, Charleston.

All over Atlanta that fall, in the blue twilights, girls came clicking home from their jobs in their clunky heels and miniskirts and opened their apartment windows to the winesap air, and got out ice cubes, and put on Petula Clark singing 'Downtown', and sat down to wait.

Soon the young men would come, drifting out of their bachelor apartments in Bermuda shorts and Topsiders, carrying beers and gin and tonics, looking for a refill and a a date and the keeping of promises that hung in the bronze air like fruit on the eve of ripeness.