I am up to my calves in the sea, the very beginnings of the sea which stretches before me out to the edge of the sky. My ship, my tiny ship moored in the shallows, rocks back and forth anxiously, like a schoolboy. The waves lap at its side, the cool waters. Ah, let us go, let us set forth, my ship!

I prepare to jump from the windowledge, but at the back of my head is a voice that says, “What are you doing, you idiot?” But it’s insignificant, that voice. Maybe next time I won’t take it into account.

The apartment has been burglarized again. They have taken a record player, a typewriter, a portable radio and other things besides. When I ask the detective if he would recommend a watchdog, he replied, “No, they will only steal the dog as well.” And of course, he was right. They did.

It happened just the other day. I can’t sleep. The whole thing makes me sick and throws me into a fever. I work in the park. Pick up papers and various articles with a stick. 

My husband, who loved festivals, who was a great fan of festivals, wanted to get to the square in time for the first band at eleven o’clock.

Often, walking down some avenue, the wide black portfolio swinging from his hand, he caught sight of himself in a shop window and wondered: Who could that be, that city fellow? Or sometimes, seeing his shoes, so thin-soled and unserviceable, he would smile with pity for the man wearing them.

In the long summers of my childhood, games flared up suddenly, burned to a brightness, and vanished forever. The summers were so long that they gradually grew longer than the whole year, they stretched

One summer evening at about midnight a man wearing eye-glasses and a light-blue shirt made his way through the crowded lobby of a movie theater and stepped outside with a look of dismay. The marquee was hung with a crackling curtain of rain. 

Mordecai Maccabee was in Disney World recording sound and Geraldine La Cru was in her apartment drinking tea. She sat at a table and kept her eyes on the river. A red tug-boat with a black chimney

When Emily Jessup said goodbye to her daughter in Oslo, she did not expect to see her again for at least five days. Mimi was going mountain climbing with friends and was to meet her mother at the end of the week on the tip of a fjord in Flam. Emily looked forward to the time apart.