“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.”

— Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

“Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.”

— Truman Capote, Summer Crossing