From his 1899 novel Dom Casmurro. Widely regarded by critics as one of the greatest writers of all time, Machado remains less well known than the luminaries he is so often compared to (Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, etc.). This particular novel...
From his short, surrealist story, A Country Doctor. Although he died over a century ago, Kafka's novels and short stories predicted our modern alienation. The nameless, faceless, oppressive bureaucracies of The Trial and The Castle had the power to distort...
From her first short story collection, Monday or Tuesday, which explores the challenge creatives face trying to capture something truthful through artifice, and striving towards the sublime with imperfect tools such as language and memory. Anyone who's struggled to express a...
Apparently, long before it had become a quaint cultural cliché, the can-can was absolutely shocking. Twain gasped! He protested! He clutched his pearls! But he wasn't fooling anyone. We know it was all in good fun, and that deep down he loved it. Deep down,...
From his poem Chapter Heading. In his earlier work, Hemingway experimented with the lean, muscular writing style he eventually distilled to what he referred to as "iceberg theory." That is, leave your meaning mostly beneath the surface. We love this...
From his novel Nicholas Nickleby. I’ve thought about this quotation often over the past few months as we collectively endure isolation and grieve gatherings. In his own time, Dickens (and his characters) also contended with a "dread disease," consumption, and...
From his beloved poem, Sympathy, which he wrote in 1899 while working as a clerk at the Library of Congress. On the most immediate level, the poem was a response to the stifling confinement and heat he felt as he worked...
The opening line of Dante's Inferno sets up the Divine Comedy’s epic, allegorical journey through hell, purgatory and heaven. Everything about the story, structure, and poetry aims for symmetry and balance, and it's no accident that the poem begins exactly...
The final line of The Great Gatsby, the Fitzgerald novel that defined the jazz age. It was the era that ushered in modernity, a time of material excess, liberation and intoxication. But even in the midst of the party, Fitzgerald could sense the toll such...
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep." - William Shakespeare From Act IV of The Tempest, this line is spoken by Prospero, as he compares his magical illusions "melted into...
