inspo/dialogue
Sally Rooney,
Rachel Kushner,
Jennifer Egan,
Raymond Carver,
Jonathan Franzen,
Nick Hornby,
Viet Thanh Nguyen,
Annie Proulx,
Jonny Steinberg
good dialogue, with or without quotation marks
She flicked the half-smoked cigarette into the pool. It floated for a second, then sank. She said, I don’t like facts.
Danny: I don’t like nouns. Or verbs. And adjectives are the worst.
Nora: No, adverbs are the worst. He said brightly. She thought hopefully.
Danny: She moaned helplessly.
Nora: He ran stiffly.
Danny: Is that why you’re here? To get away from all the adverbs back in New York?
Who says I’m from New York?
Aren’t you?
Nora cocked her head. Short-term memory problems?
Oh, yeah. Facts.
Nora: Anyway, there’s no getting away from adverbs. They’re rampant.
Danny: She confessed anxiously.
Nora: They’re in our heads.
She cried desperately.
Nora: I hope you don’t actually write like that.
Danny: I write for shit.
Nora: I’m an excellent writer.
She said smugly.
Nora: Not smugly. Factually.
Danny: Ah. So you’ll make an exception to brag.
kinda cute
She turns to me, and I swear to God her eyes are bugging half out of her head. Are you aware, she says, that every question you ask is costing the taxpayer money? Those two guards outside the door, how much you think they’re getting paid? We’re turning people away downstairs because they don’t have insurance, and you robbers and rapists and murderers are lying around here being treated like kings. I don’t get it.
I try again. But the operation—
They should have a meter running right next to your bed, she says. Just so you can see the burden you are. Then maybe you’d give me a peaceful minute to do my work.
Is it the same as the last oper—
That’s fifteen dollars.
Or is it something—
Another fifteen. You’re up to thirty.
I stare at her. My head is starting to fog up. I say, Are you seriously asking me for money?
Angela looks behind her, realizing all of a sudden that this doesn’t look too good. I don’t hear you, she says, and starts to hum. She hums and hums. I try to talk, but all she does is hum.
so sad
"What about Dad, though?" she said. "Did you forget it's his birthday?"
"I lost track of time here."
"I wouldn't push you," Denise said, "except that I was the person who opened your Christmas box."
"Christmas was a bad scene, no question."
"Which package went to whom was pretty much guesswork."
lol
“You want to talk about technology. You know how they used to get oil?” Frank was explaining to them animatedly. “The Burmese dug a big ol’ hole. And then they climbed down there and dug some more till they hit sands. They couldn’t stay down there more’n a minute at a time, and then they had to recover for twenty once they got back up top. They had the women stay up top and hoist up the cuttings they dug up. They were catching oil centuries before any Rockefeller ever thought to do it. They had to do it naked, with rags around their mouths, these little brown guys, but by god they did it.” He laughed. “Took two years to dig one hole.” Bunny held her face in her fixed expression of listening.
kinda fun