“A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle
“It was a dark and stormy night, so we stayed inside, just like we’d done every night for the last year. In that way, it was a perfectly normal night.”
“A Tale of Two Cities,” by Charles Dickens
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But, mostly, it was the worst of times. In fact, not once had it felt like the best of times.”
“Anna Karenina,” by Leo Tolstoy
“Happy families are all alike. They all have a back yard and a fire pit, and they’ve all been vaccinated.”
“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since: ‘The host of the Zoom gets a copy of the chat.’ ”
“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune is probably not giving his workers enough hazard pay.”
“Jazz,” by Toni Morrison
“Sth, I know that woman. Or wait, do I? She has two masks on. I can’t tell.”
“A Farewell to Arms,” by Ernest Hemingway
“In the late summer of that year, we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. And we posted a photo of it on Instagram to make everyone jealous.”
“Ulysses,” by James Joyce
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed, which he did not intend to use, for he had no one and nothing to shave for anymore.”
“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” by Zora Neale Hurston
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. But cruise ships are totally out of the question now. We’re never going on one of those again.”
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. And since we were remote-learning, he had to sign his own cast.”
“Moby-Dick,” by Herman Melville
“Call me Ishmael327. I am a Twitter bot, trolling your election.”
“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself, online. From a small business, and certainly not from Amazon.”
“Invisible Man,” by Ralph Ellison
“I am an invisible man. In part, because I have turned off my camera during this Zoom call.”
“Cat’s Eye,” by Margaret Atwood
“Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. Actually, time doesn’t even exist. It has been March of 2020 for twelve months.”
“Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Brontë
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Too many people were outside without masks on. Oh, well, never too early for Netflix.”
“Swann’s Way,” by Marcel Proust
“For a long time, I went to bed early. Now I stay up late scrolling through TikTok.”
“Kafka on the Shore,” by Haruki Murakami
“Cash isn’t the only thing I take from my father’s study when I leave home. I also take a mask. But it hasn’t been washed recently and it smells like morning breath. Damn it.”
“Love in the Time of Cholera,” by Gabriel García Márquez
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of some New York Times recipe he’d done completely wrong.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood
“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. And the cafeteria. And the math classroom. We were remote-learning, so we slept in our house, which was now also school.”
“Gravity’s Rainbow,” by Thomas Pynchon
“A screaming comes across the sky. It is me. I am screaming. It feels good to scream.”
