"A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury

“It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’s mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?”

("A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury)

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

"So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers."

(The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, chapter 24)

The American by Henry James

"But it has nothing to do with you personally; it's what you represent."

(The American by Henry James, chapter III)

"The Haunted Boy" by Carson McCullers

"Hugh stood in the darkening yard after the sunset colors faded in the west and the wisteria was dark purple. The kitchen light was on and he saw his mother fixing dinner. He knew that something was finished; the terror was far from him now, also the anger that had bounced with love, he dread and guilt."

("The Haunted Boy" by Carson McCullers)

“Searching for Summer” by Joan Aiken

“It was years since the bombs had been banned, but still the cloud never lifted. Whitish gray, day after day, sometimes darkening to a weeping slate color or, at the end of an evening, turning to smoky copper, the sky endlessly, secretively brooded.”

(“Searching for Summer” by Joan Aiken)

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

"Yet absence implies presence, absence is not non-existence."

(A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, chapter XIX)

“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

“He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good—no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.”

(“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

("Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)