A sudden violent jolt of it has been known to stop the victim’s watch, snap his suspenders and crack his glass eye right across.
—Irvin S. Cobb (1876–1944)
Many of us carry memories of an influential teacher who may scarcely know we existed, yet who said something at just the right time in our lives to snap a whole world into focus.
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)
Hyde Park engendered shadows. The dying greenery of hurtbushes and larches, under the grey shells of clouds that now began to snap with rain, caught that feeble light in London, neither night nor day but rather that feeble compromise which, more than the presage of autumn, filled one with a sense of long-forgotten things and showed itself to be that time when vague yearnings and regrets began to cumber the soul. Over the plains of grass burst puffs of irregular wind, spirits that spun the falling leaves, hectic, red, flapping through the wake in little side streets where, now, no one was to be seen, having long since hurried away through the silence and the telling cold. The ragged mirage of day had suicided into the cold dusk. Night fell.
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)