“Steadily the goldfinch gazed at me, with shiny, changeless eyes. The wooden panel was tiny, ‘only slightly larger than an A-4 piece of paper’ as one of my art books had pointed out, although all that dates-and-dimension stuff, the dead textbook info, was as irrelevant in its way as the sports-page stats when the Packers were up by two in the fourth quarter and a thin icy snow had begun to fall on the field. The painting, the magic and aliveness of it, was like that odd airy moment of the snow falling, greenish light and flakes whirling in the cameras, where you no longer cared about the game, who won or lost, but just wanted to drink in that speechless windswept moment. When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instant that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature–fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place.”

                     --Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, 2013

“WHILE, DEEP IN THE TIMELESS MYSTERY OF STAR-GLOSSED SPACE, A CORUSCATING BALL OF LIGHT GATHERS IN SIZE…FLASHING THROUGH THE COSMOS AT UNIMAGINABLE SPEED…PAINTING A CRATERED SATELLITE WITH THE LURID GLAZE OF ITS PASSING…STREAKING ONWARD, AS THOUGH HURLED BY SOME GALAXY-SPAWNED TITAN…NOW APPROACHING A PLANET…THE AZURE GLOBE CALLED BY ITS INHABITANTS, EARTH…AND THE VAST BODY OF WATER THEREON KNOWN AS THE ATLANTIC…WHERE CRUEL DESTINY AWAITS ITS COMETING ARRIVAL.”

             --Doug Moench, THE INHUMANS, Vol. 1, No. 1, 
                             "Spawn of Alien Heat," 1975