Narrative Classics
“A classic is a book that has never finished what it has to say,” wrote Italo Calvino, and we couldn’t agree more. Below we present our ever-expanding library of enduring classics, and while this is by no means a complete list of great authors from the past, we think it is a fine place to get deliriously lost—and found—in the company of great writing. And since we have published multiple pieces by many of these writers, be sure to look at their author pages, which are also linked. Dive in!
Anna Akhmatova
Slepnevo, 1916
I don’t want to—can’t—struggle against it.
Sherwood Anderson
A Storyteller’s Story
I had ruined my chances of becoming a successful man of affairs.
W. H. Auden
Musée des Beaux Arts
Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course.
Isaac Babel
Crossing the River Zbrucz
I find ransacked closets and fragments of the holy Seder plate.
Saul Bellow
Leaving the Yellow House
She was now more drunk than at any time since her accident.
Lucia Berlin
B.F. and Me
B.F. was exotic to me simply because he was so dirty.
Gina Berriault
The Woman in the Rose-Colored Dress
My mother and I remained apart. My father came late.
Elizabeth Bowen
Daffodils
The slender gold trumpets tapped and quivered against her face.
Paul Bowles
A Distant Episode
The distant past returned—what part of it, he could not decide.
Kay Boyle
The Teaching of Writing
Young people have a gift for reviving freshness of thought.
Joseph Brodsky
December 24, 1971
Reek of vodka and resin and cod, mandarins, cinnamon, apples.
Ivan Bunin
The Gentleman from San Francisco
Until now the man had not really lived, but simply existed, to be sure.
Sir Richard Francis Burton
The Tale of the Three Apples
By Allah, we must avenge this woman on her murderer!
Willa Cather
The Captain’s Roses
An impulse of affection drew Niel up the poplar-bordered road.
Anton Chekhov
The Lady with the Little Dog
The talk was that a new face had appeared on the embankment.
Kate Chopin
The Story of an Hour
She said it over and over under her breath: “free, free, free!”
Lucille Clifton
won’t you celebrate with me
both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself?
Joseph Conrad
Youth
O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it!
Frank Conroy
Gossip
Joan was no longer just a student to him.
Stephen Crane
The Blue Hotel
Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
your slightest look easily will unclose me
E. L. Doctorow
Emily
War meant the death of everyone in her family.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
White Nights
I took long walks, succeeding in quite forgetting where I was.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Crime of the Brigadier
He flew into two pieces, head one way and tail another.
T. S. Eliot
Tradition and the Individual Talent
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Captain Brown
We had often rejoiced that there was no gentleman to be attended to.
Nikolay Gogol
The Nose
He wrapped up the nose in a cloth.
Maxim Gorky
Her Lover
This mastodon in petticoats had made me grow quite red with shame.
Donald Hall
Gaudeamus Igitur
I was girl crazy and crazy for horror movies like Frankenstein.
Thomas Hardy
Neutral Tones
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
There, in tar-and-feather dignity, sat his kinsman, Major Molineux!
O. Henry
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen
The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure.
William Dean Howells
The Editor’s Relations with the Young Contributor
The editor is in great and constant dread of the young contributor.
Bohumil Hrabal
Closely Watched Trains
The last time I’d seen her was when she visited me in the hospital.
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Zora Neale Hurston
John Redding Goes to Sea
Let me go mamma, please. What is there here for me?
Harriet Jacobs
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Strange incongruity in a State called free!
Henry James
The Lesson of the Master
Kids interfere with perfection. Wives interfere. Marriage interferes.
Denis Johnson
Train Dreams
He took part in the attempt on the life of a Chinese laborer.
James Joyce
Araby
Her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
John Keats
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Rudyard Kipling
The Man Who Would Be King
They would find certain and awful death in Afghanistan.
D. H. Lawrence
The Horse Dealer’s Daughter
They had talked at her for so long, that she hardly heard them at all.
Federico García Lorca
Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint
Don’t let me lose the wonder of your eyes, unblinking.
Amy Lowell
Vernal Equinox
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter.
Osip Mandelstam
#196, 1923
That once—God knows—joy vanishes everything turns to ashes.
Katherine Mansfield
The Child-Who-Was-Tired
A great lump ached in her throat and then the tears ran down her face.
W. Somerset Maugham
The Painted Veil
But parsimony was as strong in her as ambition.
Guy de Maupassant
Miss Harriet
It was the most lamentable love affair of my life.
Claude McKay
America
I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
James Alan McPherson
The Story of a Scar
One had the feeling it was the art of no human hand.
H. L. Mencken
The Declaration of Independence in American
He let grafters run loose, from God knows where.
A. A. Milne
A Hint for Next Christmas
A more urgent reform is the standardization of Christmas presents.
Lucy Maud Montgomery
A Redeeming Sacrifice
He’s bewitched her—darned if I can understand it.
Alice Munro
Red Dress—1946
My legs had forgotten to tremble and my hands to sweat.
Pablo Neruda
Lightning
I saw the blaze of golden fish high up.
George Orwell
Shooting an Elephant
I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing.
Grace Paley
Wants
I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn’t want anything.
Katherine Anne Porter
Old Mortality
They were drawn and held by the mysterious love of the living.
Aleksandr Pushkin
The Shot
His looks were Russian. He was surrounded by mystery.
V. S. Pritchett
Blind Love
In three years he had made her forget that blindness meant not seeing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The Rose Window
The languid, silent pace of their paws bewilders you.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Bark
Like a ship moving into port, we of the desert come up into the night.
James Salter
Odessa, Mon Amour
For Babel, writing was an agony.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Not for the Sabbath
“Father in Heaven, where do you find such an outlaw among Jews?”
Jean Stafford
An Influx of Poets
Every poet in America came to stay with us.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island: The Black Spot
I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one leg.
Robert Stone
Under the Pitons
Life is a dream, he thought. Something she knew and I didn’t.
Peter Taylor
A Spinster’s Tale
I was frightened by the cruelty I was capable of.
Leo Tolstoy
How Much Land Does a Man Need?
“If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!”
Marina Tsvetaeva
May 3, 1915
I like that it’s not me you pine for.
Ivan Turgenev
Bezhin Meadow
Someone answered him from the woods in a thin, sharp laugh.
Mark Twain
Corn-Pone Opinions
As a rule we do not think, we only imitate.
Eudora Welty
No Place for You, My Love
He thought that here was a woman who was having an affair.
Edith Wharton
The Rembrandt
It is Eleanor’s fault if she is sometimes fought with her own weapons.
Oscar Wilde
The Decay of Lying
The novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.
P. G. Wodehouse
The Coming of Gowf
Royal love affairs were conducted on the correspondence system.
Virginia Woolf
The Mark on the Wall
The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall.
Constance Fenimore Woolson
In Sloane Street
“Well, I’ve seen the National Gallery, and that’s over.”
William Butler Yeats
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
I have spread my dreams under your feet.