You just look at it there and say, All right, I’ll take it, I’ll buy it.
-- Unnamed protagonist (Break it Down)

Importance: This quote captures how the protagonist expresses his emotional suffering through the language of commerce: the story’s central conceit. Davis uses flat, transactional phrasing to expose the narrator’s desperate attempt to impose order on grief. For the protagonist, treating pain as a purchase helps him cope with its inevitability. The sentence’s clipped rhythm reflects his resignation, marking a shift from obsessive recollection to hollow acceptance.

She has not even seen them but has come down on them like some natural element so suddenly that they did not have time to avoid her and she was surprised they were there at all.
-- Unnamed protagonist (Visit to her Husband)

Importance: This simile likens the narrator’s disoriented movements at the train station to an impersonal force of nature, emphasizing how emotional distress manifests in the body. Davis’s...