As they genially conversed over breakfast at the diner, Alex couldn't shake the feeling that his friend's political views made him physically ill. 

 They traded brains for blather; peace for a piece of the power; truth for tirades. 

 Their world grew smaller and smaller until it was just him. her, the dog, a few birds on the windowsill, and a couple of squirrels in the yard. 

The killer could be anyone, even you. 

 The water receded, the sun dried the land, and we began the long process of picking up the pieces of our lives, again. 

They got us to think in 120 characters, to dream of viral fame, to feel hollow inside so we could fill the hole with their useless products.  

The light seeped in bathing the room in brilliance but it couldn't burn away the darkness from the corners of his mind. 

The language they chose to use lacked in clarity, clearly. 

Frank could barely recall his wild days but the hangovers he would never forget. 

Danielle lived just beyond the sea in a world she'd constructed from driftwood and memories. 

Long shadows stretched in the flickering street light toward the approaching night. 

After reading a few headlines while scrolling through his feed, Albert believed he had become an expert in almost any subject. 

As the days grew darker it was becoming nearly impossible to be witty, deep, or even make much sense. 

She felt the presence of God with every brush of her hands against the trees warmed by the sunlight filtered through the forest canopy.  

It got harder and harder not to dwell on the buffeting winds of the twenty-four-hour news cycle that roared in my head and twisted my insides. 

There was nothing radical about helping your neighbors—until it was. 

 The only sounds were the paddles cutting through the water, the wind kicking up waves, and the birds on shore calling to each other. 

 Even the pigeons and seagulls suffered that summer since there were no waddling tourists dropping scraps as they gorged on their snacks and sandwiches.

 The abandoned amusement park was now just rust and grime and weeds and dust and faded memories. 

For the hollow man, hate was the only thing that helped fill the hole.

I wanted a great simile but ended up instead with simplicity. 

This: our online language had become standardized to the point of caricature (that's the whole Tweet). 

She scrolled through her feed at an exponentially faster pace until her finger finally gave out. 

Shane no longer felt the need to socialize, had, in fact, become sick at the thought of even attempting small talk. 

 There are among us those with stunted, shrunken souls that will at their first opportunity gorge themselves on the marrow of our bones. 

Potato, potato; tomato, tomato—there's no difference with the written words, she realized. 

It was possible to be both graceful and ungainly at the same time, he noted, watching the dove come in for a landing on his windowsill. 

Every moment is a miracle. 

So many of my childhood heroes were dying that I began to suspect the rapture was upon us. 

Ultraviolence was fine but naked bodies were a no no. 

What began as a joke became a fast-moving train that Troy couldn't control.