Time slips and stretches and wrinkles just like us. 

 Sheila wondered which meme best summed up her existence. 

The professor veered from lecturing to proselytizing when the subject was a personal favorite.  

They waited for the day (that never came) when they would be the dealers with stacked decks and butchers with their thumbs on the scales.

 The list got longer and longer and longer. 

Was it pride, self-preservation, or party that spurred them on?

Good art, she believed, required a balance between being clear and leaving room for interpretation. 

The couple, looking around at the layers of dust and myriad cobwebs, realized they only cleaned when guests were coming. 

 The past never left and the future never arrives. 

His house was built of words, sentences, and pages, not wood, nails, or plaster. 

They couldn't decide if they'd been duped or just misread the signs. 

 A new day dawned but darkness continued to linger at the edges.

 This is a civics lesson: delicate threads once woven form a durable fabric. 

 The old quarterback still dreamed of perfectly thrown passes. 

Tenacity, it turned out, trumped raw talent. 

There was a fine line between returning repeatedly to a certain theme and self-plagiarism and Ray wasn't sure whether he'd crossed it or not. 

Her night terrors seeped into the daytime. 

 Somehow, the more we communicated the worse things got. 

 This is a simple, declarative statement (telling you nothing).

Bailey always ended up feeling bad for the bad guy by the end of the movie even if their comeuppance was well deserved. 

Not only had his hair gone grey but his heart as well. 

The lie is repeated and the lie is repeated and the lie is repeated and legitimacy is robbed and lives are ruined and the back-peddling begins until the lie is repeated. 

The urgency in the tone of voice on the other side of the phone made Victor's own heart race as did his thoughts about what could have gone wrong. 

 The majestic sunrise couldn't overpower the coming darkness of that day.

 Our enemies rejoiced at the rot in our nation's soul that burst forth into the streets of the capital. 

 They learned nothing from the chaos they created. 

 The virus was more insidious than thought since it could separate friends and family who had different views on whether it existed or not. 

Ida had already given up on her New Year's resolutions twenty minutes after loudly proclaiming them. 

 Barb's abandoned book ideas could have filled a book. 

There was little left in the way of caring and even that seeped out a little more each day. 

 Herb began the year with a brand new regimen knowing that by this time next year he'd be back to where he started.