"Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes."

"Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain."

"Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience."

"...it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner."

“But now these highways, too, were like streams in a dry season”

"...which filled the house with a rich baked odor and the scent of maple syrup."

"...the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls."

"And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone."

"The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease..."

"Help, help! Fire! Run, run! "

"To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November..."

"...to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences..."

"Put up your hands!"
"But-" he said.
"Your hands up! Or we'll Shoot!"

"Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy."

"The moon was high and clear among the stars and the houses were gray and silent."

"Our colleagues want to go to that board meeting but pay attention only to what interests them. To some this seems like a good idea, but we can end up hiding from one another, even as we are constantly connected to one another." 

“We are consum’d with that which we were nourish’d by.” 

"I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that Thoreau once walked. Not too long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices.
So I say, look up, look at one another, and let’s start the conversation"

"WE expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship." 

"In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds."

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper."

"It’s hard to do anything with 3,000 Facebook friends except connect." 

"Leo Auffmann moved slowly through his garage..."

"And for the first time in six months we have a fight!"

The children, who had been screaming horribly at each other, fell silent, as if the Red Death had entered..."

"The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar." 

"Tick-tock"

"Sure, the fire, the garage! But like Lena said, it don;t take a year to figure; what burned in the garage don't count!"

"Leo? Don't ask. A man who thinks like that, how it runs, how things work, falls off the trapeze in the circus..."

"When the machine was burning very well indeed, Lena Auffman nodded.  "All right, Saul, she said.  "Run call the fire department."'

a reference to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, etc.

the side a person favors (slant)

the main character in a story, novel, drama, or other literary work

a character that does not change within/during a story 

a person who changes within throughout a story

how an author brings a character to life

the struggle(s) encountered in a work

a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it isnot literally applicable (a comparison does not use like or as)

the use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect.

act of giving human qualities to objects, ideas, etc.

location in which a story takes place

when words or phrases are repeated in a literary work.

the arrangement of things following one after another in time

the lesson the author wants you to walk away with