Aspirational Prose

I think I find prose more aspirational than inspirational. Along the lines of – darn it why can’t I write like that!

One of my favourite quotes from a novel is from Bareback by Kit Whitfield (released as Benighted in the US).

It’s set in an alternate universe where 99% of the population are werewolves and the other 1% are given the responsibility of policing the majority. There’s a scene where a character walks across a park, unbeknownst to his death and Kit Whitfield writes:-

“He didn’t know this was the end of his life. If nobody warned him, he couldn’t have known that he should have loved those last hundred yards, that they weren’t just an obstacle to getting to where he planned, that the sounds of his feet on the pavement and the wind in the branches were all he was ever going to have.”

Immediately I am taking those last steps with that character, beautiful, spare and haunting, those lines have stayed with me long after I finished the book.