Poetic Obituaries: "Sophie ceased looking at the pictures--

all became a blur--and her eyes sought instead the window flung open against the October sky where the evening star hung, astonishingly, as bright as a blob of crystal," [William] Styron wrote. "An agitation in the air, a sudden thickening of the light around the planet, heralded the onset of smoke, borne earthward by the circulation of cool night wind. For the first time since the morning Sophie smelled, ineluctable as a smotherer's hand, the odor of burning human beings."

from CNN: 'Sophie's Choice' author William Styron dies

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