Some more metaphors and phrases I’ve selected from my reading

More than a year ago I gave a list of some of the metaphors and phrases that have stood out for me in  my reading — in most cases I’ve greatly admired the vivid description they provide. Here are some more from my collection:

Breathing the smell of the peasants, air and rain and turf and corduroy James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p.15
Grey muttering faces Pat Barker, Regeneration, p.5
Quivering respect Pat Barker, Regeneration, p. 220
Her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, page 12
the curtain yawned in Richard Flanagan: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, p.146
the scream of his solitude Richard Flanagan: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, p.418
Miss Burton . . . with her swift ferocity Winifred Holtby: South Riding, p.114
a leaping cheerful fire Winifred Holtby: South Riding, p.134

 
her face uninhabited by intelligence Winifred Holtby: South Riding, p.258
a froth of cats Winifred Holtby: South Riding, p.383
in a voice that could pickle fish Karen Joy Fowler: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, p.93
her blank, shut-in face description from Virginia Nicholson: Singled Out, p.15
pulsing slowly towards the end of his life Kate Atkinson: A God in Ruins, p.361
waves . . . rise with majestic deliberation Helen Garner: Regions of thick-ribbed ice, p. 23
a timpani of copper bottomed kitchen pans Anna Funder: The Girl with the Dogs, p.16
[After the death of his wife] He sputtered forward gamely for some years till retirement Anna Funder: The Girl with the Dogs, p.18
[about an earlier relationship] To speak of it now would be to blow out the private flame, small as a pilot light, of another possible life Anna Funder: The Girl with the Dogs, p.32
the centre of him seemed undisturbed Toni Jordan: Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, p.48
sticky silence Toni Jordan: Our Tiny, Useless Hearts, p. 215