Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus by Carolina Maria de Jesus

"January 7 Today I fixed rice and beans and fried eggs. What happiness. Reading this you are going to think Brazil doesn't have anything to eat. We have. It's just that the prices are so impossible that we can't buy it. We have dried fish in the shops that wait for years and years for purchasers. The flies make the fish filthy. Then the fish rots and the clerks throw it in the garbage, and throw acid on it so the poor won't pick it up and eat it. My children have never eaten dried fish. They beg me.
'Buy it, Mother!'
But buy -- how? At 180 cruzeiros a kilo? I hope, if God helps me, that before I die I'll be able to buy some dried fish for them." (140)

"July 15 When I got out of bed, Vera was already awake and she asked me:
'Mama, isn't today my birthday?'
'It is. My congratulations. I wish you happiness.'
'Are you going to make a cake for me?'
'I don't know. If I can get some money...'
I lit the fire and went to carry water. The women were complaining that the water was running out slow.
The garbagemen have gone by. I got little paper. I went by the factory to pick up some rags. I began to feel dizzy. I made up my mind to go to Dona Angelina's house to ask for a little coffee. Dona Angelina gave me some. When I went out I told her I was feeling better.
'It's hunger. You need to eat.'
'But what I earn isn't enough.'
I have lost eight kilos. I have no meat on my bones, and the little I did have has gone. I picked up the papers and went out. When I went past a shop window I saw my reflection. I looked the other way because I thought I was seeing a ghost.
I fried fish and made some corn mush for the children to eat with the fish. When Vera showed up and saw the mush inside the pot she asked:
'Is that a cake? Today is my birthday!'
'No, it isn't cake. It's mush.'
'I don't like mush!'
I got some milk. I gave her milk and mush. She ate it, sobbing.
Who am I to make a cake?" (167-168)

(1962. New York: Signet Classic, 2003)

Number9Dream by David Mitchell

"I sugarize my coffee, rest my teaspoon on the meniscus, and sloooooowly dribble the cream onto the bowl of the spoon. Pangaea rotates, floating unruptured before splitting into subcontinents. Playing with coffee is the only pleasure I can afford in Tokyo." (17)

"Maybe the truest difference between people is exactly this: why we think we are here." (282)

"Now, for Kirara, I was just a dish of peanuts to nibble with her entree. For me, Kirara was the entire menu at the Viking feast of love." (368)

(New York: Random House, 2001)