A friend of Ryan's said to him one time, “Yeah, but at least you don't take any shit from anybody.”
Ryan looked over at her and smiled and shook his head, but he didn't say anything.
Elmore Leonard, Missing Man #89
It was Monday, December 27, and I was sitting in my office, trying to get a fix on the mood I was in, which was bad, bad, bad, comprised of equal parts irritation and uneasiness.
Respectfully submitted, Kinsey Millhone
Sue Grafton, ‘E’ is for Evidence
The word went out from North Jersey and crossed the Hudson on phones lines that were checked for bugs three times a day, and filtered down through various layers of impolite society in the boroughs of the City of New York.
In silent desperation I begged one of my voices to tell me what in the hell to do.
Francis Nevins, The 120-Hour Clock
It began the way the end of the world will begin, with a telephone call that comes at three in the morning.
“Not too many people have.”
Ross Thomas, If You Can't Be Good
Locke-Ober's Restaurant is on Winter Place, which is an alley off Winter Street just down from the Common.
Much later we heard Rachel cry out in her sleep, and I got off the couch and went in and sat on the bed beside her, and she took my hand and held it until nearly dawn.
Robert Parker, Looking for Rachel Wallace
Immediately, right off the bat, without further ado, here and now, I wish to say that much of what happened to me that fateful week-end is completely unprintable, since it happened with a lady (colored) of ill repute.
Meantime, Jackie is teechin me pills.
Robert Gover, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding
On the cover of the recent record album, Listening to Richard Brautigan, besides a picture of Brautigan and a very pretty girl and some brief, whimsical biographical information, is Brautigan's telephone number.
It will be fun to see what Brautigan's next book is like—and the one after that too.
Terence Malley, Richard Brautigan
Princeton, New Jersey, February 25 1967: Despite the menacing weather and bitter cold that chilled the Northeast, six hundred friends and colleagues—Nobel laureates, politicians, generals, scientists, poets, novelists, composers and acquaintances from all walks of life—gathered to recall the life and mourn the death of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The cottage on Hawksnest Bay is now gone, swept away by a hurricane, but in its place is a community house standing on what is now called Oppenheimer Beach.
Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus
At five in the morning someone banging on the door and shouting, her husband, John, leaping out of bed, grabbing his rifle, and Roscoe at the same time roused from the backhouse, his bare feet pounding: Mattie hurriedly pulled on her robe, her mind prepared for the alarm of war, but the heart stricken that it would finally have come, and down the stairs she flew to see through the open door in the lamplight, at the steps of the portico, the two horses, steam rising from their flanks, their heads lifting, their eyes wild, the driver a young darkie with rounded shoulders, showing stolid patience even in this, and the woman standing in her carriage no one but her aunt Letitia Pettibone of McDonough, her elderly face drawn in anguish, her hair a straggled mess, this woman of such fine grooming, this dowager who practically ruled the season in Atlanta standing up in the equipage like some hag of doom, which indeed she would prove to be.
There was still a scent of gunfire in the trees, and they were glad to come out into the sun again.
E.L. Doctorow, The March
A meeting in a graveyard.
And Alex waved and walked into the dark of whatever breaks good or bad lay on the other side of the door to Jerusalem Inn.
Martha Grimes, Jerusalem Inn
I prefer the more euphonious Russian beginning for fairy tales to our equivalent “once upon a time”—zhili byli (or, literally, “lived, was”).
As he stated for the people of America, and for the thirteen colonies of e pluribus unum—and as I say for the wonderful and illuminating differences between the sciences and the humanities, all in the potential service of wisdom's one great goal—we had better hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.
Stephen Jay Gould, The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox
It was near Twenty-first Street over on Ninth Avenue, one of those decaying Chelsea blocks that look as though they've been dipped in wet soot, and except for a couple of dreary bars that kept stubborn closing hours, the laundromat was the only place open.
“Yes,” he said, “I can see how you wouldn't.”
Oliver Bleek, The Procane Chronicle
It begins, as most things begin, with a song.
Together the man and the boy danced their way back up the sand to the house, singing a wordless song that they made up as they went along, which lingered in the air even after they had gone in for breakfast.
Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
What else could you think of but getting your throat slit?
They turned and crossed the street to the pub, where Jury took out the paper, looked at it once again, and dropped it in a dustbin beside the door.
Martha Grimes, The Five Bells and Bladebone
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones has anyone shown such grace and skill in the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons.
We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way.
Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life
Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.
The boy himself was the stump, and until he was taken to live with his mother's married sister in Brooklyn ten months later, I was the prosthesis.
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War offered a prospect of utter misery and desolation.
‘European Union’ may be a response to history, but it can never be a substitute.
Tony Judt, Postwar
Of course he was a charming man.
‘Egoist!’
Robertson Davies, World of Wonder
Sigmund Freud remarked that each major science has made one signal contribution to the reconstruction of human thought—and that each step in this painful progress had shattered yet another facet of an original hope for our own transcendent importance in the universe:
Humanity has in course of time had to endure from the hand of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love.
Rock a my soul…
Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle
The bearded ladies were dancing in the mud.
It's America, and everything was going to be fine.
Stephen Wright, The Amalgamation Polka
Suppose that it is once more 196—, that fateful year, and suppose that you are passing through Millford, Utah, that most fated of crossroads.
But for three old men in faded uniforms, who did not look up from their game of Go to the Dump, there was no one in the crowd who did not wish Cal and Aurora happiness, as the barque's white sails filled with wind and it slid silently away from the pier and out to sea.
James Sladek, Mechasm
Friday, June 10th, 1964 was the start of a KRLA golden oldie weekend.
When Kathleen's words turned the light into music he drew the moment into the strongest fiber of his heart and carried it away.
James Ellroy, Blood on the Moon
Ken Lay settled into his black Mercedes 600 SL, easing out of his reserved parking space at the Huntington condominiums.
As the couple headed off the stage, a group of supporters on the side of the room stood and applauded, cheering on Lay as he entered into his last and most desperate battle.
Kurt Eichenwald, Conspiracy of Fools
“Oh look, darlings, cherry blossom,” said Amanda Fairchild, as we sped from the docks into the centre of Bergen, and towards the bus station.
They were mostly silent for the rest of the flight.
Robert Barnard, The Cherry Blossom Corpse
I don't know if my story is grand enough to be a tragedy, although a lot of shitty stuff did happen.
How do you know how much to pay if you don't know what it's worth?
Peter Carey, Theft
In a world full of wrongs, rights have never been so important.
Because there will always be wrongs, there must always be rights.
Alan Dershowitz, Rights From Wrongs
At twenty-four the ambassador's daughter slept badly through the warm, unsurprising nights.
There was only Kashmira and Shalimar the clown.
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
“Yes, Madam,” the constable said quietly.
“Stupid cat,” de Gier said.
Janwillem van de Wetering, Death of a Hawker
President John Adams awakened early on the soot-black morning of October 13, 1800.
And while they believed that Adams and Jefferson, through their service in the American Revolution, had given birth to their world, it was Jefferson who had delivered them an America that was finally free of the shackles of the Colonial era, cutting those repressive cords in the course of a presidency set in motion by the election of 1800.
John Ferling, Adams vs. Jefferson
It was a job which required waiting for cultures to grow, for toxins to develop, for antibodies to form, for reagents to react.
But when it was over, he would go again with beauty all around him.
Tony Hillerman, People of Darkness
“Corruption? I'll, tell you about corruption, sonny!”
It seemed to the old man that the bear had said something, had said to him distinctly, reproachfully, Oh James, James!
John Gardner, October Light
Devils, Ahmad thinks.
These devils, Ahmad thinks, have taken away my God.
John Updike, Terrorist
Tony La Russa definitely saw things that kept him up at night: changeups without change, sinkers lacking sink, curves refusing to curve.
He loved them for that—took great pride in them as a manager and as a man—and this was the best way he could think of to tell them he would never forget it.
Buzz Bissinger, 3 Nights in August
More than most anything else, I like to do nothing.
A cloudless blue Florida sky.
Dallas Murphy, Lover Man
Just after midnight he stopped thinking.
“Now come on, let's carry him down.”
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, The Abominable Man
One may as well begin with Jerome's e-mails to his father:
Though her hands were imprecise blurs, paint heaped on paint and roiled with the brush, the rest of her skin had been expertly rendered in all its variety — chalk whites and lively pinks, the underlying blue of her veins and the ever present human hint of yellow, intimation of what is to come.
Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Janey had never seen his high-priced apartment in west St. Louis County, much less lived in it, yet each evening when Max Baron arrived home from work, her absence still hit him like a piece of unexpected sad news.
He went on lighting the candles.
Glenn Savan, White Palace
If one lives in Galloway, one either fishes or paints.
They brought it in manslaughter, with a strong recommendation to mercy, on the ground that Campbell was undoubtedly looking for trouble, and the beard of Samson was not sacrificed altogether in vain.
Dorothy Sayers, Five Red Herrings
For legal reasons, I have had to alter a number of facts in this book.
This confession is false.
Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin.
His name is Ted Kaczynski.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics
It was a nice day.
…forever.
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
In some distant arcade, a clock tower calls out six times and then stops.
He feels empty, and he stares without interest at the tiny black speck and the Alps.
Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams
The muggy heat hung like a pall over western Japan that second Saturday in July, and there wasn't even the consolation of a bit of blue sky.
In a way.
John Melville, The Chrysanthemum Chain
We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as something between teacher and pupil, or between teacher and parent.
The program is not presented as the only one meeting the problem, but as a contribution; the outcome, not of thought, but of considerable experimenting and shifting of subjects from year to year, to the problem of giving material which takes vital hold upon the child and at the same time leads on, step by step, to more thorough and accurate knowledge of both the principles and facts of social life, and makes a preparation for later specialized historic studies.
John Dewey, The School and Society
On the morning of the first murder Miss Muriel Beale, Inspector of Nurse Training Schools to the General Nursing Council, stirred into wakefulness soon after 6 o'clock and into a sluggish early morning awareness that it was Monday, 12th January, and the day of the John Carpendar Hospital inspection.
And it had never been in the least suitable as a nurse training school.
P.D. James, Shroud for a Nightingale
On St. Valintine's Day, 1989, the last day of her life, the legendary popular singer Vina Apsara woke sobbing from a dream of human sacrifice in which she had been the intended victim.
I thought they were supposed to be dead, but in real life they're just going to go on singing.
Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
It's when you're going good that they throw at your head.
“It just threw a one hitter.”
Richard Rosen, Strike Three, You're Dead
In 1964 a tidal wave knocked down the shacks next to the abandoned fish Cannery at La Caleta, and the wreckage the Pacific didn't take, bulldozers did.
“It isn't you,” she said.
Joseph Hansen, The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of
O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind!
What was then an augury for direction of action among the ruins of an archaic mentality is now the search for an innocence of certainty among the mythologies of facts.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
It had been wet and overcast all autumn, but this particular day a low-pressure front has swept over the country, bringing with it especially high winds and heavy rainfall.
After that I cut it again just below the second joint, which meant that it was, without a doubt, removed after death.
Shizuko Natsuki, The Obituary Arrives at Two O'clock
My father had lost most of the sight in his right eye by the time he'd reached eighty-six, but otherwise he seemed in phenomenal health for a man his age when he came down with what the Florida doctor diagnosed, incorrectly, as Bell's palsy, a viral infection that causes paralysis, usually temporary, to one side of the face.
You must not forget anything.
Philip Roth, Patrimony
Later, I found out his name was John Daggett, but that's not how he introduced himself the day he walked into my office.
Respectfully submitted, Kinsey Millhone
Sue Grafton, ‘D’ is for Deadbeat
The present enquiry originated in my attempt to build a science of man.
The great and vital thing is that it should be done, by someone.
Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity
Adjutant-detective Grijpstra felt that this was not the best morning of the year.
“Yes, Mr. Drachtsma,” de Gier said.
Janwillem van de Wetering, Tumbleweed
A mile from the enameled walls of the city, where the desert lay gleaming like golden glass, a beautiful woman sat in a stone tower, and she played with a bone.
“But what,” demanded the jawbones, with sinister insistency, “is love?”
Tanith Lee, Delusion's Master
She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.
Yes?
Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint
On the first day of Christmas, my alleged true love gave to me a silver pillbox.
Namaste.
Adam Smith, Powers of Mind
“He's all right. You'll live for ever, won't you Connie?” said Marcus Felstead.
“The buggers have got feelings after all, boy,” he said.
Reginald Hill, A Clubbable Woman
Benjamin Franklin has a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans.
And as long as America is seen as the land of opportunity, where you can get ahead if you work hard, this image of Franklin will likely be the one that continues to dominate American culture.
Gordon Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
Stick said he wasn't going if they had to pick up anything.
There you are, Stick thought.
Elmore Leonard, Stick
First, foremost, the puppyish, protected upbringing above his father's shoe store in Camden.
This is me who is me being me and none other!
Philip Roth, My Life as a Man
For a little while in the middle of this century it seemed that the wild, intractable, dismal science of economics had yielded up something we all want: instructions for getting or keeping prosperity.
They deteriorate.
Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations
“What the hell are you doing on the bus, with your dough?”
It was now an African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Philip Roth, Zuckerman Unbound
Our friends the Mortons have two daughters.
Even the most probable set of possibilities may be quite improbable.
Darrell Huff, How to Take a Chance
This is the first time I've worked without a net.
Perhaps we wished there was not so much time.
Thomas McGuane, Panama
citizen: Sir, I want to congratulate you for coming out on April 3 for the sanctity of human life, including the life of the yet unborn.
Thank you.
Philip Roth, Our Gang
Americans like, at intervals, to play this dirty trick upon themselves: Pollsters are sent out to canvass men and women on certain doctrines and to shame them when these doctrines are declared-as usually happens-unacceptable.
Jefferson himself came to hope, after all, for an immortality, “at rest with our friends of 1776 … in Congress, with our ancient Colleagues” (Cappon, 430, 594).
Gary Wills, Inventing America
The first time we were in bed together he held my hands pinned down above my head.
What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack: it's been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm.
Elizabeth McNeill, 9½ Weeks
He was quitting.
“Goodbye,” Dave said.
Joseph Hansen, Obedience
Women on their own run in Alice's family.
It's all over now but the shouting.
Barbara Kingsolver, Pigs in Heaven
Stacy Hamilton lay under the covers, still fully dressed, and stared at the ceiling.
The third bell had rung.
Cameron Crowe, Fast Times at Ridgemont High
By nightfall the headlines would be reporting devastation.
Only, as the plane rose from the ground, a long hiss of air-like the intake of humanity's breath when a work of ages shrivels in an instant; or the great gasp of a hull and ocean as a ship goes down.
Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus
Seated at a cushion at the upstairs window of the tall house, Hood raised the cigarette to the sun and saw that it was half full of the opium mixture.
Then, “Smoke and tell lies.”
Paul Theroux, The Family Arsenal
This page last modified on 1 April 2008.