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| When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips. [Thomas Hardy,The Mayor of Casterbridge,1886,locate] |
| But Marie was caught and she was tried and she was hanged in the square of Montréal [Afua Cooper,Memories Have Tongue,1992,locate] |
| With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. [Ray Bradbury,Fahrenheit 451,1953,locate] |
| Rabbits above ground, unless they are in proved, familiar surroundings close to their holes, live in continual fear. If it grows intense enough they can become glazed and parlysed by it - tharn, to use their own word. [Richard Adams,Watership Down,1972,locate] |
| This is the dead land This is the cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star. [Thomas Stearns Eliot,The Hollow Men,1925,locate] |
| The garden was fenced with stones on two sides, but in front there was an open fence, through which the flowers shone with answering gladness, as the four united people came within sight of them. [George Eliot,Silas Marner,1861,locate] |
| Its not natural: it would kill me. Ive never had a bath in my life: not what youd call a proper one. [Bernard Shaw,Pygmalion,1916,locate] |
| I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. [William Shakespeare,Two Gentlemen of Verona,1593,locate] |
| A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong. [Piet Hein,Grooks 3: Vita Brevis,1970,locate] |
| It is rather depressing to think that his mother complained to mine because I told him the facts of life when we were both ten years old. He, not believing this phenomenal piece of news, had asked her for up-to-date information. [David Niven,The Moon's a Balloon,1972,locate] |
| Strange sounds came out of the jungle -- unaccountable crashings, occasionally a scream of terror or agony. Life and death were all about them. And sometimes there were strange silences, more ominous than the noises. [Edgar Rice Burroughs,Tarzan and "The Foreign Legion",1947,locate] |
IF LINK NOT REESTABLISHED WITHIN FIVE[D.F. Jones,Colossus,1966,locate] |
| At that instant of extreme danger, a dark hand and glancing knife appeared before him; the Indian released his hold, as the blood flowed freely from around the several tendons of the wrist; and while Duncan was drawn backward by the saving arm of Uncas, his charmed eyes were still riveted on the fierce and disappointed countenance of his foe, who fell sullenly and disappointed down the irrecoverable precipice. [James Fenimore Cooper,The Last of the Mohicans,1826,locate] |
| Candles burnt with sword-like flames. Slender, lustrous swords of light stood in a circle around the head of a girl, whose voice was as the Amen of God. [Thea von Harbou,Metropolis,1926,locate] |
| When, later, the sepia print was produced and more details could be made out, it seemed a surprising picture indeed. The wings of the shapes were blurred and seemed to be five little figures dancing beneath the unconcerned face of Frances. A waterfall was there in the background, as were mushrooms. It was an odd first snap for anybody to take. [Joe Cooper,The Case of the Cottingley Fairies,1990,locate] |
| She didn't hurry. Being kissed by Wyoming Knott is more definite than being married to most women. Had I been Mike all my lights would have flashed at once. I felt like a Cyborg with pleasure center switched on. [Robert A. Heinlein,The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,1966,locate] |
| The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very simple; and yet hardly any one has found it out. It was merely that the fairies took him. [Charles Kingsley,The Water-Babies,1862,locate] |
| The absurd was overpowered by the sinister, by the figures in bronze and sculptured stone, which, made furtive and hideous by encroaching moss and decades of fallen grime, lurked among the trailing tendrils and even, as the wind rustled between leatherly leaves and broken masonry, seemed to move. Overhead, he could see only a narrow corridor of sky and that stormy, black and Turneresque. He walked on, looking straight ahead of him down the defile. [Ruth Rendell,Murder Being Once Done,1972,locate] |
| As she sat there, covertly looking at Jack, it came to her, imperceptible as the dawn, that it wasn't in his nature to let Bobby's remark pass, and that he must have something in mind for Bobby, something worth waiting for. Serious grief. [Laurence Gough,Karaoke Rap,1998,locate] |
| "From the place of ground zero, O Lord, deliver us. From the rain of the cobalt, O Lord, deliver us. From the rain of the strontium, O Lord, deliver us. From the rain of the cesium, O Lord, deliver us. [Walter M. Miller, Jr.,A Canticle for Leibowitz,1959,locate] |
| George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her. [E. M. Forster,A Room with a View,1908,locate] |
| When I painted Sara now, she filled the picture plane, her body spilling forward as if she were about to separate from the surface of the painting and enter an embrace. She would be trailing behind her the light of northern summer afternoons. Her face would be welcoming, disclosed, as if she were about to tell you that there is a source of light out there where you stand, that there is a world beyond this painting. But even so, the brilliance poured from her body, her self, into the viewer's life. It was relentless. There was no dark pause, no negative space at all. [Jane Urquhart,The Underpainter,1997,locate] |
| Oh, a boy's will is the wind's will, if we are to believe the poet, But a girl's will is a won't, but not until it doesn't do you any good to know it. [Ogden Nash,OH, DID YOU GET THE TICKETS? BECAUSE I DON'T THINK I'll GO, AFTER ALL,1931-40,locate] |
| The mummy was moving. The mummy's right arm was outstretched, the torn wrappings hanging from it, as the being stepped out of its gilded box! The scream froze in her throat. The thing was coming towards her--towards Henry, who stood with his back to it--moving with a weak, shuffling gait, that arm outstretched before it, the dust rising from the rotting linen that covered it, a great smell of dust and decay filling the room. [Anne Rice,The Mummy or Ramses the Damned,1989,locate] |
| CHORUS OF POLICE: Such expressions don't appear, Tarantara, Calculated men to cheer, Tarantara, Who are going to their fate, Tarantara, In a highly nervous state-- Tarantara! We observe too great a stress, Tarantara, On the risks that on us press, Tarantara! And of reference a lack, Tarantara, To our chance of coming back, Tarantara! [William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan,Pirates of Penzance,1879,locate] |
| One of the nice little gusts of wind rushed down the walk, and it was a stronger one than the rest. It was strong enough to wave the branches of the trees, and it was more than strong enough to sway the trailing sprays of untrimmed ivy hanging from the wall. Mary had stepped close to the robin, and suddenly the gust of wind swung aside some loose ivy trails, and more suddenly still she jumped toward it and caught it in her hand. This she did because she had seen something under it--a round knob which had been covered by the leaves hanging over it. It was the knob of a door. [Frances Hodgson Burnett,The Secret Garden,1909,locate] |
| Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. [0. Henry ((W. S. Porter) ,The Gift of the Magi,1906,locate] |
| I see another girl gliding down the street on her radiant bicycle, whistling. I stop breathing. She brakes and stops at the corner. Red light: her left foot on the pavement, her back bent gracefully, the nape of her neck exposed. Girls like to keep their hair short in the summer. Her body like a bent bow. Green light: she shoves off with her right foot on the pedal. Her body like the arrow that flies. Last image: her back a pure line, the graceful movement of her hips, her slender adolescent thighs. The emotion: the pain of losing someone forever whom you've loved totally, if only for twelve and three-tenths seconds. [Dany Laferrière,How to Make Love to a Negro,1985,locate] |
| IT WAS A DEATH that began it all and another death that led us on. The first was of the man called Brendan and I saw the moment of it. I saw them gather round and crouch over him in the bitter cold, then start back to give the soul passage. It was as if they played his death for me and this was a strange thing, as they did not know I watched, and I did not then know what they were. [Barry Unsworth,Morality Play,1995,locate] |
| CANDY: This bartender wants to take me out. [ROBERT: Control it.] DAVID: Hold out for a brain surgeon. CANDY: He's kinda hot. DAVID: You're so shallow. CANDY: It's either him or the lesbian I met at the gym. DAVID: Take the bartender--mixed marriages seldom work. CANDY: I'm half tempted. DAVID: The lesbot? Darling, one doesn't seriously discuss changing their sexual orientation at thirty--people lose respect. CANDY: I need some tenderness in my life. DAVID: Pick the lesbian. CANDY: I want more than just sex. DAVID: That's why God invented the movies. CANDY: The bartender's quite nice. [Brad Fraser,Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love,1988,locate] |
| "But you can't register a company here!" Shuster shrieked. "A company also has to be registered with a planetary government!" Kynance fused, dropped and exploded her last and greatest bombshell. She said, "We are a government." [John Brunner,A Planet of Your Own,1966,locate] |
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