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| So. There is that garden. And there is First Woman and Ahdamn. And there are the animals and the plants and all their relations. And there is all that food. "Boy," says Coyote, "that food certainly smells good." They can't eat my stuff, says that GOD. And that one jumps into the garden. Oh, oh, says First Woman when she sees that GOD land in her garden. Just when we were getting things organized. [Thomas King,Green grass, running water,1993,locate] |
| Edward III had very good manners. One day at a royal dance he noticed some men-about-court mocking a lady whose garter had come off, whereupon to put her at her ease he stopped the dance and made the memorable epitaph: "Honi soie qui mal y pense" ("Honey, your silk stocking's hanging down") and having replaced the garter with a romantic gesture gave the ill-mannered courtiers the Order of the Bath. (This was an extreme form of torture in the Middle Ages.) [W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman,1066 and All That,1931,locate] |
| Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her--remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that. [Toni Morrison,Beloved,1988,locate] |
| "You be careful with that tree now. These things are like explosives, you know. I sold these people a tree, I think it was last year, and two days later they was all dead. It blew up one night and burned them all so you couldn't tell one from the other. I tell you I wouldn't have one if you paid me. Even fresh--they can go off like a bomb, you know Boom! Just like that." "Merry Christmas," Dad said. "God help you," said Mr. Munch. [Garrison Keillor,Lake Wobegon Days,1985,locate] |
| "Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man!" [Mark Twain,A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,1889,locate] |
| 'Holy saints!' he cried again. 'Deeping!' He stared helplessly, then swung round on Mackintosh. 'Deeping dead! And you're telling me he was murdered! Good God! Surely not!' 'I'm feared it doesna look like an accident!' [Freeman Wills Crofts,Mystery in the Channel,1931,locate] |
| The reassembled body of Tutankhamen was placed on a wooden litter filled with sand and put inside the largest outer coffin, then lowered into the sarcophagus where it remains today. Tourists peering into the open sarcophagus see the outer coffin, but few realize that the mummy still lies inside. [Bob Brier,The Murder of Tutankhamen: A True Story,1998,locate] |
| "Let us imagine now a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, all taken up, and an infinite number of guests who come in and ask for rooms. "'Certainly, gentlemen,' says the proprietor, 'just wait a minute.' "He moves the occupant of N1 into N2, the occupant of N2 into N4, the occupant of N3 into N6, and so on, and so on... "Now all odd-numbered rooms become free and the infinity of new guests can easily be accomodated in them." [George Gamow,One, Two, Three... Infinity,1947,locate] |
| It's been a disastrous fishing season for Port Anguish fishermen. Harold Nightingale has taken exactly nine cod all season long. "Two years ago," he said, "we took 170,000 pounds of cod off Bumpy Banks. This year--less than zero. I dunno what I'm going to do. Take in washing, maybe." [E. Annie Proulx,The Shipping News,1993,locate] |
| The witches hear some dear friends calling, and depart. "Fair is foul, and foul is fair," they comment philosophically as they leave. This must have been pretty upsetting to any moralists, semanticists, or baseball umpires who chanced to overhear them. [Richard Armour,Twisted Tales From Shakespeare,1957,locate] |
| VANDAMM: This matter is best disposed of from a great height over water. [Alfred Hitchcock,North By Northwest,1959,locate] |
| Then I turned round and saw the sky. It was red and all my life was in it. I saw the grandfather clock and Aunt Cora's patchwork, all colours, I saw the orchids and the stephanotis and the jasmine and the tree of life in flames. [Jean Rhys,Wide Sargasso Sea,1966,locate] |
| Even with the temperature of the bath, there was a heat which came distinctly from her body. It seeped through the skin of my palms, up my wrists to my elbows, and flooded straight into my heart. The room was quiet, only the sound of bathwater lapping and my blood roaring in my ears. [Larissa Lai,When Fox is A Thousand,1995,locate] |
| "Well, it could mean that you are weaning me away from my awe for your wisdom and higher standing in the social order because you think my learning has reached a level on which I stand as a full member of the band." "Yes?" "Or it could mean that you do not have a really good notion of why we are doing all this riding." [George Bowering,Caprice,1987,locate] |
| And of top of that, she had such an unbelievable, wonderful smell, as if she had never taken a bath in her whole life. [Jamaica Kincaid,Annie John,1986,locate] |
| She leans the plane left over the islands, thinks how easy left has become, how the plane slides that way by itself. It seems inconceivable now that she will ever bank right again. Not just the plane, she thinks. Left is the direction that her body automatically pulls as well. [Helen Humphreys,Leaving Earth,1997,locate] |
| Every time she put her shod foot down, the satin shoe hissed when it touched water. The branches switched her and tore off her dress till only the two sleeves were left on her, and otherwise she was naked. She stopped to pant, but the alligator lumbered up out the black water beside the tree where she stood. This time she saw herself carefully remove the remaining shoe, and slowly stretch her naked body along his scaled and ridgy back, her head above his head. Then she reached out before his jaws and proffered the shoe, which he snapped from her hand, and crunched happily. [Eugene Walter,The Byzantine Riddle: Careless Willadell,1985,locate] |
| I don't remember when I first saw Victorine Meurent, but I wouldn't have recognized her or known her name at the time. No one would have. She was just another naked woman in a painting. [Eunice Lipton,Alias Olympia: A Woman's Search for Manet's Notorious Model & Her Own Desire,1992,locate] |
| "I am still awaiting an explanation for this intolerable ruse, if ruse it was. Dr.Watson may tell you that it is very dangerous for me to leave London for any length of time. It generates in the criminal classes an unhealthy excitement when my absence is discovered." [Nicholas Meyer,The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,1974,locate] |
| A country road. A tree. Evening. [Samuel Beckett,waiting for godot,1954,locate] |
| In certain moods I must confess that I find the Bain Turc a slightly comic picture. No wonder that it was made into a greetings card, with the caption 'The whole gang misses you'. [Kenneth Clark,The Romantic Rebellion,1973,locate] |
| A painting like Olympia seems much less dubious in taste now than confections such as The Birth of Venus that were greeted with universal satisfaction. What seemed provocative now seems truthful; what appeared charming has become dishonest. [Michael Gill,Image of the Body: Aspects of the Nude,1989,locate] |
| There before us lay the sealed door, and with its opening we were to blot out the centuries and stand in the presence of a king who reigned three thousand years ago. My feelings as I mounted the platform were a strange mixture, and it was with a trembling hand that I struck the first blow. [Howard Carter,The Tomb of Tutankhamen,1923,locate] |
| All that was currently on offer was some luke-warm noodle soup, great gobbets of some unidentifiable meat which looked as if it had been hacked to pieces by a maniac with an axe, and what where literally smashed potatoes. [Eric Newby,The Big Red Train Ride,1978,locate] |
| "The next time a girl wants a little powder-room change," she called, not teasing at all, "take my advice, darling: don't give her twenty-cents!" [Truman Capote,Breakfast at Tiffany's,1958,locate] |
| Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see -- to see correctly -- and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye. [Kimon Nicolaides,The Natural Way to Draw,1941,locate] |
| Rikki-tikki had a right to be proud of himself; but he did not grow too proud, and he kept that garden as a mongoose should keep it, with tooth and jump and spring and bite, till never a cobra dared show its head inside the walls. [Rudyard Kipling,The Jungle Book,1894,locate] |
| He felt terrible pain in his hands, feet and heart. His sight cleared and he saw the crown of thorns, the blood, the cross... His head quivered. Suddenly he remembered where he was, who he was and why he felt pain. A wild indomitable joy took possession of him. No, no, he was not a coward, a deserter, a traitor. [Nikos Kazantzakis (trans P.A. Bien) ,The Last Temptation of Christ,1955,locate] |
| `It is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, `that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!' [Charles Dickens,A Christmas Carol,1843,locate] |
| Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-Mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. [Samuel Taylor Coleridge,The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in Seven Parts,,1797-8,locate] |
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