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| The gaoler nodded grimly, laying his withered hand on the shoulder of the miserable Toad. The rusty key creaked in the lock, the great door clanged behind them; and Toad was a helpless prisoner in the remotest dungeon of the best-guarded keep of the stoutest castle in all the length and breadth of Merry England. [Kenneth Grahame,The Wind in the Willows,1908,locate] |
| Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!" she said, but she could not help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick it on with soap. How exactly like a boy! [James Matthew Barrie (illus) ,Peter Pan,1904,locate] |
| "This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now." [Jane Austen,Emma,1814-5,locate] |
| The first time I had held my own daughter, I had been exhausted from a too-long labour and terrified about whether I would be a good mother. The joy I felt when I looked down at my granddaughter that night was unalloyed by memories of past pain or fear of the future. I was simply and overwhelmingly happy. [Gail Bowen,Verdict in Blood,1998,locate] |
| 'Mrs Donovan,' I said softly, 'he's the most beautiful dog in Yorkshire.' Then, because I knew she was waiting for it. 'It's those wonderful condition powders. Whatever do you put in them?' 'Ah, wouldn't you like to know!' She bridled and smiled up at me coquettishly and indeed she was nearer being kissed at that moment than for many years. [James Herriot,Let Sleeping Vets Lie,1973,locate] |
| Maybe he was lucky his nose was shot . It would have been pretty bad to have to lie and smell the perfume of your own body as it rotted away. [Dalton Trumbo,johnny got his gun,1939,locate] |
| Margaret Adkins had been ripped open from her breastbone to her pubis. A jagged fissure ran downward from her sternum, exposing along its course the colors and textures of her mutilated entrails. [Kathy Reichs,Déjà Dead,1997,locate] |
| As he closed the door behind his patient it seemed that a mask suddenly slipped from the doctor's face, so swift and horrible was the change that came over his features. He had been smiling and suave, but as he turned away from the door his demeanor was more like that of a frenzied madman. [Otis Adelbert Kline,Jan of the Jungle,1931,locate] |
| She stopped thinking, and she looked at the spot in the sky where soon the moon would rise and hang like an amulet and cast its golden path on the water, and she smiled and said aloud, "Thank you." [Peter Benchley,The Girl of the Sea of Cortez,1982,locate] |
| Miss Hillard had looked young, serenely beautiful, quietly elegant. Within handshaking distance, she still was young, serenely beautiful, quietly elegant. But now were added the sudden warmth of her wide-set dark-blue eyes, the smile on her lips. [Helen MacInnes,Decision at Delphi,1960,locate] |
| The evening sun was now sinking to the tops of the gum trees, flooding the glade with golden light; in the midst of her fatigue and these strange happenings she could wonder at the beauty and the fragrance of the place. [Nevil Shute,The Far Country,1952,locate] |
| Suddenly Harblow, by a most curious progression involving horizontal, vertical, and diagonal moves, oversprang five of my stones and arrived behind my zigzag thing. To my protests at the obvious irregularity of this he replied:'Well, it says here you can move auch sietwärts oder rüchwärts,' as if that settled it. [Paul Jennings,The Jenguin Pennings,1963] |
| But I'm always true to you, darlin', in my fashion, Yes, I'm always true to you, darlin', in my way. [Cole Porter,Kiss Me, Kate: Always True to You in My Fashion,1948,locate] |
| Something in the set of her face warned me not to argue with her. I had an uneasy feeling that her coming with me was inevitable, a necessary part of the future. [Hammond Innes,Campbell's Kingdom,1952,locate] |
| "Toronto Arrival, Blueforce leader. I am Major-General Dudley Smith, personally appointed by the President of the United States to lead USAF Blueforce to land at Toronto International Airport and Downsview Canadian Forces Base for the purpose of taking over military occupancy and government of the Metropolitan Toronto area and southern Ontario in accordance with the President's decree that Canada should become and is now part of the United States of America." [Richard Rohmer,Exxoneration,1974,locate] |
| When I woke I woke to a state of terror and despair which was unlike anything I had ever experienced. [Iris Murdoch,A Severed Head,1963,locate] |
| I WISH TO TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO EXTEND A WARM WELCOME TO ALL FACULTY AND STAFF, AND THE SINCERE HOPE THAT YOU HAVE RETURNED FROM A HEALTHFUL AND FRUITFUL SUMMER VACATION WITH RENEWED VIM AND VIGOR, READY TO GIRD YOUR LOINS AND TACKLE THE MANY IMPORTANT AND VITAL TASKS THAT LIE AHEAD UNDAUNTED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP AND COOPERATION IN THE PAST AND FUTURE. [Bel Kaufman,Up the Down Staircase,1964,locate] |
| The Enemy comes from hundreds or thousands of light-years away, and he tries desperately to smash the defences of this fortress and others, and when he succeeds there will be massacre and atrocity and death to celebrate his victory. He's on the way now. [Murray Leinster,The Wailing Asteroid,1960,locate] |
| As it turned out, we had all of twenty minutes to spare before the tanks arrived. [Donald Jack,That's Me in the Middle,1973,locate] |
| My exoskeleton and Sack suit were gone. The million invisible hairs pinning me down were simply the force of Terran gravity. I could wriggle my fingers and toes. I could open and shut my lower jaw. Otherwise I could not bend a joint. [Fritz Leiber,A Specter is Haunting Texas,1968,locate] |
| "Only I soon found out why my harpoon had not entered its skin and was blunted." "Why, Ned, why?" "Because, Professor, that beast is made of sheet iron." [Jules Verne,Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,1873,locate] |
| the drops that fell from the shower never made it to her body: they evaporated before they reached her. Her body was giving off so much heat that the wooden walls began to split and burst into flame. Terrified, she thought she would be burnt to death, and she ran out of the little enclosure just as she was, completely naked. [Laura Esquivel (trans Doubleday) ,Like Water for Chocolate,1989,locate] |
| He raises an eyebrow. "This is your company car?" "No. It's mine." She puts a hand on the smooth metal. She prefers that men lust after her, not the car, although she is willing to use its attractions. She bends her knee, caresses the car with her palm, an inviting, circular motion. [Aritha Van Herk,No Fixed Address: An Amorous Journey,1986,locate] |
| My being was incandescent with a vision of angels, robes, virginity, and whiteness, eternally prolonged; and with the sensation of soaring that the music's slow ascent so powerfully evoked. But none of this, I think, got into my voice, for I regarded singing as a discipline no less than cricket: nothing of what one felt must be betrayed. [L.P. Hartley,The Go-Between,1953,locate] |
| He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it. [Frank Stockton,The Lady or the Tiger?,1882,locate] |
| He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters that she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles tied with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened. [Gabriel García Márquez (trans Gregory Rabassa) ,Chronicle of a Death Foretold,1981,locate] |
| She undressed, laid herself on her miserable straw bed, and covered herself with an old curtain. In that state, the impression made by her dirty tatters disappeared, and I only saw a perfect beauty. But I wanted to see her entirely. I tried to satisfy my wishes, she opposed some resistance, but a double crown of six francs made her obedient, and finding that her only fault was a complete absence of cleanliness, I began to wash her with my own hands. [Jacques Casanova de Seingalt (trans Arthur Machen) ,The Complete Memoires,1725-1798,locate] |
| A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. [Nicolo Machiavelli (trans W. K. Marriott) ,The Prince,1513,locate] |
| Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack. And so because of the automated process which rules out human meddling, the Doomsday Machine is terrifying, simple to understand, and completely credible and convincing. [Peter George,Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,1963,locate] |
| Memory of Duncan Idaho's voice flowed through Paul's awareness: "When your opponent fears you, then's the moment when you give fear its own rein, give it the time to work on him. Let it become terror. The terrified man fights himself. Eventually, he attacks in desperation. That is the most dangerous moment, but the terrified man can be trusted usually to make a fatal mistake. You are being trained to detect these mistakes and use them." [Frank Herbert,Dune,1965,locate] |
| I lay with my face in the wood shavings and listened to them panting as they stood over me, both of them taking great gulps of breath after their exertions. [Dick Francis,Whip Hand,1979,locate] |
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