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| Half the time, if you really want to know the truth, when I'm horsing around with a girl, I have a helluva lot of trouble just finding what I'm looking for, for God's sake, if you know what I mean. Take this girl that I just missed having sexual intercourse with, that I told you about. It took me about an hour to get her goddam brassičre off. By the time I did get it off, she was just about ready to spit in my eye. [J.D. Salinger,The Catcher In The Rye,1951,locate] |
| A woman can always beat a man to the state of nudity if she puts her mind to it, and here were two women evidently doing so. Despite earrings and necklaces, Joyce and Diana were embracing nacked beside the bed while I was still working urgently on my second shoe. [Kingsley Amis,The Green Man,1969,locate] |
| Francesca started to giggle and put her hand to her breast. She produced a little wash- leather bag which was strung on a cord around her neck and emptied it. Two more diamonds joined those on the table and there were also four emeralds. I looked at both of them and said, "You damned thieves; you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. The jewels were supposed to stay in Italy." I grinned and produced my five diamonds and we all sat there laughing like maniacs. [Desmond Bagley,The Golden Keel,1963,locate] |
| I walked up to the stage, developing a limp en route, fought back a huge desire to slug the Vice President, waited for the admiring throng to simmer down, and gave 'em the business. My previous dramatic experience had been limited to one performance as The Dormouse in Alice in Wonderland, as rendered by Miss Mowery's Kindergarten, but it stood me in good stead. [Roger Hall,You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger,1957] |
| East of this area, around Bogotį, is the Chibcha or Muisca country, and this again has its own style, which has the least claim of all to artistic merit (Ill. 230). [G.H.S. Bushnell,Ancient Arts of the Americas,1965] |
| The print was hanging by a wire placed high, and Candy had to reach. She couldn't quite get it at first, and for a moment she was standing there, lithe and lovely, stretching upward, standing on the tiptoes of one foot, the other out like a ballet-dancer's. As she strained higher, she felt the sinews of her calf rounding firmly and the edge of her flannel shirt lifting gently above her waist and upward across her bare back, while the muscles of her darling little buttocks tightened and thrust out taut beneath the jeans. 'Oh, I shouldn't!' she thought, making another last effort to reach the print, 'what if he thinks I'm... well, it's my fault, darn it!' [Maxwell Kenton (Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg),Candy,1958,locate] |
| They were everywhere. A shoulder blade, a thigh bone, part of a skull, ribs, four or five connected vertebrae, part of a foot, a lower jaw. Jim Chee was a modern man built upon traditional Navajo. This was simply too much death. Too many ghosts disturbed. He backed away from the excavation, flashlight still on, careful no longer. He wanted only to be away from here. [Tony Hillerman,A Thief of Time,1989,locate] |
| This is it, this is it, this is it! Hap thought in giddy exhilaration. Ah, this is wonderful! His face felt stiff from the blasting wind and his mouth was stretched in a grin he could not have wiped off to save him. He was deaf to all sounds save that of the roaring engine in front of him. His father beside him was stiffly grinning too; the rear-view mirror was empty. That's the last we'll see of Lennie and the gang, Hap thought triumphantly, until we get to Glenwood! [Don Stanford,The Red Car,1954,locate] |
| Aravis immediately began, sitting quite still and using a rather different tone and style from her usual one. For in Calormen, story- telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays. [C.S. Lewis,The Horse and his Boy,1954,locate] |
| My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I'm thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids. The day before yesterday I killed someone and the fact weights heavily on my mind. [Sue Grafton,"A" is for Alibi,1982,locate] |
| But we would have made a fortune if our ships could have taken the teas direct to England. And he cursed the British Navigation Acts that forbade any but British ships to bring goods into English ports. Goddam them, they own the world. [James Clavell,Tai-Pan,1966,locate] |
| An arrow sang through the air, like a huge hornet; it struck old Appleyard between the shoulder-blades, and pierced him clean through, and he fell forward on his face among the cabbages. [Robert Louis Stevenson,The Black Arrow,1883,locate] |
| She located a storage chamber, and they settled down to wait. "Now," she said, putting her arms about him and kissing him. She was fully as soft and sensual as any live woman. But she froze in midkiss. [Piers Anthony,Blue Adept,1981,locate] |
| The Fayu normally lived as single families, scattered through the swamp and coming together once or twice a year to negotiate exchanges of brides. Doug's visit coincided with such a gathering, of a few dozen Fayu. To us, a few dozen people constitute a small ordinary gathering, but to the Fayu it was a rare frightening event. [Jared Diamond,Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,1997,locate] |
| Poirot did not answer me for a moment, but at last he said: "I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself." [Agatha Christie,The Mysterious Affair at Styles,1920,locate] |
| 'Enter, my lords. If I speak truth the goat-skin with the stones will lie upon the floor; and if there is truth as to whether it is death to enter here, that will ye learn afterwards.' [H. Rider Haggard,King Solomon's Mines,1885,locate] |
| With the government stressing physical fitness the way it has, the current craze for the ladies is the exercise club. They go there for workouts, massages, and hot-fudge sundaes in the snack bar. My wife goes with her girl friend Millie Berman. You have to see these girls. They run around in black leotards--they look like a Sherman tank in mourning. [Alan King and Jack Shurman,Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery,1964,locate] |
| "Today... has been the greatest tragedy in American history. More Americans have died in the past twenty-four hours than in all the wars we have fought as a nation... Some kind of virulent and deadly disease appeared last night in towns and villages in Colorado, along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It appears to be so contagious that people catch it if they come anywhere near a person who has the disease, or who has died from it. The disease appears to travel alive in the air for an hour or so, so that anyone downwind of a person with the disease will also catch it." [William C. Heine,The Last Canadian,1974] |
| Duncan's breathing was even faster now, and droplets of cold sweat dotted his brow and the backs of his hands, even in the icy cold of the crypt. As the boy and Morgan watched, the features of the body beneath Duncan's hands began to waver, flicker, blur before their eyes. Duncan finally gasped and stiffened slightly, and in the same instant, the features of the corpse stabilized into Brion's familiar face. [Katherine Kurtz,Deryni Rising,1970,locate] |
| The girl could sing! That caress of her voice could touch your every nerve; it woke old sorrows; it made you remember pain and pity and compassion. She sang with the abandon of Mistinguette, the smouldering carelessness of Meller, dropping words as contemptuously as ashes flicked off a cigarette. But in billing her as an American singer they were stark mad. Hers were the love songs of old Paris, whose rhythms suggest brooding as much as love. They suggest bruises and the gutter; cellars, ecstasy, and the cold rain. Grief cries out in the cunning violins and the sudden break of the husky voice. Grief jabs the heart like a dull knife, just failing to pierce. [John Dickson Carr,The Corpse in the Waxworks,1932,locate] |
| Bond was directly behind the girl, his eyes fixed on the box clasp and safety chain at the back of her neck. It was clearly visible, and as he was pushed even closer, hemmed in by the crowd, Bond caught the smell of the girl's scent - Mille de Patou, he thought: the limited edition, and the most expensive scent on the market. [John Gardner,Licence Renewed,1981,locate] |
| 'Dr Colin,' he said. 'Are you stopping here?' 'The boat goes no farther,' the man answered, as if that were indeed the only explanation. [Graham Greene,A Burnt-Out Case,1960,locate] |
| 'But why he leave she?' Eddoes asked. 'To be a man, among we men.' [V.S. Naipaul,Miguel Street,1959,locate] |
| The bronze dragon settled awkwardly onto his hind legs, his wings working to keep him balanced. Carefully he set the girl on her feet and carefully he formed a cage around her with his huge talons. She stood motionless within that circle, her face turned toward the wedge-shaped head that swayed above her. [Anne McCaffrey,Dragonflight,1968,locate] |
| She tossed the gun into her suitcase and laughed. It sounded like a genuine laugh with real amusement in it. "Sorry," she said. "You sitting there with your legs crossed and a hole in your head and me trying to explain how I shot you to defend my honor-- the picture make me a little lightheaded. [Raymond Chandler,Playback,1958,locate] |
| I turned, fear gushing out of my mouth in silver, panic closing my throat, the scream kept in and choking me. The green canoe was far above me, sunlight radiating around it, a beacon, safety. [Margaret Atwood,Surfacing,1972,locate] |
| There was kindness. I and certain others, an old man and one with a bad cough, were recognized as being the least resistant to the cold, and each night we were at the center of the group, the entity of twenty- five, where it was warmest. We did not struggle for the warm place, we were simply in it each night. It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give. [Ursula K. Le Guin,The Left Hand of Darkness,1969,locate] |
| One man who did not forget was New York City Fire Chief Edward Croker. Only the previous November, when fire in a Newark, N.J., factory building took 23 lives, the chief made this public statement: "New York may have a fire as deadly as the one in Newark any time... There are buildings in New York where the danger is every bit as great... What we should have is an ordinance requiring fire escapes on every building used for manufacturing purposes. Take, for instance, some of the large loft buildings below Twenty-third Street. The employees go up to their work in the elevators and many do not even know where the stairs are. [Avram Davidson,Crimes & Chaos: A Rain of Burning Girls,1961,locate] |
| As he went by unheard on the turf the woman, still alone with her thoughts, suddenly moved. She unclasped her long hands from above her knees, stretched her limbs and body with feline grace, then slowly raised her head and extended her arms with open curving fingers, as if to gather to her all the glory and overwhelming sanity of the morning... So he saw for an instant as he passed, and he did not turn. [E.C. Bentley,Trent's Last Case,1913,locate] |
| From somewhere in the garden, not very far away, there had come the sound of a snail- shell cracking underfoot. He stayed his hand in its movement over the wall and stood quite still. The stone was harsh and cold, and unfriendly to his fingers. And as he stood there the moon rolled itself free of the cloud with a liesurely movement and a great lake of light poured over the wall and flooded the garden. He felt impaled by the light, and completely naked for the dragging split second before his limbs obeyed him and he was on his knees beside Little, with asparagus fern tickling his neck. [John Trench,Docken Dead,1953] |
| I sought, and soon discovered, the three head-stones on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey, and half buried in heath: Edgar Linton's only harmonised by the turf and moss creeping up its foot: Heathcliff's still bare. [Emily Brontė,Wuthering Heights,1847,locate] |
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