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| Yes, the Earth. The birthplace of the human race, now an old and senile planet tottering to its doom, a planet that had outlived its usefulness. [Clifford D. Simak,Cosmic Engineers,1939] |
| 'A typical Yank bint, gentlemen. More money than sense and more cheek than either.' [Robert Conquest and Kingsley Amis,The Egyptologists,1965,locate] |
| Look at this old woman. The Frenchman who painted her saw her lying just like that, but he didn't put down just what he saw. He built her up, first bone, then flesh, then clothes, so that now she's not just a black design against yellow and blue but a great heavy lump, solid, sculptural, pressing down the bed so that you can hear the springs creak. You can smell the old black woollen jacket and the black serge skirt. [Winston Graham,The Walking Stick,1967,locate] |
| The gambles were all long term. You cast your bread on the waters and hoped it would float back in the future with butter and jam. Mildew... too bad. [Dick Francis,Banker,1982,locate] |
| So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust. [Charles Dickens,Great Expectations,1861,locate] |
| `I just guessed,' I said. `She just seemed the sort of girl who would be interested in enzymes.' [Len Deighton,Funeral in Berlin,1964,locate] |
| "I hear you went into a burning house, Esteban, and pulled someone out." "Yes. I didn't get burned or anything. You know," cried Esteban, leaning across the table, "you're not allowed to kill yourself; you know you're not allowed. Everybody knows that. But if you jump into a burning house to save somebody, that wouldn't be killing yourself. And if you became a matador and the bull caught you that wouldn't be killing yourself..." [Thornton Wilder,The Bridge of San Luis Rey,1927,locate] |
| There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant, I had a sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an infinitesimal time. [H.G. Wells,The First Men in the Moon,1901,locate] |
| But the practice of Kama with women of the lower castes, with women excommunicated from their own caste, with public women, and with women twice married, is neither enjoined nor prohibited. The object of practising Kama with such women is pleasure only. [Mallanaga Vatsyayana and (trans Sir Richard Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot) ,The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana,1883,locate] |
| "I suppose none of you are sitting on a thistle by any chance?" "I believe I am," said Pooh. "Ow!" He got up, and looked behind him. "Yes, I was. I thought so." "Thank you, Pooh. If you've quite finished with it." He moved across to Pooh's place, and began to eat. "It doesn't do them any Good, you know, sitting on them," he went on, as he looked up munching. "Takes all the Life out of them. Remember that another time, all of you. A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference." [A.A. Milne,Winnie-the-Pooh,1926,locate] |
| If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. [John McCrae,In Flanders Fields,1915,locate] |
| The Earth is menaced. Earth's women--particularly the young girls--are in deadly danger. Here on Mercury the young girls of the Light Country, whom I am vainly trying to aid, have unwittingly been the cause of the menace threatening the girls of Earth. And we learned it a few hours ago. So my message is a warning! I pray it may reach you in time. [Ray Cummings,Tama of the Light Country,1930,locate] |
| Asimov was there, being introduced. He held out his hand to Anita Loos with a fatuous smile and said, "I've always wanted to play cards with you and Howard Fast, Miss Loos, for then I'd be playing Fast and Loos." [Isaac Asimov,Murder at the ABA,1976,locate] |
| "Oh, a backward little dump called Earth, I don't suppose you've ever heard of it?" [Brian W. Aldiss,Bow Down to Nul,1960,locate] |
| I have an instinct against planning far ahead. I expect it's due to my primitive upbringing in a land where God and nature tend to show a pointed disregard for human anticipation. [Laurens van der Post,Flamingo Feather,1955,locate] |
| "But if you really wanted to know," said Anthony casually, with a sudden change of voice, "I could find out for you without even bothering to ring up the hall-porter." [A.A. Milne,The Red House Mystery,1922,locate] |
| "We are leaving your orbit," Keesa said with a simplicity that delayed the impact of the words on Jeb. "To do so it is necessary to prepare you and your craft to withstand the speed of light. We must hurry. Please do as I tell you... That device... will record the molecular compositions of you and your craft. Do not make contact with the barrier until it completes its recording and you are directed to do so." [Allen Adler,Terror on Planet Ionus,1957] |
| When she had her breath back she said, "They never told me that." Gavving heaved a vast sigh. "They told me. They were right. Hey, didn't you hurt?" He pulled away from her, a little, and looked down. "There's blood. Not a lot." "It hurt. I'm tough. Gavving, I was so afraid. I didn't want to die a virgin." "Me too," he said soberly. [Larry Niven,The Integral Trees,1983,locate] |
| It's a lonely spot here. A man might easily commit a dozen murders, if he chose his time well. [Dorothy L. Sayers,Five Red Herrings,1931,locate] |
| He slipped the quill into his pocket, and looked again at the scrap of white stuff. "A fragment of a handkerchief?" he mused. "Perhaps you are right. But remember this--a good laundry does not starch a handkerchief." He nodded at me triumphantly, then he put away the scrap carefully in his pocket-book. [Agatha Christie,The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,1926,locate] |
| "I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," said the little man, in a trembling voice. "But don't strike me--please don't--and I'll do anything you want me to." [L. Frank Baum,The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,1900,locate] |
| Until the next morning, she woke up in bed With a smile on her lips, an ache in her head And a beard in her earhole that tickled and said: "Have some Madeira, m'Dear!" [Michael Flanders and Donald Swann,Madeira M'Dear,1956-59,locate] |
| So it went, month after month, year after year; at the foot of Shahryar's bed by night and in Scheherazade's by day, I learned more about the arts of making love and telling stories than I had imagined there was to know. [John Barth,Chimera,1972,locate] |
| CHARLIE BROWN: (as catcher) That makes the score ninety-three to nothing... I've come to have another conference with you." PITCHER: What do you think we ought to do? CHARLIE BROWN: Well the way I see it, there's not too much to worry about. I've got a feeling that they won't be hitting 'em so far any more... PITCHER: We're catching on to their weaknesses, huh? CHARLIE BROWN: No, the cover is about to come off the ball. [Charles M. Schultz,For the Love of Peanuts,1952-6,locate] |
| He looks like Christ at the Last Supper. To the right of him and to the left of him are somberly dressed analysts in ties and jackets. He is earnestly leaning toward the microphone, sucking his pipe, and summing up the earlier portion of the meeting--which we missed. One bare foot swings back and forth toward the audience while its tattered sandal rests under the table. [Erica Jong,Fear of Flying,1973,locate] |
| Mrs Constable lay spread-eagled in the churning water at the foot of the cliff, face up, on one of the knife-like rocks sprouting from the base. Her long hair had come loose and trailed in the water, with her gown and legs. The water was tinted red around her. She looked for all the world like a fat oyster which has been dropped from a height to split itself upon a rock. [Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee) ,The Spanish Cape Mystery,1935,locate] |
| I can identify at least four categories of reasons for the ready welcome accorded to [Piltdown Man] by all the greatest English paleontologists. All four contravene the usual mythology about scientific practice--that facts are "hard" and primary and that scientific understanding increases by patient collection and sifting of these objective bits of pure information. Instead, they display science as a human activity, motivated by hope, cultural prejudice, and the pursuit of glory, yet stumbling in its erratic path toward a better understanding of nature. [Stephen Jay Gould,The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History,1980,locate] |
| For me the most important thing has always been, and still is, to penetrate deeply into whatever I am painting that I manage to discover its hidden, innermost aspects. Every cloud, every tree, every landscape and every animal has a hidden secret that is revealed only to those who try to paint it. [Ettore Maiotti,The Paintng the Nude Handbook,1991,locate] |
| Something in the way she moves... [George Harrison,Something,1969,locate] |
| comics (kom'iks)n. plural in form, used with a singular verb. 1. Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer. [Scott McCloud,Understanding Comics,1993,locate] |
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