Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. (About Yossarian, malingering in the hospital, immediately falling in love with the Chaplain.)
BG1: Whenever, most gracious ladies, I consider how compassionate you are by nature, I realize that in your judgment the present work will seem to have a a serious and painful beginning, for it recalls in its opening the unhappy memory of the deadly plague just passed, dreadful and pitiful to all those who saw or heard about it.
BG2: The morning sunshine descended like an amber shower-bath on [Name] Castle, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied walls, its rolling parks, its gardens, outhouses, and messuages, and such of its inhabitants as chanced at the moment to be taking the air.
BG3: “Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.”
The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow.
This I believe to be one of P.G. Wodehouse’s Blandings novels, but a quick dash through my partial collection of these marvellous works does not allow me to confirm that, or to pin down which one it is.
And now, a few additions:
Ah1: Mr. Utterson, the lawyer, was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow loveable.
Ah2: A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.
Ah3: I address these lines – written in India – to my relatives in England.
Z8: When the world was new, the seven Gods dwelt in harmony and the races of man were as one people.
Z9: Jeff Winston was on the phone with his wife when he died.
Z10: A small Lizard perched on a brown stone.
Z11: The face of Nicholas Easter was slightly hidden by a display rack filled with slim cordless phones, and he was not looking directly at the hidden camera, but somewhere off to the left, perhaps at a customer, or perhaps at a counter where a group of kids hovered over the latest electronic games from Asia.
Z12: This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain.
Z13: (warning - non fiction!) Maybe you never wondered about things like this. But I did, which is how I got to be such a Darn Smart Guy.
