***The street awoke angrily. Lamps were lighted and sleepy curses were called to him. The men who lived in the house rattled furiously on his door. The girls from a cathouse across the street stuck their heads out of the windows.
“You dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb bastards! You dumb dumb dumb dumb -”
“Shuddup! Shuddup!”***
(from Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
At first, Rehoboam didn’t take this seriously, but when they stoned his chief tax collector to death, he returned to Jerusalem in a hurry.
The Cartoon History of the Universe Volumes 1-7 by Larry Gonick
You are the Mayor. Population one, but you are still boss. And even those bureaucrats in the control service wouldn’t dispute that you’ve proved the land.
Tunnel in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein.
“Meaning precisely nothing,” Duff sighed.
“Precisely,” agreed Mrs. Luce.
(from Charlie Chan Carries On by Earl Derr Biggers
“Let’s all go to my apartment,” I shouted. We did; the moment the car stopped there, I jumped out and stood on my head in the grass.
(On the Road, by Jack Kerouac)
Sorry, but the thread was dying, and somebody had to ad SOMETHING!
I understood why she wanted to move on. The tart smell of those pomegranates was almost overwhelming. I had a sudden desire to eat them, but then I remembered the story of Persephone. One bite of Underworld food, and we would never be able to leave. I pulled Grover away to keep him from picking a big juicy one.
– Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
(sorry for the repeat – all of my fiction books are still packed away in boxes.)
Are Mr. Lang and Miss Bertha the pupils of Mr. Berlitz?
The Berlitz Self-Teacher: German (© 1950)
Lacke walked down the stairs from the main square with a box of Aladdin chocolates tucked inside the top of his pants. Didn’t like to steal, but he had no money and he wanted to give Virginia something. Should have brought roses as well, but try swiping anything at a florist.
– John Advide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In
“I want to give her a present before I go away, Captain Alvarado, I want you to give me all my wages before I start- I won’t need any money anywhere- and I want to buy her a present. The present isn’t only from me. She was… was… She had a kind of a… she had a serious loss, once. She said so. I don’t know who it was, and I want to give her a present. Women can’t bear that kind of thing like we can.”
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge Of San Luis Rey