Je me rappelle fort bien comment je cessai de peindre.
- Alberto Moravia, L’ennui
(I remember quite well how I stopped painting.)
“‘Miss Armstrong? Miss Armstrong, can you hear me?’”
Transcription by Kate Atkinson (2018)
“My name is Val Caruso and I’m a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
*A Long Time Coming *by Aaron Elkins
“Gopher tortoises sunned on islands in the stream.”
No Sunscreen for the Dead, by Tim Dorsey.
“You’ve been here before.”
– Needful Things, by Stephen King.
“For five years, two armies had clashed along the edge of a vast continent.”
In the Hurricane’s Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick (2018)
“The ad said: Wanted, experienced continuity writer. Female. Apply Station KUKU, between 9 and 11 a.m.”
Of Mikes and Men by Jane Woodfin.
“There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding detail seems to be graven on the memory in such fashion that we cannot forget it, and so it is with the scene that I am about to describe.”
–She A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard (1887)
“‘This is a slightly unusual request,’ said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint.”
The Other Side of the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke (1958)(first line of “The Nine Billion Names of God,” the first short story in the collection)
“I can get you a cheaper ticket if you let me amputate your legs: I can even take your thighs as a deposit,” said the travel agent. He was clearly trying hard to be helpful: “It’s not as if you’ll need them where you’re going, is it?”
Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross
Another that comes to mind, though it’s been forever since I last read it, is this passage from Tim Powers’s, Declare:
The prose doesn’t get much easier to read after that, but it’s still a great read.
“Bel Riose traveled without escort, which is not what court etiquette prescribes for the head of a fleet stationed on the Marches of the Galactic Empire.”
Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire
“On the day he would first meet Thomas Edison, Paul watched a man burn alive in the sky above Broadway.”
The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore.
“The first time I visited Radio Flyer I was five years old.”
Radio Flyer: 100 Years of America’s Little Red Wagon, by Robert Pasin and Carlye Adler
“To think, only yesterday I was in chancletas, sipping lemonade and watching my twin cousins run through the sprinkler in the yard.”
Merci Suarez Changes Gears, by Meg Medina
“That our family’s home was a school for the deaf did not seem in any way extraordinary to Reba, Andy, and me.”
Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, by Leah Hager Cohen.
“A grandfather and his granddaughter walked under the leaf-bare trees of late autumn.”
Empire Games, by Charles Stross.
“Ariadne stared at the face in the polished oval of brass and could not believe it was hers.”
Bull God, Roberta Gellis
“Nearly three thousand years ago there was a long and savage war between the warriors of Greece and the city of Troy.”
The Legend of Ulysses by Paul Hamlyn (1965, illustr. by Mario Logli and Gabriele Santini)
“From the doorway of the short corridor between the only two rooms in the travel-head of the spaceship, Mario Esteban Rioz watched sourly as Ted Long adjusted the video dials painstakingly.”
- The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2-B, edited by Ben Bova
“He was out there somewhere.”
The Butler: A Witness to History, by Wil Haygood