“At Windsor, it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.”
The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett (2007)
Three hours past midnight on April 16, 1945, approximately nine thousand Soviet guns opened fire on German positions along the Seelow Heights guarding the eastern approaches to Berlin.
The Cold War’s Killing Fields: Rethinking the Long Peace by by Paul Thomas Chamberlin
“I love pinball.”
Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, Drains, and the Cult of the Silver Ball, by Adam Ruben
“When I was too young to check books out of the adult section of the local library, I spent a lot of weekend time sitting there and reading the forbidden texts.”
A Separate War and Other Stories by Joe Haldeman (2006)
“They waited at the dock, the three Venetians, for the fool to arrive.”
“The Serpent of Venice” by Christopher Moore, a mashup of King Lear, The Cask if Amontillado, The Merchant of Venice, Marco Polo, and a supernatural sea monster
“There were no stars.”
– The Reckoning, by Sharon Kay Penman
“Melchior! Give Caspar back the frankincense! And Balthazar, if you don’t stop throwing myrrh at the shepherds, I’m demoting you to junior sheep!”
Lark! The Herald Angels Sing, by Donna Andrews
“‘Pass the word for Captain Aubrey, pass the word for Captain Aubrey,’ cried a sequence of voices, at first dim and muffled far aft on the flagship’s maindeck, then growing louder and more distinct as the call wafted up to the quarterdeck and so along the gangway to the forecastle, where Captain Aubrey stood by the starboard thirty-two-pounder carronade contemplating the Emperor of Morocco’s purple galley as it lay off Jumper’s Bastion with the vast grey and tawny Rock of Gibraltar soaring behind it, while Mr Blake, once a puny member of his midshipman’s berth but now a tall, stout lieutenant almost as massive as his former captain, explained the new carriage he had invented, a carriage that should enable carronades to fire twice as fast, with no fear of oversetting, twice as far, and with perfect accuracy, thus virtually putting an end to war.”
The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brian (1984)
Now that’s an opening sentence.
“On November 19, 1833, a newspaper in Cumberland, MD, told of a strange and terrifying event.”
Mysteries and Lore of Western Maryland: Snallygasters, Dogmen and Other Mountain Tales, by Susan Fair
“Once upon a time, long long ago, there lay in a valley far, far away in the mountains, the most contented kingdom the world has ever known.”
The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley (Specifically, this is from its first story, “Happy Valley” by John Cleese and Connie Booth.)
“What the world needs now is more lovely, life-affirming sleep.”
IKEA Catalog 2020
“‘Thinner,’ the old Gypsy man with the rotting nose whispers to William Halleck as Halleck and his wife, Heidi, come out of the courthouse.”
Thinner by Stephen King (1984)
“For the last five or six days Hewey Calloway had realized he needed a bath”.
The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton.
“Pancho Alvarez glanced at the wall clock just above his operating console: three hours and ten minutes remaining to complete the twenty-four-hour VLBI observing program.”
Latitude: How American Astronomers Solved the Mystery of Variation, by Bill Carter and Merri Sue Carter
“Once there was an old man named Armand who wouldn’t have lived anywhere but in Paris.”
The Family Under the Bridge, by Natalie Savage Carlson
" On Waverly Street, everybody knew everybody else. "
— **Saint Maybe **, by Anne Tyler.
It was Sunday, and the day was clear and crisp as I walked from my duplex apartment at 645 Park avenue to the Mountain View hospital, a small, twenty-five bed private facility located at 1530 Marsh street.
Nurse of Manzanar, by Samuel Nakamura
Derived from My Memories of World War 2 by Toshiko Eto Nakamura
“From the outside, Jamie Hyneman’s workshop may seem like just another workshop in San Francisco’s south side industrial district, where the streets are named after different states of the Union.”
Mythbusters: The Explosive Truth Behind 30 of the Most Perplexing Urban Legends of All Time, by Keith and Kent Zimmerman, with Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage, and Peter Rees.
“Son, last Sunday the host of a popular Sunday news show asked me what it meant to lose my body.”
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
“You never see Gliese.”
Dream Houses, by Genevieve Valentine