“I’ll be seein’ ya.”
Good Words to You, by John Ciardi.
“Don’t you hate it when you have perfected a magnificent schedule and and then suddenly you get interrupted by an enormous brain tumor?”
When Life Gives You Pears. Jeannie Gaffigan.
Odd that she didn’t do the late night talk show circuit promoting this. Did just a few morning shows. Not afraid of the milieu. She co-hosted Craig Ferguson for a week with her husband a few years back.
Sing, goddess, of the anger of Achillius, son of Peleus, the accursed anger which brought uncounted anguish on the Achaians and hurled down to Hades many mighty souls of heroes, making their bodies prey to dogs and the birds’ feasting: and this was the work of Zeus’ will.
*The Iliad.
Homer*
“I peeked in the rearview mirror of my car, touched up my lip gloss, and ran my hands through my hair.”
Fed Up, by Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant
“She didn’t want to be a beauty queen, but as luck would have it, she was about to become one.”
— Funny Girl by Nick Hornby
Thanks! See post 940.
“As the captain of the Yale swimming team stood beside the pool, still dripping after his laps, and listened to Bob Moses, the team’s second-best freestyler, he didn’t know what shocked him more - the suggestion or the fact that it was Moses who was making it.”
The Power Broker - Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Also, the quote that appears at the beginning of the tale:
“One must wait until the evening
To see how splendid the day has been.”
-Sophocles
“Music was my refuge.”
Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, by Maya Angelou.
“The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.”
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.
“Since she was eleven years old, even if all she had to work with was neck bones, pepper-grass, or poke salad, she put good food on the table.”
*
The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table*, by Rick Bragg.
“The West Indies squadron lay off Bridgetown, sheltered from the north-east tradewind and basking in the brilliant sun.”
The Reverse of the Medal by Patrick O’Brian (1986)
“Let me guess. You want to know why I tried to kill myself.”
For One More Day by Mitch Albom (2006)
“Sally was looking out of the train window, her face to the glass.”
Swampfire, by Patricia Cecil Haas.
“The following anecdote stems from the late 1980’s, with the world on the brink of crisis, when it seemed that the Berlin Wall would stand for at least another hundred years, and West Berlin’s Zoo and East Berlin’s Tierpark were not only their respective countries’ most popular recreational facilities, but also symbols of their systems of government.”
The Zookeepers’ War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War, by J. W. Mohnhaupt, translated by Shelley Frisch.
When the sun finally returned to the Arctic Circle and stained the gray sky with blazing streaks of pink, Augustine was outside, waiting.
—Lily Brooks-Dalton, Good Morning, Midnight
“It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton.”
*
-The Illuminati Trilogy*, by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, a re-read
“Elmore Leonard said it’s bad style to open a novel with the weather.”
This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us, by Edgar Cantero
“THEY LAY IN the dark, guarding.” Making Money, Pratchett.
If only the “THEY” was capitalized it would seem more ominous. Why the first 3 words? IT’s A PATTERN AS it turns out. Well, unless there’s an article in which case it’s the first four.
“The cab turned off U.S. 101 in the direction of the sea.”
The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald (1949)
“The basket. The body. The canoe. The page. Each of these vessels has a form, a shape to which its purpose is intimately related.”
Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers, by Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton.
“So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd waiting in hushed and black-clad awe could not keep back gasps of admiration.”