“If there was any doubt at the turn of the twentieth century, by the turn of the twenty-first, it was a foregone conclusion: when it comes to revealing the true nature of reality, common experience is deceptive.”
Brian Greene,The Hidden Reality
BTW, I like Darren Garrison’s game – makes my entry (and those of many others) pretty funny. But not Max Torque’s. 
“It did not seem a night for revolution.”
Duce! by Richard Collier, copyright 1971.
The solemn tones of an old cathedral clock have announced midnight - the air is thick and heavy - a strange, death like stillness pervades all nature.
A fun if somewhat tortuous Dickens like novel, by James Malcom Rymer
“You will develop a palate.”
*Sweetbitter *by Stephanie Danler.
The second sentence: “A palate is a spot on your tongue where you remember.”
“The letter had said to meet in a bookstore.”
The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman
“This book is an official battle-by-battle history of the American Sex Revolution.”
Rape of the A. P. E. (American Puritan Ethic : The Official History of the Sex Revolution, 1945-1973 : The Obscening of America, an R. S. V. P.) by Allan Sherman.
“Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gambler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a poet.”
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck - Mark Manson
Look to the edge of the swollen Missouri in Montana Territory, where the longest river on the continent holds a blush of twilight, to see what becomes of an Irishman just before he disappears.
- The Immortal Irishman (Biography of Thomas Francis Meagher)
by Timothy Egan
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. I absolutely love it. In 50-odd years of serious reading this is my third time round.
“I wanted darkness.”
Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell. Book 3 of the Saxon series, an excellent read.
“Dr. Strauss says I shoud rite down what I think and remembir and every thing that happins to me from now on.”
I’ve never read “Flowers for Algernon” but somehow I know everything that’s going to happen. Taking a break from re-reading Pratchett and King.
“On January 12, 1779, an eleven-year-old New England boy named John Quincy Adams started a diary that continued, rarely interrupted, for almost seventy tumultuous years.”
-from John Quincy Adams (A Public Life, A Private Life) by Paul C. Nagel.
mmm
“Snowflakes danced through the evening light.”
SIX FOUR, Hideo Yokoyama.
“As Director of the Peace Corps, it has been my honor to have met Peace Corps Volunteers all over the world and to have seen firsthand the remarkable dedication, passion, and skill they bring to serving others.”–Ron Tschetter,* A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service.*
“When Patricia was six years old, she found a wounded bird.”
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
“When Henry Robinson Luce looked down on the muddy Yangtze on October 6, 1945, he had reason to feel exultation in the consummation of one of the great dreams of his life.”
– from Luce and His Empire, by W. A. Swanberg.
“I was having lunch with Timothy Leary in the late 1980s at a little sidewalk cafe near Sunset and Gower in Hollywood, California.”
–Infinite Tuesday - An Autobiographical Riff by Michael Nesmith
“The letter, several pages in length and signed by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, was addressed to Commander Thomas O. Selfridge.”
From The Path Between the Seas, David McCullough’s terrific history of the building of the Panama Canal
“The children were playing while Holstrom climbed to his death.”
—“Wool”, by Hugh Howey