Sweet!
“The funny thing was, Ghreni Nohamapetan, the acting Duke of End, actually saw the surface-to-air missile that slammed into his aircar a second before it hit.”
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
“Bianca walks toward me, under too much sky.”
The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
“The still desert air had a lenselike quality.”
The White Rose, by Glen Cook. Part of “The Chronicles of the Black Company - Book 1”
“At the end of December 2015 winter had not yet reached Brooklyn.”
In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende.
“For decades, science fiction artists (principally Frank R. Paul), via their prophetic palettes, have been illustrating for us the shapes of things to come.”
Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art, by Forrest J. Ackerman with Brad Linaweaver
“I was in Classis on business.”
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, by K. J. Parker
“One tree is like another tree, but not too much.”
Upstream, by Mary Oliver
“The ‘classical world’ is the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, some forty lifetimes before our own but still able to challenge us by a humanity shared with ours.”
– The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian, by Robin Lane Fox
“The great spaceship plunged through the black starways toward the orbit of the third planet.”
The Counterfeit Man and Other Science Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse
“Who can withstand the lure of the antique or the glamor of the exotic?”
The Ragged Edge of Science by L. Sprague de Camp
“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday.”
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
“Ever since Jack Aubrey had been dismissed from the service, ever since his name, with its now meaningless seniority, had been struck off the list of post-captains, it had seemed to him that he was living in a radically different world; everything was perfectly familiar, from the smell of seawater and tarred rigging to the gentle heave of the deck under his feet, but the essence was gone and he was a stranger.”
The Letter of Marque by Patrick O’Brian
“Rich!” the willowy blonde woman in a superbly-cut ivory satin gown exclaimed, in delight.
Luna City: Behind the 8 Ball by Jeanne Hayden and Celia Hayes
“There was a man called Thorvald, who was the father of Eirik the Red.”
The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America, translated and with an introduction by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson.
“The founders of the United States of America created a document that allowed disparate states to act together cohesively to form a greater union.”
Altered States of the Union, edited by Glenn Hauman. (Note that this is an anthology; this sentence is from a story called “Shall Not Perish from This Earth”, by Ian Randal Strock.)
“While Christians all over the world were preparing for the birth of the Savior, little Martin de Porres was born on December 9, 1579.”
Saint Martin de Porres: Humble Healer, by Elizabeth DeDomenico
“First came the routine request for a Breach of Privacy permit.”
The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, by Larry Niven
“When Red wins, she stands alone.”
This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
“He has forgotten something, he knows that for sure when he wakes up”
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
“On an afternoon in late May 2006 a woman named Ivanna left her phone in the backseat of a New York City cab.”
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, by Clay Shirky.