“Let me tell you of the worlds I’ve left behind. Earth you know; everyone knows it.”
The Last Colony by John Scalzi
“The spaceship resumed humming around Sweeney without his noticing the change.”
The Seedling Stars, by James Blish.
“To better appreciate the potential role of the human microbiome in health and disease, let’s take a look at where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we are going on our journey into the microbial world.”
GUT FEELINGS - The Microbiome and Our Health by Alessio Fasano and Susie Flaherty
“A fourteen year old girl sits cross-legged on the floor of a circular vault.”
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
“The air is heavy with the crackle of electricity, with the taste of ozone and mercury and the burning tang of alkahest, the universal solvent, which has a nasty tendency to consume everything in its path unless properly contained.”
Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire
Accidentally put the incorrect first line in.
“There is so much blood.”
Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire
“I parked my Vauxall roadster beside a hedgerow, gathered up my dog-eared copy of The Battle of Maldon, and set off down the straight path toward the famous causeway.”
– The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D., by James Reston Jr
“You can’t be serious.”
“I couldn’t be more serious, Father, as you’d realize if you’d ever listened to anything I’ve been saying for the past ten years.”
Nothing Ventured by Jeffrey Archer
“We are increasingly confident that there is life elsewhere in the universe, and, even more excitingly, that it might be possible to find it.”
The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy: What Animals on Earth Reveal About Aliens–and Ourselves, by Arik Kershenbaum
“I know too much of mud.”
Clap When You Land, by Elizabeth Acevedo
“We were in Doc Fiddler’s one cold night in November 1967.”
– The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War, by John “Chick” Donohue and JT Molloy
“Chemistry is everywhere, in everything.”
It’s Elemental: The Hidden Chemistry in Everything, by Kate Biberdorf
“When the boys arrive, Subject 643 stops skating and sits down on her board.”
Clarkesworld: Year Eleven-Volume Two, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace. (Note that this is an anthology of stories from the SF and Fantasy magazine Clarkesworld. The sentence is from the first story, “The Ways Out” by Sam J. Miller.
He signed his name “A. Lincoln.”
–A. Lincoln, by Ronald C. White, Jr.
“At dusk they pour from the sky.”
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
“Nearly four years earlier, Joe Biden was knocking around his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware, the weekend of August 12, 2017, when he caught snatches of President Trump on television.”
– Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
“For most of the past century, your odds of being killed by a cougar were about the same as your odds of being killed by a filing cabinet.”
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
“Late on the moonless night of August 5, 2011, two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinook helicopters, empty of all passengers, cut through the pitch-black sky at more than 100 mph above the rolling high desert of eastern Afghanistan.”
The Final Mission of Extortion 17: Special Ops, Helicopter Support, SEAL Team Six, and the Deadliest Day of the U.S. War in Afghanistan by Ed Darack
“I can turn invisible.”
When You Trap a Tiger, by Tae Keller.
“I grew up in a land of Oz.”
The Wizard of Macatawa and Other Stories, by Tom Doyle