Here’s a collection of my favorite phrases/sentences/paragraphs from last month that I haven’t already used for something. (I will skip most audiobooks, my transcription skills aren’t what they should be. But when I try, the punctuation is just a guess).
Rosebud by Paul Cornell
Haunt has never heard an insect scream before. He doesn’t feel he’s missed out. It’s the sound of whatever Quin has got in that made-up body instead of a mammalian voicebox having a terrible malfunction.
…humans have had many ideas for how to travel beyond the solar system, and some of them might work, even, given enormous time and energy and money. But that’s just it. Humans are, in the end, stupid chimps without the attention span to achieve anything like that. And they’re only just starting to understand that.
The Cartographer by Peng Shepherd
“I really think you should tell the police sooner rather than later.”
“I will, I will,” Nell replied.
“When?” he urged, a familiar tone slipping into his voice. With a Young, unless you agreed on a firm date to stop working on something, “soon” meant “when I’m satisfied.”
A burst of cool, stale air hit her as soon as she was inside, and Nell sank wistfully into it. It was the smell of ancient pages, of time, of her very soul, if souls could have smells, she thought.
Wally had spent so long repressing his real feelings for Tam, I think he didn’t even know they were there. They were like a phantom limb to him—a thing he’d convinced himself wasn’t real, even though he could still sense its ghost.
I don’t know how it happened—isn’t that what everyone who betrays someone says? But I don’t know how it happened. I just know why.
Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour by Mike Lupica
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“I’d rather not,” she said.
“Force yourself,” I said.
“We can talk about it after dinner.”
“I can manage both,” I said. “I’m the kind of multitasker that makes young multitaskers aspirational.”
I wasn’t sure what I had expected the great and powerful Richard Gross to look like. But the rather legendary Hollywood power broker, one who had begun his career Out There as a lawyer, looked more like an actor, reminding me somewhat of Michael Douglas. Not the Romancing the Stone Michael Douglas. The older one from Netflix.
I stopped about a half-hour into New York. These turnpike rest areas all looked the same to me, the way shopping malls did. I used the ladies’ room and bought a Coke Zero and a guilty-pleasure Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, knowing that some might say that the combination of candy and a diet soft drink was counterintuitive. I thought of it as establishing a crucial and delicate balance to my personal nutrition.
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
I wasn’t destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.
This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
Her extremely posh eight-year-old asks her a question about the economy (!), and before she answers it, she asks her extremely posh five-year-old “Do you know what the economy is, darling?”
“Yes mummy, it’s the part of the plane that’s terrible”.
This is how revolutions start.
But it’s a Saturday night and the NHS runs a skeleton service. Actually, that’s unfair on skeletons – it’s more like when they dig up remains of Neolithic Man and reconstruct what he might have looked like from a piece of clavicle and a thumb joint.
Heroic Hearts edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes
Hero, noun
1. a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities
2. a sandwich
Comfort Zone by Kelley Armstrong
We’ll be fine. Remember, the couple that breaks and enters together goes to prison together.
Fire Hazard by Kevin Hearne
The most important question in this life, I’ve heard it said, is whether you have the sausage to achieve your goals. Sausage being a metaphor for courage, in this case, instead of the many other things it could be, including actual sausage.
It burned with the rage of five grizzly bears on energy drinks fighting to drink the last one of a six-pack.
Silverspell by Chloe Neill
“Are you going to get coffee right now?”
Only if the universe was just.
Little Things by Jim Butcher
My name is Major General Toot-Toot Minimus, sprite in service to Sir Harry Dresden, Knight of the Winter Court and Wizard of Chicago, and captain of his personal guard. When the skies darken with smoke and ash, when wails of wrong and woe rend the night, when my lord goes to war with titans and unspeakable horrors from Outside of reality, someone must protect him from threats too small to readily discern. That is my place: not at my lord’s side, but at his ankles.
Don’t Know Tough by Eli Cranor
I feel drunk, but not the good kind. The kind where you just keep drinking and drinking, and it don’t matter none, just don’t never feel good.
“Trent thinks Billy might be able to get a football scholarship.”
Tina laughs as a semitruck downshifts somewhere out on a highway in the dark, a low, grating sound. “Ain’t nobody talking about no scholarship, Mrs. Powers. We just trying to survive.”
“Survive?”
“Yeah, me and my boys. Sometime it ain’t even death you got to worry about.”
“What could be worse than death?”
“If you don’t know already,” Tina’s lips barely move, “then don’t go asking.”
In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin
‘I seem to have picked up a wee dose of COPD.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – known as emphysema in the old days.’
‘Trust you to get something that has the word COP in it.’
‘Aye, I feel like I drew a winning ticket there.’
[Name Withheld] sat with arms folded, alongside his solicitor. The room was stuffy and Dean had removed his jacket but kept his waistcoat on. It boasted a fob watch on a gold chain, just when Rebus thought he couldn’t dislike lawyers more than he already did.
There was so much energy emanating from the various groupings, Rebus could feel it as a physical force, pushing against him. He knew he was looking at the future, but also that the futures these various young people imagined for themselves might not work out the way they hoped. There’d be tears and traumas along the way, mistakes made, promises broken. Sime would marry their sweethearts and live to regret it, Others would break apart. A few would trouble the police in later years. There’d be early deaths from disease and maybe even a suicide or two, Right now, none of that would seem feasible to them, They were alive in and of the moment ~ and that was all that mattered.
(Image by DaModernDaVinci from Pixabay)
