Scott Westerfeld

"As Alek glared at the newspaper man one last time, an unsettling realization overtook him. He spoke French, English, and Hungarian fluently, and always impressed his tutors in Latin and Greek. But Prince Aleksandar of Hohenberg could barely manage the daily language of his own people well enough to buy a newspaper."
Leviathan, 125

Robin Benway

“We read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, all right? Believe me, this is not what we were expecting!”
Audrey, Wait! 153

Ann B. Ross

“And if permitting women to be officers in the church is what started us on the slippery slopes of sin, I’d like to know what mountaintop the church was sitting on for the two thousand years men had it to themselves.”
Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind, 97

Tim Wynne-Jones

"He sported a bit of fluff on his chin that didn’t look as if it would ever get a diploma as a full-fledged beard."
The Uninvited, 33

Jess Walter

“And I wonder if we don’t live like water
seeking a level
a low bed
until one day we just go dry.
I wonder if a creek ever realizes
it has made its own grave.”
The Financial Lives of the Poets, 240

Laurie Halse Anderson

“In the spring of fifth grade, the boob fairy arrived with her wand and smacked Cassie wicked hard.”
Wintergirls, 39

Madeleine L'Engle

"Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own."
A Wrinkle in Time, 59

M. T. Anderson

Oh, I don’t know about you, but I really hate chase scenes. It’s all just chase, chase, chase, up the staircase, down the staircase, bang, bang, bang, “Over this way,” “No—that way,” under the desk, over the chair, and you know that either they’re going to get caught or they’re not. So why prolong the agony?
I’ll just tell you.
They made it to an old laundry chute.
Whales on Stilts, 47

Janette Rallison

“Esme gave me the impression of a vase full of cut roses. Beautiful. Elegant. But she was all for show and had absolutely no intention of ever growing again. And she had sharp thorns.”
Just One Wish, 83

Libba Bray

"And when it comes, her kiss is like something not so much felt as found." Going Bovine, 411

Robert Ludlum

“I think we live by stories. We organize our lives around stories. You ask me who I am, I tell you a story. But stories change. I told myself one story about my mother. When that story started to fall apart, I started to fall apart. You have a story about Jared Rinehart, about all he’s done for you—and that story makes it imperative that you rescue him even at the cost of you own life. There’s no experience outside of narrative.”
The Bancroft Strategy, 296

Brunonia Barry

“But when the sixties finally did arrive in the old port of Salem, Ann Chase was one of the first to jump on board. And when that ship sailed away, Ann stayed behind waving from the beach. She had found her home port.”
The Lace Reader, 60

Daoud Hari

The statements were “set before us slowly and quietly like tea. These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own heart must supply it.”
The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur

Joseph Finder

She “must have fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Company Man, 28.

Matt Richtel

“When I was with him, it always felt like it was Sunday afternoon. . . . Safe enough to nap.”
Hooked, 48