Charles Dickens
- Great Expectations
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. I give Pirrip on my father's family name on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
Gerald Seymour
- A line in the sand
The car was waiting. The driver stood beside the rear door and smiled at him with respect. The technicians, engineers and managers pressed close to him to shake his hand, hold his arms and brush-kiss his cheeks. The women who worked at the computers and the design benches were behind the men and their eyes beneath their close-wrapped headscarves were lit with warmth, but they did not touch him or speak.
Patricia Cornwell
- Trace
Yellow bulldozers and excavators hack earth and stone on an old city block that has seen more death than most modern wars, and Kay Scarpetta slows her rental SUV almost to a stop. Shaken by the destruction ahead, she stares at the mustard-colored machines savaging her past. "Someone should have told me," she says.
Terry Pratchett
- Nation
Mau concentrated on weaving the long thorns between the stakes. He'd have to go and get some more from the big thickets on the north slope, he thought. Perhaps I ought to go and get some right now. If I run, perhaps she won't try to follow me.
Ben Elton
- Stark
Cockroaches have an extraordinary physical resilience. You can smash one to bits on your living room floor leaving it in numerous 'cockroachie' pieces and a little later when you have steeled yourself to clearing it up, it's gone! It's cleaned itself up!
Albert Einstein
- On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, 1905
Thence we conclude that a balance clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions.
Jack Nicklaus
- Jack Nicklaus - Golf
One of my greatest assets as a golfer has been my day-to-day ability to doctor my own swing. I've often gone back to my original teacher, Jack Grout, for checkups and review sessions but rarely for major surgery. The reason is that whenever a serious swing problem has arisen - and I've had a few in my time - I've generally been able to work it out via my own understanding of golfing cause and effect.
