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unearths some literary gems.
***
If there were ever a man who, like Nature, could fill a vacuum, it was Melrose Plant. He could fill in a black hole; he could void a universal void.
***
Wiggins was talking...not as if he'd caught a cold but as if he'd invented them. His comments were cold-proprietary.
***
Chilten held the pause long enough to put the gum in his mouth and crunch it around, as if even the Chiclet were part and parcel of the overall mystery. [And, as I may have noted before, I think Chiclets are funnier than other gums.]
***
[The protagonists are in an herb garden.]
Jury blinked, looked at Wiggins, who looked rueful. And as if mood were an herb indicator, he looked round for it, the rue.
***
"It's a long story, Jury." [...]
"I'm in the long-story business, Ronnie."
[later in the scene]
"That's anybody's guess."
"But we're not," said Wiggins..."in the anybody's-guess business."
***
Sebastian raised his eyebrows again, the only part of him that questioned Jury's presence. Even that question appeared rhetorical, however.
***
A member was declaiming, "Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish"....Melrose sat, waiting for the final "rubbish."
***
Melrose had always loved the way London streets simply left off being what they were and started being something else, as if naming streets were nothing but whim.
***
She looked around, as if words hung in the air from which she might take the right one.
***
Melrose slid his stool back from the bar as if this proximity to impossible coincidence were too much to take.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Death of a Downsizer, by Carole Berry:
The man with her was a study in tweed. Merely looking at him made me itch.
***
From The Anodyne Necklace, by Martha Grimes:
Miss Pettigrew kneaded her brows as if she were making muffins in her mind.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***
She had a head full of doughnut holes.
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Time creeps in the dark, with no sense of passage. It fumbles blindly for the next position on the clock, and though each tick is a measurable footstep, it never seems to get its feet off the ground.
***
"She said he was like a bird....Sometimes she said a hummingbird, but mostly just any old bird."
***
He stared at me as if I were something out of Lewis Carroll. A slithy tove, for example.
***
You can be jerked out of a sound sleep at three a.m. to fumble in the dark and tell some halfwit that this is not the Superba Doughnut Company; and not be able to sleep again for wondering what kind of hours they work at Superba.
***
Tomorrow would just have to be another day, whether it wanted to or not.
***
[Bastard Grading dept.]
"You said Flynne was a grade-A bastard."
"Well, he was."
"How?"
"My God!" he flared. "Don't you know what a bastard is?"....
"I've never made a classification."
***
"I might have got an Academy award, I might have got screen credit, hell, I might even have got paid."
***
[It's those NYPL lions again! They're always good for a laugh.]
"You could have found out by calling the public library," I pointed out.
"But it wasn't open in New York."
"You could have wired one of the lions, then."
***
"I'll buy him a new suit. A double-breasted libel."
***
[No Such Person dept.]
"His name's Lazarus Fortescue."
"You're kidding. There isn't any such name."
***
[Bonus: a reference to a "half-horse town."]
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case Has Altered, by Martha Grimes:
Even the roots of his hair awakened with wide-eyed follicle-amazement.
***
From Dover and the Claret-Tappers, by Joyce Porter:
[Multi-word Middle Names (in Absentia) dept.]
"Consideration-for-others is not Dover's middle name!"
***
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unearths some literary gems.
[Part of the disclaimer in the front matter]
Some resemblance between the Billingsgates' bees and real bees is unavoidable.
***
["Just when you think it's going to flop--it flaps!" dept.]
For a headdress, Appie had simply pinned the open end of a white linen pillow case around her head like a coif and let the rest of the case flop down her back. It was rather flapping than flopping just now, as a brisk wind had sprung up.
***
"Don't you know bee stings are supposed to be beneficial in certain cases? It would be quite like Aunt Bodie to try, if she could find a suitable bee."
"How'd she know which bee was suitable?"
***
Old Purbody took a beating on that shrinkage in the wool market.
***
"That peculiar-looking guitar Tick's niece Alison played yesterday for the minstrelsy was a pandora. Or bandore, if you prefer."
Max had no particular choice in the matter.
***
[Upon entering a sterilized, sealed-off honey-bottling room]
Casting prophylaxis to the winds, Max turned the white porcelian knob and pushed.
***
[Taking a leaf from Erle Stanley Gardner's "primers for extraterrestrials" writing guide...]
"What kind of plastic container?" Max wanted to know.
"The ordinary sort that gets used in a kitchen," Abigail told him. "Squarish, with a colored plastic top. You can buy them in any supermarket. We have a bunch of them around. I expect that you do, too.*"
"Oh, yes," Sarah agreed. "They're handy for leftovers and freezing things. Or bringing soup to the afflicted."
[*Which is why she needs to explain to him what they are.]
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***"We've been free of that sort of person, thus far."Considering that Diane Demorney [the speaker above] had moved to Long Piddleton direct from London with no stopover in a That Sort of Person decompression chamber, it was hard to distinguish her from a London "emigrée," in other words, That Sort of Person.***Macalvie seemed to be tasting his thoughts, his words, and not his dinner.***"Why, just the other day, Miss Fludd was saying--""Miss Fludd?" Plant and Trueblood chorused.[Cf. The Can of Yams:HEATHEROh, dear--I hope it’s not a second-rate Pickle Festival. I would feel so bad for Euclid.ALAN AND DELPHINIA(Together) Euclid??]***"I'm just taking my nut-and-ginger cookies out of the oven, Mr. Jury. Your favorite. Come and have some."Mrs. Wasserman always assumed everything was Jury's favorite.***"Why is there a dog in the first-floor flat?" He didn't want to ask why it was playing the piano.***"Is this going to be another 'deep time' lecture?"...."I'm not talking about deep time; I'm talking about dark matter. Can't a person even look at the universe without being persecuted by you?"***He thought of Nancy Fludd. Her name wasn't Nancy, but he thought it fit her, and he was tired of calling her Miss Fludd.***"Silliness, my dear, is my stock in trade."***"That's your idea of 'not philosophical'? Hey, hey"--his hand shot out for the telephone--"let's call Plato, let's call Kant."***"They're always making movies around Santa Fe. If I see Robert Redford one more time I'll throw up."***Oh, do shut up! cried his other, sensible, sterner self, glaring over the top of gold-rimmed spectacles.[This character does wear gold-rimmed spectacles for reading, but I like the idea that when he's arguing with himself, only the sensible self wears the glasses.]***[A blank map, in so many words!]Melrose ran a couple of blanked-out maps of the United States through his mind.[....]It was Jury's fault, of course, this blank map.***
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