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On a cold, fretful afternoon in early October, 1872, a hansom cab drew up outside the offices of Lockhart and Shelby, Shipping Agents, in Cheapside. The city wore an air as restless as the winds that swept the sky above it. The street was crowded with carriages; the ring of hooves, the trundle of wheels and the jingle of harness spoke of haste, and business, and fortunes being made. Messenger boys, their faces shiny with speed, flew like shuttles between banking-house and shipping company, insurance agent and Stock Exchange, lawyer and financier – flew almost as swiftly as the buttoned-up leather containers packed with bills that shot through the newly installed pneumatic tubes in the walls of Crouch's Emporium, The Shop That Sells Everything, on the corner of Holborn and Chancery Lane. Artificial winds in metal tubes, and the real wind in the grey sky snapping and flapping the company flags that flew on the important buildings, and the little sportive imitations of win that spun down alleys and courts lifting papers and dust from the ground and letting them fall again – the city was alive with the moving air, and the only stillness in the whole street belonged in the eyes of the girl who stepped out of the hansom.

  —  The Ruby in the Smoke (Philip Pullman)

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At the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left the closet he rented from tenants in S—y Lane, walked out to the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, headed for the K—n Bridge.

  —  Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

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It was soft. Soft and silky as a mouse's ear. More like a soft little quivering animal than a sprig of sage. Sister Iphigenia rubbed the leaves once more, vigorously this time to release their volatile oils, then dropped them into the teapot. She briefly sniffed her fingers then wiped them down the front of her woollen vest. The nuns had long ago dispensed with formal habits.

  —  Lambs of God (Marele Day)

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When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right-angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

  —  To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

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They rose up like men. We saw them. Like men they stood.

  —  Home (Toni Morrison)

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I don't know what I am doing here.

  —  So Much to Tell You (John Marsden)

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It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the expedition that has been preoccupying my imagination now for some days. An expedition, I should say, which I will undertake alone, in the comfort of Mr Farraday’s Ford; an expedition which, as I foresee it, will take me through much of the finest countryside of England to the West Country, and may keep me away from Darlington Hall for as much as five or six days. The idea of such a journey came about, I should point out, from a most kind suggestion put to me by Mr Farraday himself one afternoon almost a fortnight ago, when I had been dusting the portraits in the library. In fact, as I recall, I was up on the step-ladder dusting the portrait of Viscount Wetherby when my employer had entered carrying a few volumes which he presumably wished returned to the shelves. On seeing my person, he took the opportunity to inform me that he had just that moment finalized plans to return to the United States for a period of five weeks between August and September. Having made this announcement, my employer put his volumes down on a table, seated himself on the chaise-longue, and stretched out his legs. It was then, gazing up at me, that he said,

  —  The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)

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"All this riding is playing havoc with my rhoids, Grift."

  —  A Man Betrayed (J. V. Jones)

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It's winter in Chicago.

  —  The New Me (Halle Butler)

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On that day, which was the seventh of February of the year of Our Lord 1141, they had offered special prayers at every office, not for the victory of one party or the defeat of another in the battlefields of the north, but for better counsel, for reconciliation, for the sparing of blood-letting and the respect of life between men of the same country – all desirable consummations, as Brother Cadfael sighed to himself even as he prayed, but very unlikely to be answered in this torn and fragmented land with any but a very dusty answer. Even God needs some consideration and support from his material to make reasoning and benign creatures of men.

  —  Dead Man’s Ransom (Ellis Peters)

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Since Maria had decided to die, her cat would have to fend for itself. She'd already cared for it far beyond the point where keeping a pet made any sense. Rats and mice had long since been trapped and eaten by the villagers. Domestic animals had disappeared shortly after that. All except for one, this cat, her companion which she'd kept hidden. Why hadn't she killed it? She needed something to live for; something to protect and love – something to survive for. She'd made a promise to continue feeding it up until the day she could no longer feed herself. That day was today. She'd already cut her leather boots into thin strips, boiled them with nettles and beetroot seeds. She'd already dug for earthworms, sucked on bark. This morning in a feverish delirium she'd gnawed the leg of her kitchen stool, chewed and chewed until there were splinters jutting out of her gums. Upon seeing her the cat had run away, hiding under the bed, refusing to show itself even as she'd knelt down, calling its name, trying to coax it out. That had been the moment Maria decided to die, with nothing to eat and nothing to love.

  —  Child 44 (Tom Rob Smith)

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Every time he came over to where she was sitting he would start to say something and then decide not to; there were too many people around for him to say anything sentimental, and her attitude discouraged whatever humorous comments the situation suggested. Once he sat down next to her and took hold of her hand, but she only smiled at him vaguely and went on staring straight in front of her.

  —  I Don’t Kiss Strangers (Shirley Jackson)

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They shot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun.

  —  Paradise (Toni Morrison)

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My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as “agitated”, even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well, especially that bit about my donors staying “calm”. I've developed a kind of instinct around donors. I know when to hang around and comfort them, when to leave them to themselves; when to listen to everything they have to say, and when to just shrug and tell them to snap out of it.

  —  Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

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“You too will marry a boy I choose,” said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter.

 —    A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth)

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“Hey, kid – stop hanging off that rail!” A sailor, one of the women, was yelling at me. “We've only told you a dozen times! If you fall overboard, we'll not turn back!”

  —  Melting Stones (Tamora Pierce)

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Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back into the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum: it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

  —  Anne of Green Gables (L. M. Montgomery)