3/10/05

madrobins: It's a meatloaf.  Dressed up like a bunny.  (Default)
The dreaded first-sentence meme strikes yet again:

from Arlen's Man

This is not a joyful place. Even when my lady lived, it was cool and full of shadows, deep in the forest where little sunlight breaks the fastness of tree and rockside.


from the current Sarah Tolerance (the title of which proves elusive):

No one who had seen Miss Sarah Brereton as a child would have taken her for a heroine. She was a well-behaved girl, affectionate and active, given to rolling hoops and running races with the gardener’s children. Her upbringing was neither intellectual nor revolutionary, being designed to make her what she was destined to be: the well-bred wife of a gentleman of means.


from "The Flush":

Ira was four days into the Flush when he started hearing voices. They weren't bad, didn't tell him to kill himself or anyone else, the sort of thing he knew to report. They just muttered to him, observations about the other people in the center: "Look at that nose, looks like a head of garlic. Wonder if she smells garlic all the time." or "Christ, that sonofabitch oughta get himself a bra and some lipstick; he's halfway to girl already." or "Where's the chin? The girl has no chin, gotta have a chin or her mouth'll slide clear down to her cleavage!" The voices made him want to close his eyes, to stop their relentless observations and criticisms of the clinic's other patients. But the first time he tried that, the voices started whispering, not quite loud or clear enough to be understood, just a relentless rustle of sound that drove him crazy.


from "And You Were the Only Girl*"

Tammy was out looking for fuel again. That was her job because, as Pa Terry said, she was too little to do much of anything else but trudge through the streets gathering up stuff that was lying there. Tammy liked to have a job, even if she got so cold her fingers and toes got numb doing it.


* you get points if you know the origin of the title.