“That Dodge City was the gateway to the Great American Desert probably does not seem to be much of a recommendation for it.” Tom Clavin, Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and the Wickedest Town in the American West.

“The day before Mrs. Starch vanished, her third-period biology students trudged silently, as always, into the classroom.” Carl Hiaasen, Scat.

“It was a foul autumn morning in Jaffa when the pilgrims came out of the church.” Dan Jones: The Templars: The Rise and Fall of God’s Holy Warriors.

“The Government still pays my wages but I no longer think of myself as a bureaucrat.” Gita Mehta, A River Sutra.

“Chief Tecumseh had every right to be vengeful.” Jared Cohen, Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America.

“They are watching me, thought Rupert Stonebird, as he saw the two women walking rather too slowly down the road.” Barbara Pym, An Unsuitable Attachment.

“Enough water, like enough time, can make anything disappear.” Casey Cep, Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and Last Trial of Harper Lee.

“Peter Crowther’s book on the election was already in the shops.” Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty.

“The Great War had brought Paul Lewis into the navy in 1918 as a lieutenant commander, but he never seemed quite at ease when in his uniform.” John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

“The ugliest truth, a friend once told Myron, is still better than the prettiest of lies.” Harlan Coben, Live Wire.

“When Michael Joyce of Los Angeles serves, when he tosses the ball and his face rises to track it, it looks like he’s smiling, but he’s not really smiling—his face’s circumoral muscles are straining with the rest of his body to reach the ball at the top of the toss’s rise.” David Foster Wallace, “Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness,” in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments.

“I was never so frightened.” Sarah Waters, Affinity.

“In 1957 legendary CBS newsman Walter Cronkite—lauded as the most trusted man in America—stared into the camera and told viewers that the ‘greatest engineering feat of our time’ was under way.” Dan Egan, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes.