“Not so long ago, it was less than ideal for an American politician to seem like a dumbass.” Andy Borowitz, Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber.

“She got to the parking lot earlier than usual.” Natsuo Kirino, Out (translated by Stephen Snyder).

“The only lodging in Grafton was a low-slung motel with a smashed door at the entrance.” Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide.

“Vespasia stood at the long, open window of her hotel bedroom and gazed across the rooftops of the city toward the western sky.” Anne Perry, A Christmas Message.

“I didn’t spend a year building a wooden flatboat and then sailing it two thousand miles down the Mississippi to New Orleans simply because I was suffering from a Huck Finn complex, although that certainly played a part.” Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure.

“In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.” Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None.

“Beginning on September 15, 1987, and continued for an amazing twelve days, the hearings over the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork for the United States Supreme Court mesmerized the nation.” Erwin Chemerinsky, Worse than Nothing: The Dangerous Fallacy of Originalism.

“Next to hot chicken soup, a tattoo of an anchor on your chest, and penicillin, I consider a honeymoon one of the most overrated events in the world.” Erma Bombeck, If Life is a Bowl of Cherries—What am I Doing in the Pits?

“It was as black in the closet as old blood.” Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

“The Scopes trial has dogged me for more than a decade, ever since I wrote my first book on the American controversy of creation and evolution.” Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.

“The oldest written record of the word tennis makes no mention of athletic shoes; rather, it refers solely to the sport from which they take their name; a sport that—along with fencing, its near kin—was one of the first to require a special kind of footwear.” Álvaro Enrigue, Sudden Death.

“Poised to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln found he could not write his name.” Noah Feldman, The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America.