“In my defense, it was not my intent to write this book.” Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.

“Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur—a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds—and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather’s Donkey Kong machine, but mostly Sam.” Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

“Millions of people have formulated the wish, often unexpressed, that the lessons learnt from the philosophy of Gamesmanship should be extended to include the simple problems of everyday life.” Stephen Potter, Lifemanship: Some Notes on Lifemanship with a Summary of Recent Research in Gamesmanship.

“Some years ago, there was a boomlet of books about how the Greeks or the Jews or the Scots ‘saved’ or ‘invented’ the world.” Fareed Zakaria, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.

“My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British Security Service.” Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth.

“It was the start of a very important year—1776—and James Cook had become a very important figure, a celebrity, a champion, a hero.” Hampton Sides, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain Cook.

“On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen.” George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo.

“The first weekend of my 80 per cent [ultra-processed food] diet was one of those freakish autumn days when summer briefly returns.” Chris v. Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food that Isn’t Food.

“There were children, and then there were the children of Indians, because the merciless savage inhabitants of these American lands did not make children but nits, and nits make lice, or so it was said by the man who meant to make a massacre feel like killing bugs at Sand Creek, when 700 drunken men came at dawn with cannons, and then again four years later almost to the day the same way at the Washita River, where afterward, seven hundred Indian horses were rounded up and shot in the head.” Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

“The reedy and excitable twenty-six-year-old recent Harvard Graduate, full of anticipation, was motoring out to an open field in Potsdam, Germany, to attend a Nazi youth rally.” Rachel Maddow, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.

“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.” Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

“When writing about the deep ocean, the first question that arises is: What is it? At what point does the ocean become the deep ocean?” Susan Casey, The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.