# Random line from the current book you're reading...



## Jon-of-arc (May 22, 2012)

Probably been done before, but ho hum...

Pick a line, any line. Quote it. No context; just a random line. You can open a page and pick the first sentence your finger finds, or you can chose one that you particularly like. Apart from that, no rules - anything goes, literally...

I guess I should start 



> And House and Sonny Mays, both of them doing good, talking that NA twelve-step shit.


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## zoooo (May 22, 2012)

> Everyone was eating their cornet really fast so they wouldn't have to share it with Dennis.


 
Poor Dennis.


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## stuff_it (May 22, 2012)

> It is interesting to compare the moments of inertia of this disk assembly


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## marty21 (May 22, 2012)

> 'You'll have a duty', Wetherbee said, pushing.'You won't be there just as a person, but as a repository of genes. A contributor to genetic diversity.'


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## Stigmata (May 22, 2012)

> "And in the first year of Seisho" - Kawabata said, looking at the file - "you saved the Sultan of Majapahit from a poison administered by his own physician"


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## wayward bob (May 22, 2012)

3. in the toolbox, select the type tool (T). then, in the tool options bar, select the following options for the type tool...

<yaaaaaaawn>


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## bi0boy (May 22, 2012)

Since you are somewhat - in fact, considerably - retarded, you will be enrolled in Special Indoctrination Class.


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## stuff_it (May 22, 2012)

This one is a little better:



> Formula One racing drivers develop very strong neck muscles because they experience sideways accelerations of up to 3.5g when cornering


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## Jon-of-arc (May 22, 2012)

bi0boy said:


> Since you are somewhat - in fact, considerably - retarded, you will be enrolled in Special Indoctrination Class.



I didnt think the thread was that bad an idea...


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## magneze (May 22, 2012)

Got two books on the go:


> The fate of the factory workers will best be depicted if we make a rapid survey of developments in the English cotton industry.


and


> It had limbs too, in approximately the positions you'd expect on a human being, but enough of them to suggest insect rather than mammalian life.


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## Mrs Magpie (May 22, 2012)

> William Whitely of Leith who made the business which bears his name was born in 1856 and died in 1941 by which time he had become the grand doyen of the Leith Blenders


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## twentythreedom (May 22, 2012)

In so many ways, to understand how the present crash came about is to understand the expression of evil known as "Goldman Sachs".


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## tar1984 (May 22, 2012)

> "Do you know what that little speech you made was called, Mister Feeny?"
> 
> "Don't know, sir, it's just what I think."
> 
> "It was called redemption, Mr Feeny. Hold on to it."


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## tar1984 (May 22, 2012)

That was dialogue rather than one line but whatevs


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## Pickman's model (May 22, 2012)

Ha! Canterbury!


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## weltweit (May 22, 2012)

> Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.


 
I was reading it a few weeks ago, still reading


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## ShiftyBagLady (May 22, 2012)

"...which is a specific exposé of the Eurocentric universalism which..."

A line. Not a sentence.


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## danny la rouge (May 22, 2012)

I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear's grease, and I frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins's faded flower.


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## colacubes (May 22, 2012)

"She might as well have stood outside the school gates at home time and given Jarvis a free sample of heroin or crack-cocaine"


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## Voley (May 22, 2012)

"Sap gloves broke bones and spared your hands. They maximized hurt and minimized self-damage."


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## wayward bob (May 22, 2012)

you lot read shit books


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## tar1984 (May 22, 2012)

Mines was Terry Pratchett!


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## Epona (May 23, 2012)

wayward bob said:


> you lot read shit books


 
I really dislike that kind of comment you know, I did years of night school to get my degree, on top of working full time, and it took me more than 2 years after I'd finished before I could even pick up a novel, any novel, simply because I'd spent every spare moment for 5 years reading textbooks and primary sources and secondary sources and writing essays and so on.... - when I was eventually able to sit down and read a book for pleasure without feeling a touch of panic that I ought to be studying, it tended to be crime or horror fiction, just for fun, with little intellectual involvement required. Why do you feel the right to negatively comment about other peoples' book choices? I don't think the stuff I read purely for pleasure says much about me or my intellectual capacity, and if you make assumptions about me based on what I read in bed on a Sunday morning then you are probably wrong 

A quote from the book I am currently reading (probably too "low brow" for some though  )

"Jane did not like coincidences. In the complex fabric of life they happened, of course, but she always felt compelled to examine what made the threads cross, whether it was truly random or if there was some grander design at work, a pattern that could only be seen when you traced those threads back to their origins. And so she sat at her desk trying to do exactly that, tracing five disparate threads that had tragically intersected in a Chinatown restaurant 19 years ago."


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## stuff_it (May 23, 2012)

ShiftyBagLady said:


> "...which is a specific exposé of the Eurocentric universalism which..."
> 
> A line. Not a sentence.


Thus:



> as toothbrushes!). In many applications d.c. motors also offer a cheap


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## Johnny Canuck3 (May 23, 2012)

> I tried to imagine myself, sitting formally in Fuyuki's home, leaning towards him, cigarette smoke trailing from my painted lips. In my mind's eye one of my hands was resting on a locked chest, the other was extended elegantly, palm up, to receive a large key that Fuyuki was passing to me.


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## maldwyn (May 23, 2012)

Abe watched from a distance, "afraid it might somehow rise up and tear me to pieces".


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## silverfish (May 23, 2012)

"This means there is no judgement of the now"


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## danny la rouge (May 23, 2012)

wayward bob said:


> you lot read shit books


Mine's not shit!


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## Voley (May 23, 2012)

wayward bob said:


> you lot read shit books





tar1984 said:


> Mines was Terry Pratchett!


WB 1 Tar 0.


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## Greebo (May 23, 2012)

This won't make a lot of sense as most of the author's sentences stretched far beyond 2 lines, but never mind:
"a long drawn-out and stressful one, enlivened only by the"


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## tar1984 (May 23, 2012)

NVP said:


> WB 1 Tar 0.


 
He is one of the most talented writers of our generation


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## wayward bob (May 23, 2012)

Epona said:


> Why do you feel the right to negatively comment about other peoples' book choices? I don't think the stuff I read purely for pleasure says much about me or my intellectual capacity, and if you make assumptions about me based on what I read in bed on a Sunday morning then you are probably wrong


 
tbh i think you may be reading a little too much into on offhand remark


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## wayward bob (May 23, 2012)

my fella and kid1 both love pratchett. i don't really read much fiction.


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## Orang Utan (May 23, 2012)

I'm cheating, with a short paragraph instead of a sentence:


> Voodoo rites, voodoo rituals, voodoo curses, voodoo priests. Mindblowing voodoo liquor and voodoo herbs. American spooks _ate_ fried chicken. Haitian spooks fucked chickens and drank their hot blood.


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## golightly (May 23, 2012)

> "but greedy, one of the greediest men she had ever known, Milly Brush thought"


 
A story without lasers, spaceships or black holes as far as I can tell.


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## Roadkill (May 23, 2012)

"In general, the "go out" phase meant the internationalization of Chinese firms - that they should become competitive international companies with access both to the raw materials required by the rapidly growing economy and to the markets into which to sell their manufactures.'
(Daniel Yergin, _The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World_ (London, 2011), p.203.)


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## Voley (May 23, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> I'm cheating, with a short paragraph instead of a sentence:


You're reading the same book as me.


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## Orang Utan (May 23, 2012)

NVP said:


> You're reading the same book as me.


Noddy Goes To Toytown?


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## Voley (May 23, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> Noddy Goes To Toytown?


That's the fella. The hallucinogenic Haitian voodoo death scene with Big Ears is awesome.


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## Orang Utan (May 23, 2012)

I loved it when Noddy beat a gollywog to death with a phone directory for looking at a white woman.


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## Epona (May 24, 2012)

wayward bob said:


> tbh i think you may be reading a little too much into on offhand remark


 
Yeah but too many people make offhand remarks about that sort of thing - taste in books, clothes, music, telly, it gets boring and annoying after a while. Throw in a few Daily Mail level comments about "chavs" and a choice quote or two from Jeremy Kyle for good measure and you could turn it into a game of elitism drinking bingo....   Which is really quite a horrible thought, hence my objection


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## Johnny Canuck3 (May 24, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> I'm cheating, with a short paragraph instead of a sentence:


 
Which book is this: I want to read it next.


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## Yossarian (May 24, 2012)

"Mary Island covers twenty square kilometres and has never been logged; food and fresh water are abundant and no one has ever searched it with an eye toward finding someone who wanted to remain hidden."


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## Johnny Canuck3 (May 24, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> I'm cheating, with a short paragraph instead of a sentence:


 
Is it called Blood's A Rover by Ellroy?


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## Johnny Canuck3 (May 24, 2012)

Orang Utan said:


> I loved it when Noddy beat a gollywog to death with a phone directory for looking at a white woman.


 
Naughty.


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## stuff_it (May 24, 2012)

> This equation tells us that the correct banking angle depends on the desired


 
Sorry guys, more of the same.


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## SpookyFrank (May 25, 2012)

"For the sake of argument , let's say all your choices and all your effort are destined to be a waste. You're still very much yourself an no-one else. And you're forging ahead, _as yourself_. So relax."

OK so I cherry-picked that one, but only from the page I'm currently on. You don't have to go far to find a great line with Murakami.


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## Hocus Eye. (May 25, 2012)

"The strike wave that had begun on the third week of the revolution and which delivered the final blow to Mubarak's rule did not end with the fall of the dictator."


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## Frankie Jack (May 25, 2012)

"He really is a cunt ay the first order. Nae doubt about that."


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## Johnny Vodka (May 25, 2012)

To throw out Hume's conclusions was necessary, but unfortunately he had arrived at them in such a way that it was seemingly impossible to throw them out without abandoning empirical reason itself and retiring into some medieval predecessor of empirical reason.


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## mentalchik (May 25, 2012)

"Then pass," the door said.Its lips opened, wide and wider and wider still, until nothing remained but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles......


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## Mrs Magpie (May 25, 2012)

The war is having a crippling effect on the trug industry.


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## Cid (May 25, 2012)

Behind the "Republican" lines, power lay essentially in the hands of the trade unions and their political organizations: the million-member General Confederation of Workers (UGT), the labor federation of the Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), and the equally large General Confederation of Labor (CNT), strongly influenced by the semi-clandestine Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI).


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## Yuwipi Woman (May 25, 2012)

Despite all the chemicals being spread across its fields, Florida has an abysmal record when it comes to protecting its farmworkers, employing only about fifty inspectors (ten were hastily added following the media furor surrounding the bith of the deformed Immokalee babies.


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## Mrs Magpie (May 25, 2012)

Yuwipi Woman said:


> Despite all the chemicals being spread across its fields, Florida has an abysmal record when it comes to protecting its farmworkers, employing only about fifty inspectors (ten were hastily added following the media furor surrounding the bith of the deformed Immokalee babies.


Tomatoland?


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## Yuwipi Woman (May 25, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Tomatoland?


 
Yep.


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## danny la rouge (May 25, 2012)

tar1984 said:


> He is one of the most talented writers of our generation


Unless I'm mistaken, he's not your generation at all.


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## Voley (May 26, 2012)

Or a writer.


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## Greebo (May 26, 2012)

The case of remedies apart, the dominance of demonology by Decalogue theology


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## quimcunx (May 27, 2012)

''my sister is a notorious virgin''.


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## Mrs Magpie (May 27, 2012)

Broadly speaking they reveal that for the year 1919 - 20 there was little to choose between the Titan tractor and the Shire horse as regards the actual cost of the operations performed.


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## Pickman's model (May 28, 2012)

by now he was making overt connections with the politics of the day


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## Frances Lengel (Jun 23, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> Broadly speaking they reveal that for the year 1919 - 20 there was little to choose between the Titan tractor and the Shire horse as regards the actual cost of the operations performed.


 
A Short History of Tractors In the Ukraine?


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## Mrs Magpie (Jun 23, 2012)

No. It's non-fiction.


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## Frances Lengel (Jun 23, 2012)

> "You eat our food and you shag in our bed"


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## Frances Lengel (Jun 23, 2012)

Mrs Magpie said:


> No. It's non-fiction.


 

Just guessed coz it mentioned tractors.


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## Jon-of-arc (Jun 23, 2012)

> I'll tell them what a lyin', sleazy nigger you are.


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## bi0boy (Jun 23, 2012)

Nobody but he who first saw the deep dangers of hurried, thoughtless, and irreverent feeding, could have done justice to its exquisite flavour when in the best condition, or could have explained how deliciously it combined the virtues of herb and flesh, unspeakably superior to either.


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## magneze (Jun 23, 2012)

The pretence that these loans were not all essentially the same, doomed to default en masse the moment house prices stopped rising, had justified the decisions by Moody's and S&P to bestow triple-A ratings on roughly 80 percent of every CDO.


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## 8115 (Jun 23, 2012)

First, you'll need a pet rabbit (or alternatively, borrow a friends!).


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## Jon-of-arc (Jun 23, 2012)

8115 said:


> First, you'll need a pet rabbit (or alternatively, borrow a friends!).


 
A cat is fine too.


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## Mrs Magpie (Jun 23, 2012)

Pallanguli is popular in southern India among the Tamil and is one of a large family of similar games known as the Mancala group.


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## barney_pig (Jun 23, 2012)

Interiecto tempore aliquanto hens Scottorum innummerabili exercitu coadunato inter cetera sue crudelitatis facinora Lindesfarnense monasrerium seuiens et rapiens inuasit.


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## Pickman's model (Jun 23, 2012)

in the immediate term, by 1988 the restoration of the dock system was nearing completion.


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## Pickman's model (Jun 23, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> Interiecto tempore aliquanto hens Scottorum innummerabili exercitu coadunato inter cetera sue crudelitatis facinora Lindesfarnense monasrerium seuiens et rapiens inuasit.


anglo-saxon chronicle? or bede?


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## barney_pig (Jun 23, 2012)

The Anglo Saxon chronicle is is old English, this is from symeon of durhams chronicle, and is part of st cuthberts miracle storys


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## barney_pig (Jun 23, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> The Anglo Saxon chronicle is is old English, this is from symeon of durhams chronicle, and is part of st cuthberts miracle storys


The ground opens up and swallows the Scots whole!


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## Stigmata (Jun 23, 2012)

In 1050 Leo IX could appoint no-one to church office outside central Italy; in 1342 Pope Clement VI nominated candidates for 100,000 church offices, a truly astonishing increase in effective power.


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## Pickman's model (Jun 23, 2012)

barney_pig said:


> The Anglo Saxon chronicle is is old English, this is from symeon of durhams chronicle, and is part of st cuthberts miracle storys


never saw you as a medieval latinist before.


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## barney_pig (Jun 23, 2012)

Past 2 years doing a MA in medieval studies, writing my dissertation now.


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## Greebo (Jun 23, 2012)

Leichtes Kopfweh oder Magendruecken waren zum Glueck die einzigen Nebenwirkungen, wenn der Kristall jedes Molekuel ihres Koerpers zerlegte und wieder zusammenfuegte, nachdem die Ankuftszeit erreicht war.


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## JimW (Jun 23, 2012)

Quote from Benjamin used in the thing I'm translating: There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
​


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## ginger_syn (Jun 25, 2012)

Prehistoric men would have worshipped her,


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## Frances Lengel (Jun 25, 2012)

"Anthony from flat thirty/one accused concierges of breaking into his room and stealing cornflakes. Assured tenant that concierges did not break in and steal cornflakes."


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## Pickman's model (Jun 25, 2012)

hand grenades rain into the street


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## renegadechicken (Jun 25, 2012)

The inevitable golden arches being recognisable if not a comforting icon amid the drive-through Mexican auto insurance offices and souvenir shops


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## ShiftyBagLady (Jul 4, 2012)

But the cessation of the pain has not banished the memory of the kind offices done me by those who shared by sympathy the burden of my griefs; nor will it ever, I believe, pass from me except by death.


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## silverfish (Jul 4, 2012)

The Phaeacian spectators, oarsmen themselves and seamen of repute, looked at each other and cried out in words that flew:


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## Mrs Magpie (Jul 4, 2012)

Ivey Ingers's son watched too much television and look what happened to him!


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## Greebo (Jul 4, 2012)

et de balles; ceignit un cimeterre, monta sur un cheval


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## ShiftyBagLady (Jul 15, 2012)

Not the while sentence but a beautiful bit of the closing sentence:
"... complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in..."


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## Greebo (Jul 15, 2012)

"...Assuming you are right-handed, slip your left thumb into the..."


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## DotCommunist (Jul 15, 2012)

I've a couple of mrs Von Stahlenbergs war diary gems to post- she was truly a vile nazi. tomorrow


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## Vintage Paw (Jul 16, 2012)

"The Sister looked at him curiously, but didn't object."


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## Greebo (Jul 16, 2012)

"Und verzeih mir die Partnerlook-Ringelsocken.  Das war wirklich gemein."


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## Mephitic (Jul 20, 2012)

"I don't sing becuase I'm happy, I'm happy because i sing"


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## billy_bob (Jul 21, 2012)

"We cannot distinctly say whether it was the prospect of the pipe, or the consolatory reflection that a fatal disposition to get married ran in the family and couldn't be helped, which calmed Mr. Weller's feelings, and caused his grief to subside."

Quite succinct for Dickens - I was fearing I'd have to type out half a page or so.


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## Dusty Bint (Jul 21, 2012)

The notion that dogs are wolves under the skin still pervades much of dog training today, despite having been abandoned by the scientific and veterinary communities and an increasing number of dog trainers.


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## marty21 (Jul 21, 2012)

'Bingo!' thought Bilal, telling the receptionist to let the sender go: they had already captured his image on CCTV.


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## Firky (Jul 21, 2012)

“Some day, Locke Lamora,” he said, “some day, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope that I’m still around to see it.”  ― _Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora_


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## dylanredefined (Jul 21, 2012)

The two week we first spent in the base and which seemed to stretch like an addled eternity were laughable by comparison, a distant and fleeting memory in the slow-motion, dying battery afternoons spent watching the fish attempt to jump the sluice-gates upstream,feeling slightly that there's an unfair unBritish advantage to tossing grenades in the broiling water,
  Patrick Hennessey The junior officer's reading club


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## Ceej (Jul 22, 2012)

'If you've got some conspiracy hearsay bollocks that you believe in, tell me and I'll believe in it too.'


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## Jon-of-arc (Jul 22, 2012)

"What is this, the prom?  Jesus Christ, Song, why don't you just pick him up at the Soviet Embassy next time?"


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## Greebo (Jul 22, 2012)

"...davor ehrlich.  Allein: So kann ich nicht, so ticke ich nicht.  Ich bin zwar schon erwachsen..."


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## wemakeyousoundb (Jul 22, 2012)

you don't have to do this


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## colbhoy (Jul 23, 2012)

"She held her hands up in front of her and looked at them, trying to remember if shitbird, lying on the bed in his bikinis, had told her."


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## 8115 (Jul 23, 2012)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius, gas mark 6.


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## SpookyFrank (Jul 23, 2012)

'For heaven's sake say something. Where would you rather go, to my place or yours? What's the matter with you?'


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