John

“Such colourless phrases as he achieved were produced with a difficulty, a hesitancy, simulated perhaps, but decidedly effective in their unconcealed ineptness. Like most successful men, he had turned this apparent disadvantage into a powerful weapon of offense and defense, in the way that the sledge-hammer impact of his comment left, by its banality, every other speaker at a standstill, giving him as a rule complete mastery of the conversational field. A vast capacity for imposing boredom, a sense of immensely powerful stuffiness, emanated from him, sapping every drop of vitality from weaker spirits.
"So you were at school together," he said slowly.”
― Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones

“It [the Audi] has those new wave-shaped headlights, Ove notes, presumably designed so that no one at night will be able to avoid the insight that here comes a car driven by an utter shit.”
― Fredrick Backman

“Even a light-colored shirt or blouse or clown makeup can cause a reflection on the monitor, obscuring some of the data displayed.”
― Randall Whitehead

“The town slowly wakes up around him with its foreign-made cars and its statistics and credit card debt and all its other crap.”
― Fredrick Backman