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The surfer celebrity was the sort of hero who strode into a room, smiling, with confident eyes, and a hush fell, and the celebrity spoke to the room and did not linger; after the talk—no questions—the celebrity departed. Because of being known so well as a power figure, the celebrity was like a visiting friend—his history in everyone's mind, no introduction needed....

And that was that -- the boyfriend, the admiring old man -- she could not have put him in his place more neatly, without any effort. I'm a bystander, he thought. Everyone is spoken for or too young. I should be glad with what I have, which is a whole life, yet the animal in me is always hungry.

Particularly interesting is [Rashid's] History of the Franks, the only Islamic work on Europe to be written until the Ottoman period. His sources sometimes let him down (a papal text misled him into thinking that the Pope was in the habit of using the bent head and neck of the Holy Roman Emperor as a step to mount his horse)....

All [Lamberton] gained was hat the Vatican would continue to recognize John Balliol as King of Scots—this in order that [Pope] Boniface might have some bargaining card with Edward [of England]; at least it enabled Holy Church to support the Guardians of Scotland as legitimate.

The exercise was using the [enemy's] spears as long poles to push the great mass of horseflesh and riders off the causeway and into the bog. This was to be achieved by sustained pressure, and by jabbing and probing with the spear-tips at the joints and weak points of the armour, especially the eye-holes and mouthpieces of the horses, also their lower legs.

Straight into the marsh the horsemen drove their beasts—and did not throw themselves off their desperately floundering mounts until they were well into its miry middle. By that time the first of the enemy were in sight. Whether Sir Hugo de Moreland had any idea that there was no causeway here, or that the bog would sink his cavalry—or whether he could just pull up in time was not evident.

Deliberately seeking to play on the other's weaknesses, [Wallace] leapt in, feinting and jinking around the other, causing him to las out wildly, to twist and turn in his heavy armour—more important still, to keep turning his head this way and that so that he could keep his opponent in view from the very limited aperture of his helmet, which he had donned at the first hint of trouble.

His natural impulse was to grapple with the circumstances, and that was what he was trying to do; but he missed now that sense of mastery which is half the battle. Conflict of some sort was the very essence of his life. But this was something he had never known before. This was a conflict within himself.

Some people go about the world with their eyes shut. The sea is free to all of us. Some work on it, and some play the fool on it—and I don't care. Only you may take it from me that I will let no man's play interfere with my work.

The conviction that the yacht, and everything belonging to her, were in some indefinite but very real danger, took afresh a strong hold of Carter, and the persuasion that the master of the brig was going there to help did not by by any means assuage his alarm. The fact only served to complicate his uneasiness with a sense of mystery.

What have you got against Robert Forester? Ralph wanted to ask as she came toward the bed in her pajamas, but he knew she'd answer only, That's my business, darling, or, more flippantly, I'll play my games and you play yours.

He wanted to see the girl again. Maybe for the last time, he thought. But he had thought that before, and no time before had been the last time. He wondered if the girl was why he had worked late today, when he had not needed to work late; if he had stayed late just to be sure it would be dark when he left the plant?

He [Elizabeth Cree dressed as a male] was a scamp and liked nothing better than to stroll through the night like a regular masher; he would cross the river down Southwark way and then wander by Whitechapel, Shadwell and Limehouse.

For me, Paris is littered with ghosts, as numerous as metro stations and all the dots that light up when you press the buttons on the electric route map.

Hoke shook his head. It didn't pay to become obsessed with anything, especially a case as gelid as the Russell murder. If he solved it, fine; if he didn't, what difference would it make a hundred years from now?

They are mot called howler monkeys for nothing. On occasion their stupendous bellowing has been known to send unforewarned tourists running for their lives. Once one recognizes the source, however, all that hullabaloo becomes the stuff of comedy.

[Queen Lili'uokalani] surrendered under protest, expecting confidently that once the United States government learned the facts she would be reinstated. Marshal Wilson handed over the police station, and 270 Hawaiian soldiers at the barracks stacked their arms. The Hawaiian monarchy was no more.

No one could tell which power would become paramount in the Hawaiian Islands, or when. Hopes rose and fell as warships of each nation in turn came to show the flag, and disputes between foreigners went on incessantly in the law courts, in the columns of newspapers, on the streets, and in the taverns.

Before the first Christian missionaries arrived no chief could have had a very clear idea of the white man's god. But anyone could see that the haole (white man) was wealthy and powerful and that he did not owe this happy state to his observance of the kapus (taboos).

A tug pilot claimed there were feral children living in a mothballed Japanese drug factory. There's a whole new apocrypha out there, really—ghost ships, lost cities.... There's a pathos to it, when you think about it. I mean every bit of it's locked into orbit. Like watching myths take root in a parking lot.

Hung's drab place was what Bunt had always imagined China to be like: fiercely frugal, stinking of cabbage and fried noodles and cheesy feet, where people sat upright in hard chairs in their underwear.

He followed Jammer's instructions, secretly grateful that he could feel Jackie beside him as they plunged down into the workaday depths of cyberspace, the glowing Basketball dwindling above them. The deck was quick, superslick, and it made him feel fast and strong.

She knew that that was a lie, and yet, as she often had before, she wondered if he was entirely conscious of the fact that he was lying. Andrea maintained that men like Alain lied so constantly, so passionately, that some basic distinction had been lost. They were artists in their own right ... intent on restructuring reality....

And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.

Some of what I know about Marin Bogart's disappearance I know from Charlotte. Some of it I know from Leonard Douglas. Some of it I know from having once seen Warren Bogart and some of it I know from having once seen Marin but most of what I know, the most reliable part of what I know, derives from my training in human behavior... I mean my training in being de afuera [an outsider].

Three or four things I know about Charlotte. As a child of comfortable family in the temperate zone she had been as a matter of course been provided with clean sheets, lamb chops, orthodontia, living grandparents, attentive god-parents, one brother named Dickie, ballet lessons, and casual timely information about menstruation and the care of flat silver....

[Paul Theroux writing about Paul Theroux:] The smirking, intrusive, ungenerous, and insincere man was jumping to conclusions about me, making up his mind and forming fatal errors out of his impatience and knowingness.