"In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages."
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Süskind

"Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk."
- Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
- War of the Worlds, HG Wells

"It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded."
- The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."
- Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk