I work in the magic industry. I think you'll agree it's pretty glamourous: a life full of spells, potions and whispered enchantments; of levitation, vanishings and alchemy. Of titanic fights to the death with the powers of darkness, of conjuring up blizzards and quelling storms at sea; of casting lightning bolts from mountains, and bringing statues to life in order to vanquish troublesome foes.
If only.

(Jasper Fforde, The Song of the Quarkbeast - The Last Dragonslayer, Volume II, 2011)

I don't believe in good or bad luck. I don't believe that some people are destined for bad things to happen to them, but I admit, sometimes I have to question myself.

(Joe R. Lansdale, Petrified Dreams, 2026)

Right here and now (as an old friend used to say), we are in the fluid present, so see this and see it well.

(Stephen King, Peter Straub, Other Worlds Than These, 2026)

It is cold at six-forty in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.

(Aus: "The Day of the Jackal", Frederick Forsyth, 1971)

Have you ever noticed that getting married is like trying to collect a debt from a dead guy?

(Steven Brust, Tsalmoth, 2023)

The woman stood in the far corner of the dimly lit room, hiding in shadows like a fish in gray water.

(Robert Crais, The Promise, 2015)

.
Reveillie was not the best thing to have reverberating through one's skull after a night of too much and too little in various combinations.

(Tanya Huff, Valor's Choice, 2000)