The Study cupped itself around him like a hand around a match, guarding the flame until it can ignite the fuse. A dark room, filled with the sounds of Led Zeppelin, lit by a single Anglepoise lamp and the three huge monitors that hung above his ancient wooden desk. Awaiting his next words. Hungry.

(Stuart MacBride, All that's Dead, 2019)

Many species from this side of creation to the other and back again have at one time or another had a saying that involves perceiving the conditions then obtaining around one, and then pointing at them and saying in ultimate acceptance: "It is what it is." (Often with an added, or
at least implied, "And what can you do?") And this
attitude is often seen as very wise and the pinnacle of maturity.
Except that maturity isn't everything ... as wizards will be the first to agree.

(Diane Duane, Interim Errantry 2 - On Ordeal: Mamvish fsh Wimsih, 2016)
.

Computers and insurance companies call me Ruddick McCann - to everyone else I'm just Ruddy. I work for a collateral recovery agency run by a guy named Milton Kramer. When people can't make their car payments, I help them get back on their feet.
I'm a repo man. Get it? "Back on their feet." That was repo humor, there.

(W. Bruce Cameron, The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man, 2014)
.

Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third.

(Jodi Picoult, Second Glance, 2003)
.

I was six years old the first time I disappeared.

(aus: Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts, 2005)

On the second Thursday of the month, Mrs. Dombrowski brings her dead husband to our therapy group.

(Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller, 2013)

1. Satz des Prologs:

The old woman fills her lungs with the crisp autumn air, throws open her arms and exhales a flawless top C.

1. Satz des ersten Kapitels:

Today's pool temperature is 6.3; a little warmer than a mortuary, but then I am not quite dead yet.

(aus: Ruth Hogan, The Particular Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes, 2018)