"Would the defendant please rise."
This wasn't an actual question, even though it sounded like one. I'd noticed that the first time we'd all been assembled here, in this way. Instead, it was a command, an order. The "please" was just for show.

(Sarah Dessen, aus: Saint Anything, 2015)

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere - the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years - she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy.

(Justin Cronin, The Passage, 2010)

Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you're told you deserve whatever you get.

(Iain Banks, Transition, 2009)
.

My mother killed my father when I was seven years old. Now, thirty-nine years later, she is dead too, and I am an orphan.

(Ruth Hogan, aus: Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel, 2019)
.

Looking back, I think of it as Race Week in the rain. Thunderboomers almost every day. Sure, it was spring. But those storms were over the top.
In the end, Summer saved my life.
I know. Sounds bizarre.
This is what happened.

(Kathy Reichs, Flash and Bones, 2011)

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)
.