Signor Perso was the last person who knew who I’d been, and when I found him—naked but for his dressing gown, his white mustache perfectly groomed, his hands folded over the little volume on his chest as if he’d laid himself out for the occasion

In Hungary, Richard Hoffman's family had been the manufacturers of Hoffman's Rose Water, a product which was used at that time for both cosmetic and medicinal purposes. 

Sometime between the cheese and the fruit, while the port was still being passed, Lieutenant Wilby allowed a sweet, but rather too boisterous fart to slip between his buttocks. 

In fact there were two boys born that night. Jesus was first long awaited, expected. His twin brother was a surprise. The angels ignored him. His mother was disconcerted b this squalling irascible utter! 

Constitutionally, temperamentally, against the grain of his better intentions, his background and even many of his actions, Wendell Spear, the film critic and historian, was avaricious.

MY MASTER’S TEMPER were by spasms choleric, the spasms exacerbated by trespass, real or fancied, of his slaves, all of whom had had occasion to beg their fellows daub their backs with salve of rum and lard. 

I never thought I could fall for a spaceman. I mean, you see them in the newspaper and they kind of give you the willies, all skinny and hairless and wiggly-looking, and if you touched one, even to shake hands, you just know it would be like when you were about fifteen and you were with an earth boy and you were sweet on him but there was this thing he wanted, and you finally said okay, but only rub-a-dub, which is what we called it around these parts when I was younger, and it was the first time ever that you touched … well, you know what I’m talking about. 

The disaster was great for me and Scud. We were given time off school to help clear up the beaches. Not that we did much.

On the Buka Islands off the coast of New Guinea there has recently been observed an unexplained surge in the population of the genus Ciconia ciconia, commonly known as the Indonesian stork. 

“Do you know Portofino?” the Frenchman said.