Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. The first quote comes from a classic:
" 'I heard you coming,' she said, 'and hid there to see what sort of man you were, before I risked speaking. I doubted and feared about it till you passed; and then I was obliged to steal after you, and touch you.' - Steal after me, and touch me? Why not call to me? Strange, to say the least of it. - 'May I trust you?' she asked. 'You don't think the worse of me because I have met with an accident?' She stopped in confusion; shifted her bag from one hand to the other; and sighed bitterly. - The loneliness and helplessness of the woman touched me. The natural impulse to assist her and to spare her, got the better of the judgment, the caution, the worldly tact, which an older, wiser, and colder man might have summoned to help him in this strange emergency...."
2. Yet another, already legendary classic features the following quote:
"5 November - With the dawn we saw the body of Szgany before us dashing away from the river with their leiterwaggon. They surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset. The snow is falling lightly and there is a strange excitement in the air. It may be our own excited feelings, but the depression is strange. Far off I hear the howling of wolves; the snow brings them down from the mountains, and there are dangers to all of us, and from all sides. The horses are nearly ready, and we are soon off. We ride to death of someone. God alone knows who, or where, or what, or when, or how it may be...."
3. From which children's classic did I take the following quote, describing a slightly odd situation?
"Ram Dass slipped through his attic window and crossed to hers as steadily and lightly as if he had walked on roofs all his life. He slipped through the skylight and dropped upon his feet without a sound. Then he turned to Sara and salaamed again. The monkey saw him and uttered a little scream. Ram Dass hastily took the precaution of shutting the skylight, and then went in chase of him. It was not a very long chase. The monkey prolonged it for a few minutes evidently for the mere fun of it, but presently he sprang chattering on to Ram Dass's shoulder and sat there chattering and clinging to his neck with a weird little skinny arm. - Ram Dass thanked Sara profoundly. She had seen that his quick native eyes had taken in at a glance all the bare shabbiness of the room, but he spoke to her as if he were speaking to the little daughter of a rajah, and pretended that he observed nothing...."
4. It won't take you long to give me the title of the book this particular quote is from:
" 'When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.' - Tedious talk this, but being a stay-at-home she liked it. - 'And so,' he went on good-naturedly, 'there ought to be one fairy for every boy and girl.' - 'Ought to be? Isn't there?' - 'No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, "I don't believe in fairies," there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.'.... "
5. This book is not originally English, but I understand that you guys heard of it, anyway:
"Yet in their rather crude way the three knights were of good cheer. They hadn't expected their adventure with Sir Bastian to be a Sunday stroll. Now and then, with more spirit than art, they sang into the storm, sometimes singly and sometimes in chorus. Their favourite song seemed to be one that began with the words: 'When that I was a little boy - With hey, ho, the wind and the rain...' As they explained, this had been sung by a human who had visited Fantastica long years before, name of Shexper, or something of the sort...."
6. From which successful book comes this narrative?
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. - People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years...."
7. The following quote is from a book by Jeffery Deaver, one of my favorite authors. Which one is it?
"For a terrible half hour Wyatt Gillette had sat in the cold, medieval dungeon, refusing to speculate if it would really happen - if he'd be released. He wouldn't allow himself even a wisp of hope; in prison, expectations are the first to die. - Then, with a nearly silent click, the door opened and the cops returned. - Gillette looked up and happened to notice in Anderson's left lobe a tiny brown dot of an earring hole that had closed up long ago. 'A magistrate's signed a temporary release order,' the cop said. - Gillette realized that he'd been sitting with his teeth clenched and his shoulders drawn into a fierce knot. With this news he exhaled in relief. Thank you, thank you...."
8. A highly acclaimed thriller written by a lady begins as follows:
"Today they will find her body. - I know how it will happen. I can picture, quite vividly, the sequence of events that will lead to the discovery. By nine o' clock, those snooty ladies at the Kendall and Lord Travel Agency will be sitting at their desks, their elegantly manicured fingers tapping at computer keyboards, booking a Mediterranean cruise for Mrs Smith, a ski vacation at Klosters for Mr Jones. And for Mr and Mrs Brown, something different this year, something exotic, perhaps Chiang Mai or Madagascar, but nothing too rugged; oh no, adventure must, above all, be comfortable. That is the motto at Kendall and Lord: 'Comfortable adventures.' It is a busy agency, and the phone rings often. - It will not take long for the ladies to notice that Diana is not at her desk...."
9. Moving to a different genre now... From which of Irish author Marian Keyes's hilarious novels comes this excerpt:
"I was reminded of a conversation I'd had with my sisters the previous Christmas - we were trapped in the house without even a Harrison Ford film to take our minds off things and were driven to wondering what each of us would be if we were food instead of people. It was decided that Claire would be a green curry because they were both fiery, then Helen decreed that Rachel would be a jelly baby, which pleased Rachel no end. - 'Because I'm sweet?' - 'Because I like to bite your head off.' - Anna - 'this is nearly too easy,' Helen had said - was a Flake. And I was 'plain yoghurt at room temperature.' - OK, so I knew I'd never been in with a shout of being, say, an After Eight ('thin and sophisticated'), or a Ginger Nut biscuit ('hard and interesting'). But I saw nothing wrong with me being a trifle ('has hidden depths'). Instead, I was the dullest thing, the most flavourless thing anyone could think of - plain yoghurt at room temperature. It cut me deep, and even when Claire said that Helen was a human durian fruit because she was offensive and banned in several countries, it wasn't enough to lift my spirits...."
10. The last passage comes from a thriller by Scottish author Val McDermid:
"Blood. The realization dawned at the same instant that the snow in his ears melted and allowed him to hear the faint but stertorous wheeze of her breath. - 'Jesus Christ,' Alex stuttered, trying to scramble away from the horror that he had stumbled into. But he kept banging into what felt like little stone walls as he squirmed backward. 'Jesus Christ.' He looked up desperately, as if the sign of his companions would break this spell and make it all go away. He glanced back at the nightmare vision in the snow. It was no drunken hallucination. It was the real thing. He turned again to his friends. 'There's a lassie up here,' he shouted. - Weird Mackie's voice floated back eerily. 'Lucky bastard.' - 'No, stop messing, she's bleeding.' - Weird's laughter split the night. 'No' so lucky after all, Gilly.'...."
Source: Author
PearlQ19
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agony before going online.
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