Scott Avery

“I walked back down the room and out. The little blonde at the PBX looked at me expectantly, her small red lips parted, waiting for more fun. I didn't have any more. I went on out.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Lady In The Lake

“Yes, Mr Latimer, most of us go through life without knowing what we want of it. But Dimitrios, you know, was not like that. Dimitrios knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted money and he wanted power.”
― Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios

“Oh, I love the mustard-pot!” cried the Wart. “Wherever did you get it?” At this the pot beamed all over its face and began to strut a bit, but Merlyn rapped it on the head with a teaspoon, so that it sat down and shut up at once. “It is not a bad pot,” he said grudgingly. “Only it is inclined to give itself airs.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?”
― George Orwell, 1984