Bella

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”
― Gary Provost

“Was it a test?” she asked. “I mean, I know I'm still new to this. I'm still the rookie. Did you hang back to test me, to see if I'd be able to handle it alone?”
“Well, kind of,” he said. “Actually, no, nothing like that. My shoelace was untied. That's why I was late. That's why you were alone.”
“I could have been killed because you were tying your SHOELACE?”
“An untied shoelace an be dangerous,” he said. “I could have tripped.”
She stared at him. A moment dragged by.
“I'm joking,” he said at last.
She relaxed. “Really?”
“Absolutely. I would never have tripped. I'm far too graceful”
― Derek Landy, Playing with Fire

“Jaime had never realised that trees made a sound when they grew, and no-one else had realised it either, because the sound is made over hundreds of years in waves of twenty-four hours from peak to peak. Speed it up, and the sound a tree makes is vrooom.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact