Test XV

1. “G’day,” he said, his mouth opening in a grin. (D. du Maurier)

2. “I do like you,” said Rosemary, “but I don’t think you ought to fight a duel.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. You’re their ideal of all that’s graceful and beautiful and wonderful. (W.S. Maugham)

4. Barny did not reply. He looked at Krendler as though the left and right hemispheres of Krendler’s brain were two dogs stuck together. (Th. Harris)

5. “When someone loves you it’s like having a blanket all round your heart,” he said, “and then when it’s taken away …” and burst into tears.

(H. Fielding)

6. Daniel kept sending me computer messages at work. The more he sent the more I got carried away, imagining that the self-reinvention was working, that he realized he had made a terrible, terrible mistake, had only now understood how much he truly loved me, and that the rooftop giantess was history. (H. Fielding)

7. “Bridget,” he muttered nervously as we walked into the white hole and sea of grunge youths. (H. Fielding)

8. It’s not an unattractive trait. (W.S. Maugham)

9. He who only five months before had sought her so eagerly with his eyes and intriguing smile. The liar! The brute! The monster! (Th. Dreiser)

10. A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule. (O. Wilde)

11. “They don’t want wit. They don’t want a man to be funny; they think he’s not serious. They don’t want a man who’s too handsome; they think he’s not serious either. That’s what they want, they want a man who’s serious. Safety first. And then – attention. I may not be handsome and I may not be amusing, but believe me, I’ve got what every woman wants. Poise. And the proof is, I’ve made every one of my wives happy.”

(W.S. Maugham)

12. Magda looked up at Jude like Piglet hoping to be included on an outing with Pooh and Tigger. (H. Fielding)

13. “People will shout,” said Alec quietly, “but Goethe’s on his same old shelf in the library – to bore anyone that wants to read him!”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. “- So you love me?”

“Oh, do I!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. His eyes rested in a melancholy way on his boots, which were sadly in need of repair. (W.S. Maugham)

Test XVI

1. They looked a bit ill as if they’d been surviving on nothing more substantial than cigarettes, coffee and exam pressure for some time.

(M. Gayle)

2. While we waited for the coffee to arrive, Gershwin and I exchanged a brief lift of the eyebrows in salute to a random act of senseless beauty clearing the table behind us. (M. Gayle)

3. “I dunno,” said Gershwin, “but I suppose we’ll both find out soon enough.” (M. Gayle)

4. “They must be nearly a million years old now because they were half a million when we were there.” (M. Gayle)

5. “My mum was standing at the top of the stairs wearing her nightie, her dressing-gown and an uncompromising frown.” (M. Gayle)

6. “So come on, Mr. Misery, why was tonight so awful for you?” (M. Gayle)

7. “I’ve been dying to ask you about her for ages and it’s only now that I’m trying to get you drunk that I feel able to.” (M. Gayle)

8. “But don’t you think the jacket goes with the Birkenstocks? I think the Birkenstocks need the jacket.” She said it as though her footwear was going to suffer from severe depression without the jacket. (M. Gayle)

9. Our readers don’t love music they live it – eat it, breathe it. Just as I do. (M. Gayle)

10. Only my wife has the power to utter the phrase I fear so much, and then only when some catastrophe has befallen the house – like, for example, last Saturday when the kitchen radiator precipitated a scale version of Lake Windermere across the kitchen floor… I had to take on the mantle of Mr Fix-it. (M. Gayle)

11. We’ve been talking about life at Teen Scene for the previous half an hour and just as my vegetable tempura and chicken ramen arrives she drops this bombshell. (M. Gayle)

12. … I look around me. There are girls with nose-rings, girls with purple hair, tall girls, short girls, girls with skateboards, hard girls, posh girls, rude girls, and girls whose jeans are so baggy I can’t understand why they don’t fall over – they are girls of every variety and yet they all have one thing in common: they’re wearing clothes that make them look older than their years. (M. Gayle)

13. When the doctor told me it was positive I cried and cried. I was so scared. Absolutely terrified. (M. Gayle)

14. You must know that I didn’t do this to hurt you. I acted stupidly. I acted carelessly. I acted hurtfully. But I never did any of it to hurt you. (M. Gayle)

15. “You don’t have to tell me that,” says Izzy. “I wake up every day and you’re not there. I come home to an empty flat because you’re not there. I sit alone in the home we made feeling desperate for you to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be all right.” (M. Gayle)