"Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

"I looked at my notes and I didn't like them."

"'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."

"The primroses were over."

"Even in the dry heat of summer's end, the great forest was never silent."

"'All right, Chewie, try it now.'"

"'Honored Solo, we are running out of time!' the voice squawked from the comm unit."

"Anyone living in the United States in the early 1990s and paying even a whisper of attention to the nightly news or a daily paper could be forgiven for having been scared out of his skin."

"When you've been involved in something like this, no matter how long ago it happened, no matter how long it's been absent from the news, you're fated, nonetheless, to always search it out."

"My mother used to threaten to tear me into eight pieces if I knocked over the water bucket, or pretended not to hear her calling me to come home as the dusk thickened and the cicadas' shrilling increased."

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

"Before they vastened me I felt a need I hadn't felt for thirty years and more, and so I did what I hadn't thought I would ever do again."

"Stubbornly Elijah Baley fought panic."

"Elijah Baley found himself in the shade of the tree and muttered to himself, 'I knew it.'"

"Gladia felt the lawn lounge to make sure it wasn't too damp and then sat down."

"'I don't believe it, of course,' said Golan Trevize, standing on the wide steps of Seldon Hall and looking out over the city as it sparkled in the sunlight."

SOONER OR LATER, it was bound to happen.

"The First Galactic Empire had endured for tens of thousands of years."

"Bel Riose traveled without escort, which is not what court etiquette prescribes for the head of a fleet stationed in a yetsullen stellar system on the Marches of the Galactic Empire."

Dear John Paul and Theresa Wiggin, You understand that during the recent attempt by the Warsaw Pact to take over the International Fleet, our sole concern at EducAdmin was the safety of the children.

"Lije Baley had just reached his desk when he became aware of R. Sammy watching him expectantly."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

"Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese Bund."

"It was a pleasure to burn."