The name of the title of this post

   "The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.'"
   "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it? Alice said, trying to feel interested.
   "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged Aged Man.'"
   "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.
   "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only what it's called, you know!
   "Well, what is the song, then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
   "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting on a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."

Lewis Carroll
Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871)

At least once

   "Why is everyone getting up?" I said.
   "It's a standing ovation," said Mom, getting up.
   So I got up and clapped and clapped. I clapped until my hands hurt. For a second, I imagined how cool it would be to be Via and Justin right then, having all these people stand up and cheering for them. I think there should be a rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives.

R. J. Palacio
Wonder (2012)

I dunno

A lot of these broads, you know, you just don't know. You know?

David Mamet
Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974)

Drink up, kids

   This morning I stroll over to Dorothy's office to get a soda. It's a tiny wood-paneled room. The desk seems to have no purpose other than holding Dorothy's collection of snow globes from places that seem unworthy of commemoration: Gulf Shores, Alabama. Hilo, Arkansas. When I see the snow globes, I don't see paradise, I see overheated hillbillies with sunburns tugging along wailing, clumsy children, smacking them with one hand, with the other clutching giant nonbiodegradable Styrofoam cups of warm corn-syrupy drinks. 

Gillian Flynn
Gone Girl (2012)

Her pièce de resistance...

But Miss Prentice also belonged to a generation when girls learnt the pianoforte from their governesses, and she, too, liked to be expected to perform. Her pièce de resistance was Ethelbert Nevin's Venetian Suite, which she rendered with muffled insecurity, the chords of the accompaniment never quite synchronising with the saccharine notes of the melody.

Ngaio Marsh
Overture to Death (1939)

Seen one, seen 'em all?

He was of a remarkable appearance, having a great mane of silver hair, large sunken eyes and black brows. The bone of his face was much emphasised, the flesh heavily grooved. His mouth was abnormally wide with a heavy underlip. It might have been the head of an actor, a saint, or a Middle-West American purveyor of patent medicines.

Ngaio Marsh
Death In Ecstasy (1936)

Cooking sherry? So regal!

The air inside smelled antediluvian, regal somehow, with traces of pipe tobacco, tea leaves, cooking sherry, and the earthen aroma of stone architecture.

Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code (2003)

God bless her all the same

   "She fancies herself a detective and wants to become involved in the case—wants someone to think she may even be the killer."
   "The killer?" Feely snorted. "Horse eggs! She couldn't see to kill an elephant if it were standing on her toes. And as for being a detective, why, the woman couldn't find her own bottom if it weren't buttoned on."
   "God bless her all the same," I said. It was a formula we used whenever we had gone too far.
   "God bless her all the same," Feely echoed, rather sourly.

Alan Bradley
Speaking From Among the Bones (2013)

More adjectives, please

Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code (2003)

Why i hate the cold

Hot days may well elicit sweat and curses, but chill winds cut through the greatcoats and farthingales of time, knife to the primal memory of the species, shiver that slumbering animal in the caves of our soul, and whisper "Danger!" in his hairy ear.

John Barth
The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

The assistant to the stationmaster

The assistant to the stationmaster was a young man who had modeled his particularly unlikable officiousness upon the officiousness of the stationmaster, so that he had a completely inappropriate old-fart, complaining, curmudgeonly aspect to his youthfulness—this in combination with the mean-spiritedness of a dogcatcher who enjoys his work.

John Irving
The Cider House Rules (1985)

Pedagogy

   Another woman, a well-to-do plumber's widow, taught grammar and spelling. Her method was rigorous and messy. She presented great clumps of uncapitalized, misspelled, and unpunctuated words, and demanded that the clumps be put into proper sentences, meticulously punctuated and correctly spelled. She then corrected the corrections; the final document—she employed a system of different-colored inks—resembled a much-revised treaty between two semiliterate countries at war.

John Irving
The Cider House Rules (1985)

The wages of trust

   "You're much too trusting," Janeway said, "and it's going to cause you grief someday." Again the quick smile. "Welcome to someday."

William Goldman
Marathon Man (1974)

Leadership qualities

   "It would be a sorry state if none of us had leadership qualities," he said. "Besides, most people like to be told what to do."
   "That theory is advanced by people who tell people what to do."

Marjorie Kellogg
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1968)

Seven Gables...

She stole softly into the hall, and, herself invisible, gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal at the young, blooming, and very cheerful face which presented itself for admittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to which almost any door would have opened of its own accord.

~~~

It was strewn about with a few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phoebe was a harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed -- not having been played upon, or opened, for years -- there must have been a vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air.

~~~

With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihilated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had only this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closely at it, is nothing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)