“Pope [a minor-league thug]: 'My superior wants to see you.' Jonathan Hemlock [played by Clint Eastwood]: 'Well, that doesn't limit the field much!'”
The Eiger Sanction, quoted on The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com)
"'How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked. 'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (frequently misquoted or misattributed including to Mark Twain or F. Scott Fitzgerald according to www.sovereignman.com/offshore/slowly-at-first-then-all-at-once-12909, which warned that it applies to nations too)
“Goodness me! Humans don't go to heaven! No, someone made that up to prevent you all from going nuts!”
Kryten the robot butler in the Red Dwarf episode "Last Day" (as a side note, Kryten firmly believes in a "silicon heaven" for everything from robots to calculators to toasters)
"Looking for fish? Don’t climb a tree."
Chinese proverb (according to "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail March 31 2011
“He uttered my name as if a fire had broken out.”
Peter Lovesey, Bertie and the Seven Bodies
"The commander of the local French naval district… answered as if he were conversing with a fungus."
Clive Cussler in The Sea Hunters (a true story, in which the commander is answering Cussler)
A putt "scurrying across the green like a rat on fire."
An announcer on TBS August 15 1992
"At the sight of Aslan the cheeks of the Telmarine soldiers became the colour of cold gravy..." C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian