Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer
The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos
Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut
We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. —George Eliot, Middlemarch
"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between
Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. —Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche
Don’t look for dignity in public bathrooms. —Victor LaValle, Big Machine
Since it’s Sunday and it’s stopped raining, I think I’ll take a bouquet of roses to my grave. —Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses
When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had travelled across a desert of living sand. —Kevin Brockmeier, A Brief History of the Dead
Who is John Galt? -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I stopped shooting people six months ago, just after I won the Pulitzer Prize. -Greg Iles, Dead Sleep
In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black coats, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES. -Roald Dahl, The Witches
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. -Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.” -Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. -PG Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins
Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four
Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. –E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
The year 1866 was signalized by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. -Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.” -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. -The Gospel of John
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