Opening lines are the initial portions of dialogue or text in a written book or other media work often constituted by at least the first sentence or a fragment thereof. A good opening line, or incipit, is usually considered desirable. A number of them are so well-known that they are remembered long after the work, while others are so famous that they can end up parodied.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.

A [ edit ]

From a little after four o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that sight and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.



I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow.



You don't know about me without you have read a book called "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.



On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.



Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , by Lewis Carroll.



I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate,first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to Lavinian shores – hurled about endlessly by land and sea, by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger, long suffering also in war, until he founded a city and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome. Muse, tell me the cause: how was she offended in her divinity. how was she grieved, the Queen of Heaven, to drive a man, noted for virtue, to endure such dangers, to face so many trials? Can there be such anger in the minds of the gods? Aeneid by Virgil (Translation by A. S. Kline).



To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren.



The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.



My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.



When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home, and went into the mountains. Also Sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Thomas Common).



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. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

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.

November, 1997.

You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen, slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town of Anchorhead. Anchorhead by Michael S. Gentry.

You take a deep breath of salty air as the first raindrops begin to spatter the pavement, and the swollen, slate-colored clouds that blanket the sky mutter ominous portents amongst themselves over the little coastal town of Anchorhead.

Dirk Moeller didn't know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out. The Android's Dream by John Scalzi.



Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. Animal Farm by George Orwell.



One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening. Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells.



Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.



Mrs Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladie's eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs Rachel Lynde was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed any-thing odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.



Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.



Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien.



"Who is John Galt?" Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.



In July, my father left to take the waters; he left me with my mother and older brother at the mercy of the summer days, white from the heat and stunning. "August" by Bruno Schulz, in: The Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories (trans. John Curran Davis.)



If you were going to give a gold medal to the least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn’t give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway. The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket.



B [ edit ]

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.



I've been called Bone all my life, but my name's Ruth Anne. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

Gotham City. Maybe it's all I deserve, now. Maybe it's just my time in Hell. Batman: Year One by Frank Miller.



It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. A Bend in the River , by V.S. Naipaul.



124 was spiteful. Beloved by Toni Morrison.



It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. The Big Sleep , by Raymond Chandler.



RIGHT HERE AND NOW, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision. The Black House , by Stephen King and Peter Straub.



Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The Blind Assassin , by Margaret Atwood.



There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker. The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat.



The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault. Blood Rites by Jim Butcher



Prince Rupert rode his unicorn into the Tanglewood, peering balefully through the drizzling rain as he searched half-heartedly for the flea hiding somewhere under his breastplate. Blue Moon Rising , by Simon R. Green.



The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum.



A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words “Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre” and, in a shield, the World State's Motto: “Community, Identity, Stability”. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.



This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.



I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world. Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart .



See the Child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy.



C [ edit ]

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. The Call of Cthulhu , by H. P. Lovecraft.



In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. Candide by Voltaire.



Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres.



Barry Fairbrother did not want to go out to dinner. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling.



Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood.



It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.



If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.



I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan.



To the east were moving waters, as far as eye could follow. To the west a sea of grass as far as wind might reach. / Waters restlessly, with every motion, slipping out of used colors for new. So that each fresh wind off the lake washed the prairie grasses with used sea-colors: the prairie moved in the light like a secondhand sea. / Till between the waters and the wind came the marked-down derelicts with the dollar signs for eyes. / Looking for any prairie portage at all that hadn't yet built a jail. Chicago: City on the Make by Nelson Algren



If you're going to read this, don't bother. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.



Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. A Christmas Carol , by Charles Dickens.



It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. City of Glass by Paul Auster.



It was dark by the time I reached Bonn, and I forced myself not to succumb to the series of mechanical actions which had taken hold of me in five years of traveling back and forth: down the station steps, up the station steps, put down my suitcase, take my ticket out of my coat pocket, pick up my suitcase, hand in my ticket, cross over to the newstand, buy the evening newspaper, go outside and signal for a taxi. The Clown by Heinrich Böll.



You better not never tell nobody but God. The Color Purple by Alice Walker.



West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. The Colour Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft



All of Gaul is divided into three parts. (Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres) Commentaries on the Gallic War (Commentarii de Bello Gallico) by Julius Caesar.



Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right , and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. Common Sense by Thomas Paine.

gives it a superficial appearance of being , and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.

A voice comes to one in the dark. Company by Samuel Beckett.



A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. A Confederacy of Dunces , by John Kennedy Toole.



The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Cosmos by Carl Sagan.



On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (trans. Constance Garnett).



It was the day my grandmother exploded. The Crow Road by Iain Banks.



One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.



It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.



D [ edit ]

It was a diamond all right, shining in the grass half a dozen feet from the blue brick wall. The Dain Curse , by Dashiell Hammett.



On Zothique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. "The Dark Eidolon", by Clark Ashton Smith.



Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. David Copperfield , by Charles Dickens.



When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. The Day of the Triffids , by John Wyndham.



Conventions, like clichés, have a way of surviving their own usefulness. Desert of the Heart , by Jane Rule.



Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel : aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, 14 October 1905. The Difference Engine , by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, 14 October 1905.

This time there would be no witnesses. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency , by Douglas Adams.



For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well. Disgrace , by J. M. Coetzee.



Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost. The Divine Comedy, The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.



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. Don Quixote , by Miguel de Cervantes.



Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft.



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. Dune , by Frank Herbert.



E [ edit ]

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.



Elmer Gantry was drunk. Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis.



Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. Emma by Jane Austen.



A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.



In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. The End of the Road by John Barth.



The beginning is simple to mark. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.



I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.



By 1899 we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat. The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.



What about the teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.



F [ edit ]

It was a pleasure to burn. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.



During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.



When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.



In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.



Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.



We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.



Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.



riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Finnegans Wake James Joyce.



How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge



His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. Foundation by Isaac Asimov.



The Galactic Empire was dying. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov.



You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.



G [ edit ]

If youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you wouldn’t constantly run across folks today who claim that “a child don’t know anything.” A child’s brain starts functioning at birth; and has, amongst its many infant convolutions, thousands of dormant atoms, into which God has put a mystic possibility for noticing an adult’s act, and figuring out its purport. Gadsby by Ernest Vincent Wright.



We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.



It was like so, but wasn't. Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers.



In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis .



I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.



George is my name; my deeds have been heard of in Tower Hall, and my childhood has been chronicled in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. Giles Goat-boy by John Barth.



It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. The Giver by Lois Lowry.



Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin.



The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley.



It was time to whip the god. The God Engines by John Scalzi.



Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her. The Godfather by Mario Puzo.



Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell.



It was a nice day.

All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford.



To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.



There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.



A screaming comes across the sky. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.



My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.



In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.



The old ram stands looking down over rock slides, stupidly triumphant. Grendel by John Gardner.



The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King.



H [ edit ]

'Now what I want is, Facts.' Hard Times by Charles Dickens.



Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling.



Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.



Harry Potter was a very unusual boy in many ways. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling.



The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it “the Riddle House,” even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.



The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.



It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling.



The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling.



No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.



In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.



The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.



The assassin came in and ordered waffles. Hello Lemuria, Hello by Ron Goulart.



Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. Herbert West–Reanimator , by H. P. Lovecraft.



If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me thought Moses Herzog. Herzog by Saul Bellow.



Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.



In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.



Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. The Hound of the Baskervilles , by Arthur Conan Doyle.



One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister. Howards End by E. M. Forster.



In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes. Howl's Moving Castle , by Diana Wynne Jones.



All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania – that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him. Hunger by Knut Hamsun (Robert Bly's translation).



When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins



"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,

As he landed his crew with care; The Hunting of the Snark , by Lewis Carroll.

As he landed his crew with care;

I [ edit ]

On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.



I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.



I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled. I, Claudius by Robert Graves.



When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - "To Whom It May Concern" - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.



I looked at my notes and I didn't like them. I'd spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica. I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.



Silent as specters, the tall and the fat thief edged past the dead, noose-strangled watch-leopard, out the thick, lock-picked door of Jengao the Gem Merchant, and strolled east on Cash Street through the thin black night-smog of Lankhmar, City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. "Ill Met in Lankhmar", by Fritz Leiber.



The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.



You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler . If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino.

.

For a long time, I went to bed early. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.



In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do East Coast family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mr. McKinley Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer



It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner.



I am an invisible man. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.



The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.



Kidnapping children is never a good idea; all the same, sometimes it has to be done. Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson.



The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. IT by Stephen King.



J [ edit ]

—Money . . . in a voice that rustled. J R by William Gaddis.



There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.



Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell , by Susanna Clarke.



One evening of late summer, before the present century had reached its thirteith year, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors on foot. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy.



It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.



It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.



K [ edit ]

"So you're all set for money, then?" the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice. Kafka on the Shore , by Haruki Murakami.



He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Kim by Rudyard Kipling.



In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1, King James Bible.



L [ edit ]

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.



In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving



The Scopuli had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot. Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey.



This book was born as I was hungry. Life of Pi by Yann Martel.



The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was. Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams.



The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth the effort. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.



Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, "I have come from Alabama: a fur piece." Light in August by William Faulkner.



"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.



Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.



It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.” The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams.



You wouldn’t think we’d have to leave Chicago to see a dead body. A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck.

The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. Looking for Alaska by John Green

He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.



The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon. Lord of the Flies by William Golding.



When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.



It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.



M [ edit ]

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans.



Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein.



Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. The Maltese Falcon , by Dashiell Hammett.



The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton.



The captain never drank. Yet, toward nightfall in that smoke-colored season between Indian summer and December's first true snow, he would sometimes feel half drunken. The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren



My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind. Metamorphoses by Ovid.



As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.



Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Middlemarch by George Eliot.



I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.



I was born in the city of Bombay ..... once upon a time. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie.



When animal droppings and garbage and spoiled straw are piled up in a great heap, the rotting and moiling give forth heat. The Midwife's Apprentice , by Karen Cushman.



The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.



Call me Ishmael. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.



The ghost was her father's parting gift, presented by a black-clad secretary in a departure lounge at Narita. Mona Lisa Overdrive , by William Gibson.



On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window. Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia.



Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.



After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off Quinn's for an oyster supper. The Meaning of Night by Micheal Cox.



The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy , by Samuel Beckett.



N [ edit ]

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Neuromancer by William Gibson.



The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself. Neverwhere , by Neil Gaiman.



It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.



No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Northanger Abbey , by Jane Austen.



Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. Northern Lights, by Philip Pullman.



I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.



O [ edit ]

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.



He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.



I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army. Old Man's War by John Scalzi.



Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.



Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.



He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. Orlando by Virginia Woolf.



The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge. Orthodoxy by Gilbert Keith Chesterton.



As summer wheat came ripe,

so did I,

born at home, on the kitchen floor. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse.

so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor.

The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree into the middle of the road. Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis.



P [ edit ]

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.



They shoot the white girl first. Paradise by Toni Morrison.



Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat

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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.



As I left the railway station at Worchester and set out on the three-mile walk to Ransom's cottage, I reflected that no one on that platform could possibly guess the truth about the man I was going to visit. Perelandra by C. S. Lewis.



One winter night, at half past nine,

Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy,

I had come home, too late to dine Phantasmagoria by Lewis Carroll.

Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy, I had come home, too late to dine

The small boys came early to the hanging. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.



The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope. The Portal of the Mystery of Hope by Charles Péguy.



Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.



Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo... A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce.



Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. The Power and The Glory , by Graham Greene.



I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. A Prayer for Owen Meany , by John Irving.



All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (trans. W. K. Marriott)



The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. The Princess Bride , William Goldman.



It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.



It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.



Q [ edit ]

In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Qur'an .



R [ edit ]

Once upon a midnight dreary, as 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 someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. The Raven , by Edgar Allan Poe.

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham.



Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest. Ready Player One , by Ernest Cline.



The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.



Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Rebecca , by Daphne du Maurier.



The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.



I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett.



I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. The Republic by Plato (trans. Benjamin Jowett)



The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams.



A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy.



Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York Richard III by William Shakespeare.

Made glorious summer by this son of York

In the night-time heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality. Ringworld by Larry Niven.



When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. The Road by Cormac McCarthy.



Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the cornflake and peanut butter, not to mention caramel-cereal coffee, Bromose, Nuttolene and some seventy-five other gastronomically correct foods, paused to level his gaze on the heavyset women in front of him. The Road to Wellville by T. Coraghessan Boyle.



I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.



Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years. A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner.

...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis.



S [ edit ]

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'" The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.



To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. A Scandal in Bohemia ( The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ), by Arthur Conan Doyle.

woman.

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini.



I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands. The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.



When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.



Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: "Have they discovered evolution yet?" The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.



It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned. The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe



After twenty-two years of nightmare and terror, saved only by a desperate conviction of the mythical source of certain impressions, I am unwilling to vouch for the truth of that which I think I found in Western Australia on the night of July 17–18, 1935. Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft.



This is what happened. Shoot by Douglas Fairbairn.



There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien



All this happened, more or less. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.



Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life! Sleep Till Noon by Max Shulman.



Its freezing - an extraordinary 0 Fahrenfeit - and its snowing, and in the language that is no longer mine, the snow is qanik - big, almost weightless crystals falling in clumps and covering the ground with a layer of pulverized white frost. Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.



First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.



In the last years of the seventeenth century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and sting-taut with similes stretched to the snapping point. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth.



Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner.



There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people. Sourcery by Terry Pratchett.



It was just about midnight when Stenham left Si Jaffar’s door. The Spider's House by Paul Bowles.



A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

Did you hear that? They've shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure. This is madness! Star Wars by George Lucas. The first line appears in a scroll of text introducing the film; the second, spoken by C-3PO, is the first line of dialogue spoken in the film.



I heard the mailman approach my office door, half an hour earlier than usual. He didn't sound right. His footsteps fell more heavily, jauntily, and he whistled. A new guy. He whistled his way to my office door, then fell silent for a moment. Then he laughed. Storm Front by Jim Butcher.



Once upon a time when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith. Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein.



Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe. The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.



Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.



For a long time I would go to bed early. "Swann's Way" by Marcel Proust.



Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The Stranger by Albert Camus.



Probable-Possible, my black hen,She lays eggs in the Relative-when. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive-now. Because she's unable to Postulate how. The Space Child's Mother Goose by Frederick Winsor.



Less Bread! More Taxes!--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) "Who roar for the Sub-Warden?" Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting "Bread!" and some "Taxes!", but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted. Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll.



T [ edit ]

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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.



True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The Tell-Tale Heart , by Edgar Allan Poe.

you say that I am mad?

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.



Nick Naylor had been called many things since becoming the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, but until now no one had actually compared him to Satan. Thank You for Smoking: A Novel , by Christopher Buckley.



Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.



When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.



The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive. The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.



Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.



Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman.



In my earliest memory, my grandfather is as bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers. The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht.



The bench on which Dobbs was sitting was not so good. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven.



I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan.



Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. This Side of Paradise , by F. Scott Fitzgerald.



One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it: -- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief. Through the Looking Glass , by Lewis Carroll.

have had any hand in the mischief.

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. The Time Machine , by H. G. Wells.



When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.



'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay.



The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.



Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. The Trial by Franz Kafka.



I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.



Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.



Not every 13-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi.



People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. True Grit by Charles Portis



Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass.



The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom



U [ edit ]

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and razor lay crossed. Ulysses by James Joyce.



Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P----, in Kentucky. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.



Where now? Who now? When now? The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett.



V [ edit ]

I am the vampire Lestat. The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice.



It's hot as hell in Martirio, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news. Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.



There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis.



W [ edit ]

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. Waiting by Ha Jin.



When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. Walden by Henry David Thoreau.



‘He's just a pore lonesome wife-left feller,’ the more understanding said of Fitz Linkhorn, ‘losin' his old lady is what crazied him.’ / ‘That man is so contrary,’ the less understanding said, ‘if you throwed him in the river he'd float upstream.’ / For what had embittered him Fitz had no name. A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren



"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes...." War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.



The telephone was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse. War in Heaven by Charles Williams.



Jasper Maskelyne was drinking a glass of razor blades when the war began. The War Magician by David Fisher.



No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. The War of the Worlds , by H. G. Wells.



Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.



The primroses were over. Watership Down , by Richard Adams.



Nothing ever begins. Weaveworld by Clive Barker.



When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie , which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.

, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.



She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James.



Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.



1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. Wuthering Heights , by Emily Brontë.



Y [ edit ]

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman



Z [ edit ]