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Quotations #26:  Good Starts
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Author's Last Name Index: 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 -
  1. The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created.
      --The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams, 1800


  2. The primroses were over.
      --Watership Down, Richard Adams, 1972


  3. It was dusk -- winter dusk.
      --The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, 1962


  4. This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.
      --The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, 2003


  5. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," mumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
      --Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, 1868


  6. Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horse-shoes.
      --The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander, 1964


  7. Under a chill, gray sky, two riders jogged across the turf.
      --The High King, by Lloyd Alexander, 1968


  8. The captain never drank.
      --The Man with the Golden Arm, by Nelson Algren, 1949


  9. Night was running ahead of itself.
      --Sea of Death, by Jorge Amado, 1984


  10. The tall man stood at the edge of the porch.
      --Sounder, by William H. Armstrong, 1969


  11. From the doorway of the short corridor between the only two rooms in the travel-head of the spaceship, Mario Esteban Rioz watched sourly as Ted Long adjusted the video dials painstakingly.
      --The martian Way, by Isaac Asimov, 1984


  12. 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, 1813


  13. 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, 1815



- B -
  1. It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
      --Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach, 1970


  2. He was facing Seventh Avenue at Times Square.
      --Another Country, by James Baldwin, 1960


  3. 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, 1952


  4. The storm came up out of the southwest like a fiend, stalking its prey on legs of lightning.
      --Abarat, by Clive Barker, 2002


  5. All children, except one, grow up.
      --Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, 1911


  6. There is a young legend developing on the west side of the mountains.
      --Lilies of the Field, by William E. Barrett, 1962


  7. The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.
      --Jaws, by Peter Benchley, 1973


  8. I am a white man and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyanne Indians from the age of ten.
      --Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger, 1964


  9. 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, 1971


  10. Even now she can’t decide.
      --In the Unlikely Event, by Judy Blume, 2015


  11. He awoke, opened his eyes.
      --The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles, 1949


  12. It was a pleasure to burn.
      --Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, 1953


  13. First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.
      --Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, 1962


  14. 1801--I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with.
      --Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, 1847


  15. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
      --Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, 1847


  16. Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.
      --The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown , 2003


  17. I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.
      --The Thirty-nine Steps, James Buchan, 1915


  18. It was Wang Lung's marriage day.
      --The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, 1931


  19. As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream.
      --The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, 1675


  20. 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, 1911


  21. I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.
      --Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1914


  22. When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick.
      --The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler, 1916



- C -
  1. I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.
      --Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote, 1958


  2. 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, 1965


  3. "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one."
      --Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, 1965


  4. Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London's secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin.
      --The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carré, 1977


  5. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and 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, 1866


  6. At a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to remember, there lived a little while ago one of those gentlemen who are wont to keep a lance in the rack, an old buckler, a lean horse and a swift greyhound.
      --Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, 1605


  7. 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, 1939


  8. The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.
      --The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler, 1954


  9. Freedom was one of those placee honest ships avoided, a pleasant world of a pleasant star, but lacking a station at which ships could dock, and by reason if its locationon the limb's sparse edge, inconvenient for ships on fixed schedules.
      --Wave Without a Shore, by C.J. Cherryh, 1981


  10. A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!
      --The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, 1899
  11. Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window.
      --The Mirror Crack'd, by Agatha Christie, 1962


  12. The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.
      --2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke, 1968


  13. Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun.
      --The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter van Tilburg Clarke, 1940


  14. The customs agent spent more time than usual examining the sword that my wife had brought into the country and then asked what we intended to do with it.
      --The Pilgrimage, by Paul Coelho (English Translation), 1992


  15. There are many stories about Michael Sullivan.
      --The Road to Perdition, by Max Allan Collins (Novelization), 2002


  16. This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
      --The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, 1860


  17. In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written: "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it."
      --The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, 1868


  18. ‘Will she last out the night, I wonder?
      --The Dead Secret, by Wilkie Collins, 1861


  19. In the year 1860, the reputation of Doctor Wybrow as a London physician reached its highest point.
      --The Haunted Hotel, by Wilkie Collins, 1879


  20. 26th February, 1827.—The doctor has just called for the third time to examine my husband’s eyes.
      --After Dark, Wilkie Collins, 1856


  21. On a summer’s morning, between thirty and forty years ago, two girls were crying bitterly in the cabin of an East Indian passenger ship bound outwards, from Gravesend to Bombay.
      --Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins, 1870


  22. It was sunny in San Francisco; a fabulous condition.
      --The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon, 1959


  23. The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of her sails, and was at rest.
      --Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, 1902


  24. 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, 1900


  25. Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.
      --The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, 1906


  26. To begin with, I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril of Isidor--Kiryo Sidorovitch--Razumov.
      --Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad, 1910


  27. A long sultry Syrian day was drawing near its close.
      --Barabbas, by Marie Corelli, 1893


  28. It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet.
      --The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826


  29. He did not expect to see blood.
      --Kramer vs.Kramer, by Avery Corman, 1977


  30. You’re late.
      --The History of Great Things, by Elizabeth Crane, 2016


  31. 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, 1895


  32. He stood at the wheel, watching the current stream, and the bald eagles fishing for herring that waited until the boat was almost upon them to lift, to drop the instant it had passed.
      --I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven, 1973


  33. In the end, write it down.
      --Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher, 2001



- D -
  1. The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America.
      --Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, 1840


  2. My true name is so well known in the records, or registers, at Newgate and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps after my death it may be better known; at present it woud not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions of persons or crimes.
      --Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe, 1722


  3. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china
      --The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, by Kate DiCamillo, 2006


  4. A merry little surge of electricity piped by automated alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.
      --Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick, 1968 (the basis for Bladerunner)


  5. Marley was dead, to begin with, there is no doubt whatever about that.
      --A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, 1843


  6. 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.
      --The Personal History of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, 1850


  7. Now, what I want is Facts.
      --Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, 1854


  8. 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 doing 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, 1859


  9. It was January something, 1946 and I was in the bus station, waiting to go to the oil field.
      --Oil and Water by Millicent Dillon, 1991


  10. Down Fairfax Avenue Mollie ran, she knew the way, her little feet remorseless.
      --Lost in LA by Millicent Dillon, 1991


  11. I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills.
      --Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, 1937


  12. I'm Homer, the blind brother,
      --Homer & Langley , by E.L. Doctorow, 2009


  13. In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle, New York.
      --Ragtime , by E.L. Doctorow, 1975


  14. At five in the morning someone banging on the door and shouting, her husband, John, leaping out of bed, grabbing his rifle, and Roscoe at the same time roused from the backhouse, his bare feet pounding: Mattie hurriedly pulled on her robe, her mind prepared for the alarm of war, but the heart stricken ... Read Morethat it would have finally come, and down the stairs she flew to see through the open door in the lamplight, at the steps of the portico, the two horses, steam rising from their flanks, their heads lifting, their eyes wild, the driver a young darkie with rounded sholders, showing stolid patience even in this, and the woman standing in her carriage no one but her Aunt Letita Pettibone of McDonough, her elderly face drawn in anguish, her hair a straggled mess, this women of such fine grooming, this dowager who practically ruled the season in Atlanta standing up in the equipage like some hag of doom, which indeed she would prove to be.
      --The March , by E. L. Doctorow, 2005


  15. Startled awake by the ammoniated mists, I am aroused in one instant from glutinous sleep to grieving awareness; I have done it again.
      --World's Fair , by E.L. Doctorow, 1985


  16. He had to have planned it because when we drove into the dock the boat was there and the engine was running and you could see the water churning up phosphorescence in the river, which was the only light there was because there was no moon, nor no electric light either in the shack where the dock master should have been sitting, nor on the boat itself, and certainly not from the car, yet everyone knew where everything was, and when the big Packard came down the ramp Mickey the driver braked it so that the wheels hardly rattled the boards, and when he pulled up alongside the gangway the doors were already open and they hustled Bo and the girl upside before they even made a shadow in the darkness.
      --Billy Bathgate , by E.L. Doctorow, 1989


  17. They were a hateful presence in me.
      --Loon Lake , by E.L. Doctorow, 1980


  18. The Man from Bodie drank down a half bottle of the Silver Sun's best; that cleared the dust from his throat and then when Florence, who was a redhead, moved along the bar to him, he turned and grinned down at her.
      --Welcome to Hard Times , by E.L. Doctorow, 1960


  19. People wouldn't take what Martin Pemberton said as literal truth, he was much to melodramatic or too tormented to speak plainly.
      --The Waterworks , by E.L. Doctorow, 1994


  20. General Miles with his gaudy uniform and spirited charger was the center for all eyes, especially as his steed was extremely restless.
      --The 42nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos, 1930


  21. Jim Pignatelli was born in the year of victories.
      --Chosen Country, by John Dos Passos, 1951


  22. Mr. Sherlock Holmes,who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.
      --The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902


  23. Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own self.
      --The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912


  24. Dusk--of a summer night.
      --An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser, 1925


  25. Landscape tones: brown to bronze, steep skyline, low cloud, pearl ground with shadowed pearl and oyster reflections.
      --Balthazar, by Lawrence Durrell, 1958


  26. During the early part of June, 1947, a small party of sightseers found itself trapped in what was then the newly-discovered labyrinth of Cefalû, on the island of Crete.
      --Dark Labyrinth, by Lawrence Durrell, 1947 (published as Cefalû)



- E -
  1. That was when I saw the Pendulum.
      --Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, 1988


  2. With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past.
      --Adam Bede, by George Eliiot, 1858


  3. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
      --Middlemarch, by George Eliot, 1872


  4. I am the invisible man.
      --The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, 1947


  5. All the beasts in Howling Forest were safe in their caves, nests, and burrows.
      --The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende, 1979


  6. Take care to chop the onion fine.
      --Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, 1989


  7. There was death at its beginning, as there would be death again at its end.
      --The Horse Whisperer, by Nicholas Evans, 1995



- F -
  1. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
      --The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, 1929


  2. Jewell and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.
      --As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, 1930


  3. From beyond the screen of bushes that surrounded the spring, Popeye watched the man drinking.
      --Sanctuary, by William Faulkner, 1931


  4. Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill beside her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.'
      --A Light in August, by William Faulkner, 1932


  5. The jury said "Guilty" and the Judge said "Life" but he didn't hear them.
      --The Mansion, by William Faulkner, 1955


  6. This is the kind of man Boon Hoggenbeck was.
      --The Reivers, by William Faulkner, 1962


  7. In the Abalone (Arizona) Morning Tribune for August third there appeared on page five an advertisement eight columns wide and twenty-one inches long.
      --The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles G. Finney, 1935


  8. I warn you that what you're about to read is full of lose ends and unanswered questions.
      --Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney, 1955


  9. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
      --The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925


  10. Though I haven't ever been on the screen, I was brought up in pictures.
      --The Last Tycoon, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1941


  11. The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since.
      --Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg, 1987


  12. We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a “new fellow,” not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk.
      --Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, 1857


  13. It was the saddest story I have ever heard.
      --The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford, 1927


  14. The two young men - they were of the English public official class - sat in the perfectly appointed railway carriage.
      --Parade’s End, by Ford Maddox Ford, 1950


  15. Although she herself was ill enough to justify being in bed had she been a person weak minded enough to give up, Rose Sayer could see that her brother, the Reverend Samuel Sayer, was far more ill.
      --The African Queen, by C.S. Forester, 1935


  16. "The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all."
      --A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster, 1908


  17. "The cow is there," said Ansell, lighting a match and holding it out over the carpet.
      --The Longest Journey, by E.M. Forster, 1907



- G -
  1. The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself.
      --Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman, 1996


  2. On the fifteenth of may, in the Jungle of Nool,
    In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
    He was splashing...enjoying the jungle's great joys...
    When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.
      --Horton Hears a Who!, by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), 1954


  3. When you're traeling in India--especially through holy sites and Ashrams--you see a lot of people wearing beads around their necks.
      --Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006


  4. This is the story of a group of people who had a bizzare and unexpected thing happen to them.
      --The Cabal, by Ellen Gilchrist, 2000


  5. Freddy Harwood sat in his office at his bookstore in Berkeley, California, with his feet up on the desk and chewed the edge of his coffee cup.
      --Drunk With love, by Ellen Gilchrist, 1986


  6. When I was in the third grade I knew a boy who had to have fourteen shots in the stomach as the result of a squirrel bite.
      --Victory Over Japan, by Ellen Gilchrist, 1984


  7. An extraordinary thing happened today.
      --The Diary of a Madman, by Nikolai Gogol, 1915


  8. 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, 1954


  9. The Year that Buttercup was born the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.
      --The Princess Bride, by William Goldman, 1973


  10. The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
      --The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, 1908


  11. There is an old legend that somewhere in the world every man has his double.
      --The Tenth Man, by Graham Greene, 1985


  12. To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have a guiding principle.
      --Ordinary People, by Judith Guest, 1976



- H -
  1. One evening of late summer, before the present century had reached its thirtieth year, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.
      --The Mayor of Castorbridge, Thomas Hardy, 1886


  2. 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’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy, 1892


  3. Halfway down a bystreet of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.
      --The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851


  4. It is remarkable that--though disinclined to talk much about myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.
      --The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850


  5. If he had his way, peter McDermott thought, he would have fired the chief house detective long ago.
      --Hotel, by Arthur Hailey, 1965


  6. At half-past six on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with difficulty.
      --Airport, by Arthur Hailey, 1968


  7. 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 Dashell Hammett, 1930


  8. I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from a table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me.
      --The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett, 1933


  9. The schoolmaster was leaving the village and everybody seemed sorry.
      --Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, 1895


  10. Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
      --Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, 1961


  11. Our troop had been up in the High Sierras that day and we were late getting back.
      --Farmer in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein, 1950


  12. It was love at first sight.
      --Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, 1955


  13. 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, 1929


  14. The strange thing was, he said, how they screamed every night at midnight.
      --In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway, 1925


  15. 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, 1951


  16. "The marvelous thing is that it's painless," he said.
      --The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway, 1927


  17. Then there was the bad weather.
      --A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway, 1964


  18. 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, 1965


  19. I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.
      --Demian, by Herman Hesse, 1925


  20. The day had gone by just as days go by.
      --Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse, 1929


  21. It was my destiny to join in a great experience.
      --The Journey to the East, by Herman Hesse, 1961


  22. In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin's son, grew up with his friend Govinda.
      --Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, 1951


  23. On the second day of January, windswept and bright, a half-blood seminole named Billy Tigertail dumped a dead body in the Lost-mans River.
      --Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen, 2006


  24. When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape.
      --Goodbye, Mr. Chips, by James Hilton, 1934


  25. Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had.
      --The Lost Horizon, by James Hilton, 1933


  26. Inside room 824, Maria parked the vacuum cleaner, fastened all the locks and the safety chain and kicked off her shoes.
      --English as as Second Language, by Lucy Honig, 1992


  27. It was three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and ninteen days ago today that the citizens of Paris were awakened by the pealing of all the bells in the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town.
      --The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo, 1831


  28. An hour before sunset, on the evening of a day in the beginning of October, a man traveling on foot entered the little town of D---.
      --Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, 1862


  29. A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.
      --Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, 1932


- I -
  1. Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.
      --The World According to Garp, by John Irving, 1978


  2. Tonight, I find myself here ina guest house in the city of Salisbury.
      --The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989



- J -
  1. 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, 1881


  2. The evening his master died he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins.
      --The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, 2003


  3. There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them.
      --Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong, 1973


  4. 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 baby boy named tuckoo....
      --A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, 1916


  5. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
      --Ulysses, by James Joyce, 1922


  6. 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.
      --Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce, 1939



- K -
  1. A cool heavenly breeze took possession of him.
      --The last temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1960


  2. I first met him in Piraeus.
      --Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1952


  3. It has been a quiet week in lake Wobegon.
      --Leaving Home, by Garrison Keillor, 1987


  4. They're out there.
      --One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, 1962


  5. Dr. Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on..
      --Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys, 1966


  6. Nobody was really suprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.
      --Carrie, by Stephen King, 1974


  7. Not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.
      --Cujo, by Stephen King, 1981


  8. Hapscomb’s Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. The Stand, Stephen King, 1978
      -- , by , 1917


  9. Oh my God!" my friend Arnie Cunningham cried out suddenly.
      --Christine , by Stephen King, 1983


  10. The coulee is so still right now that if a match were to be lit, the flame would not waver.
      --Obasan , by Joy Kogawa, 1981


  11. They sat stiffly on his antique Eames chairs, two people who didn't want to be here, or one person who didn't want to and one who resented the other's reluctance.
      --Beggars In Spain, by Nancy Kress, 1994


  12. There it was.
      --Beggars Ride, by Nancy Kress, 1996



- L -
  1. He rolled the cigarette in his lips, liking the taste of the tobacco, squinting his eyes against the sun glare.
      --Hondo, by Louis L'amour, 1953


  2. The ranch house on Malibu was a low-roofed adobe with a porch across the front corner-to-corner.
      --The Californians, by Louis L'amour, 1974


  3. Everyone knows how they hung there on the crosses, and who they were that stood gathered around him.
      --Barabbas, by Pär Lagerkvist, 1951


  4. The date was April 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course the man in suite 63-65, shelter deck C, did not yet know it. (this is actually non-fiction)
      --Devil in the White City , by Erik Larson, 2003


  5. The truth is, if old Major Dover had not dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would have never come to Thurgoods at all.
      --Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carré, 1974


  6. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
      --To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, 1960


  7. This is the first page of the Book of the Dark, written some six hundred years ago in Berila, on Enlad:
      --The Finder, by Ursula K. LeGuin, 2001


  8. The last house on Searoad stood in the field between the dunes.
      --Hand, Cup, Shell, by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1991


  9. Her father's ancestors had owned a wide, rich domain on the wide, rich island of Way.
      --Dragonfly, by Ursula K. LeGuin, 2001


  10. 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. LeGuin, 1969


  11. It was a dark and stormy night.
      --A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle, 1962 (you were thinking Snoopy, perhaps?)


  12. The big kitchen of the Murry’s house was bright and warm, curtains drawn against the dark outside, against the rain driving past the house from the northeast.
      --A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeline L'Engle, 1978


  13. “There are dragons in the twins’ vegetable garden.”
      --A Wind in the Door, by Madeline L'Engle, 1973


  14. A sudden shower put an end to hockey practice.
      --Many Waters, by Madeline L'Engle, 1986


  15. She walked through an orchard, fallen apples red and cidery on the ground, crossed a stone wall, and wandered on into a small wood.
      --An Acceptable Time, by Madeline L'Engle, 1989


  16. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
      --The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, 1950


  17. Once there was a boy called Eustace Ckarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
      --The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis, 1952


  18. In the last days of Narnia, far up beyond Lantern Wastee and close beside the great waterfall, there lived an Ape.
      --The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, 1956


  19. On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky.
      --Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, 1920


  20. The driver of the wagon swaying through the forest and swamp of Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen.
      --Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis, 1925


  21. Elmer Gantry was drunk.
      --Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis, 1927


  22. The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its guilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies' Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.
      --It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis, 1935


  23. I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the litle blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.
      --How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn, 1940


  24. Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
      --The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, 1903


  25. All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.
      --The Star Rover, by Jack London, 1914


  26. Dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway.
      --White Fang, by Jack London, 1915



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