Posted by OldVin
Apr 27, 2011 4:59 pm

Replies (11)

Posted by

• 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. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
  ~Dickens sure opens/begins David Copperfield at the beginning...love it!

  Aug 12, 2011 6:22 pm
  by DayLily

• ok. i have read many novels but never found something so realistic and yet funny. it is from jane austen's pride and prejudice- "IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
  
  However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

  Oct 5, 2011 12:52 am
  by anisha_astrologer

• If you follow the rules of society you will end up with a JOB...Just Over Broke...The Secrets of Empowerment by Charles Gordon...great book

  Oct 6, 2011 10:34 am
  by SimonP

• The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the invention of spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes…
  I have escaped to this island with a few books and the child — Melissa's child. I do not know why I use the word "escape". The villagers say jokingly that only a sick man would choose such a remote place to rebuild…
  At night when the wind roars and the child sleeps quietly in its wooden cot by the echoing chimney piece I light a lamp and walk about, thinking of my friends – of Justine and Nessim, of Melissa and Balthazar. I return link by link along the iron chains of memory to the city we inhabited so briefly together: the city which used us as its flora – precipitated conflicts which were hers and which we mistook for our own: beloved Alexandria!
  [Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet: Justine]

  Oct 7, 2011 8:25 am
  by Thamus

• Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of tell-tale signs. Mostly because they're nervous. By definition they're all first-timers.
  
  -- Lee Child, Gone Tomorrow
  
  Dare you to not continue reading.

  Oct 14, 2011 11:52 pm
  by pipoe

• "Mr. and Mrs. Beresford were sitting at the breakfast table."
  So begins Agatha Christie's detective novel
  BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS.
  
  "First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys."
  So begins Ray Bradbury's science-fiction novel
  SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES.

  Nov 27, 2011 4:19 pm
  by Mike-Golf

• "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina)
  
  "We fought." (Anywhere but Here)

  Jan 10, 2012 11:48 am
  by jeirich

• "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."(Nineteen Eighty-Four) - Not particularly special by itself, perhaps, but I live the way that so many of Orwell's books start with the time.

  Feb 7, 2012 12:40 am
  by LizzzyBF

• "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." [Neuromancer by William Gibson]
  
  "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." [The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King]

  Feb 9, 2012 11:15 am
  by dennishenley

• Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this.

  Feb 10, 2012 8:33 am
  by remarriner

• 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.
  
  She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

  Feb 10, 2012 5:15 pm
  by guy.hermann