Opening lines of books and poems

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Douglas Adams

There is a theory which states that if anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Douglas Adams

The primroses were over.

Richard Adams

Even in the dry heat of summer's end, the great forest was never silent.

Richard Adams

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.

James Agee

This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.

Mitch Albom

In order that we may start afresh and go to Meg's wedding with free minds, it will be well to begin with a little gossip about the Marches.

Louisa May Alcott

Please, sir, is this Plumfield? asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him.

Louisa May Alcott

Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

Louisa May Alcott

When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town.

Maya Angelou

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

Isaac Asimov

I looked at my notes and I didn't like them.

Isaac Asimov

It was an afternoon in late September.

Richard & Florence Atwater

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

Margaret Atwood

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

Margaret Atwood

This is the Night Mail crossing the border, bringing the cheque and the postal order.

WH Auden

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence.

Jane Austen

About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon with only seven thousand pounds had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram.

Jane Austen

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.

Jane Austen

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage...

Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Jane Austen

The family of Dashwood has long been settled in Sussex.

Jane Austen

Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.

James Baldwin

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

Iain Banks

It was not that Omri didn't appreciate Patrick's birthday present to him.

Lynne Reid Banks

All children, except one, grow up.

JM Barrie

Dorothy lived in the midst of the Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

L Frank Baum

A voice comes to one in the dark.

Samuel Beckett

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived 12 little girls in two straight lines.

Ludwig Bemelmans

The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

Peter Benchley

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed.

Peter William Blatty

It was a pleasure to burn.

Ray Bradbury

Even in high summer, Tintagel was a haunted place; Igraine, Lady of Duke Gorlois, looked out over the sea from the headland.

Marion Zimmer Bradley

All true histories contain instruction, though in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.

Anne Bronte

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.

Anne Bronte

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Charlotte Bronte

The other day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the following copy of a letter.

Charlotte Bronte

My Godmother lived in a handsome house in the clean and ancient town of Bretton.

Charlotte Bronte

1801- I have just returned from a visit to my landlord.

Emily Bronte

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.

Rupert Brooke

High atop the steps of the Pyramid of Giza a young woman laughed and called down to him.

Dan Brown

Robert Langdon awoke slowly.

Dan Brown

I returned from the city about three o'clock on that May afternoon, pretty well disgusted with life.

John Buchan

It was a dark and stormy night and 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.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where there was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

John Bunyan

What's it going to be then, eh?

Anthony Burgess

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.

Anthony Burgess

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

O my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June.

Robert Burns

Wee, sleekit cow'rin', tim'rous beastie, O what a panic's in thy breastie.

Robert Burns

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies.

Lord Byron

He is very ugly, said his mother.

Taylor Caldwell

Mother died today. Or perhaps it was yesterday, I don't know.

Albert Camus

I am always drawn back to the places where I have lived, the houses & their neighborhoods.

Truman Capote

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'.

Truman Capote

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, 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?'

Lewis Carroll

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it- it was the black kitten's fault entirely.

Lewis Carroll

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.

Miguel de Cervantes

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.

Raymond Chandler

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.

Jung Chang

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset.

GK Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked and figs grew upon thorn.

GK Chesterton

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong...

GK Chesterton

Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window.

Agatha Christie

The Volcano that had reared Taratua up from the Pacific depths had been sleeping now for half a million years.

Arthur C Clarke

Like a glowing jewel, the city lay upon the breast of the desert.

Arthur C Clarke

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

Arthur C Clarke

The boy's name was Santiago.

Paulo Coelho

Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of sails, and was at rest.

Joseph Conrad

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.

Joseph Conrad

When he stepped off the straight and narrow path of his peculiar honesty, it was with an inward assertion of unflinching resolve.

Joseph Conrad

Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.

Joseph Conrad

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.

James Fenimore Cooper

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

Stephen Crane

These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket.

Roald Dahl

Midway along the path of life.

Dante Alighieri

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull.

Daniel Defoe

They came through on the hot line at about half past two in the afternoon.

Len Deighton

A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.

Philip K Dick

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.

Charles Dickens

Marley was dead, to begin with.

Charles Dickens

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.

Charles Dickens

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.

Charles Dickens

Now, what I want is Facts.

Charles Dickens

Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.

Charles Dickens

An ancient English Cathedral Tower?

Charles Dickens

Night is generally my time for walking.

Charles Dickens

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.

Charles Dickens

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.

Charles Dickens

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

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.

Arthur Conan Doyle

September 1653. The last of summer. The first chill winds of autumn.

Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Daphne du Maurier

On the 24th of February, 1815, the lookout of Notre Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon, from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples.

Alexandre Dumas

On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the town of Meung, in which the author of The Romance of the Rose was born, appeared to be in a perfect state of revolution as if the Huguenots had just made a second Rochelle of it.

Alexandre Dumas

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.

Umberto Eco

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

George Eliot

A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace.

George Eliot

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood-red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank...

Bret Easton Ellis

I am an invisible man.

Ralph Ellison

From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office...

William Faulkner

Isaac McCaslin, 'Uncle Ike', past seventy and nearer eighty than he ever corroborated any more, a widower now and uncle to half a country and father to one.

William Faulkner

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.

William Faulkner

An author ought to consider himself not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat.

Henry Fielding

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

F Scott Fitzgerald

We were in the study-hall when the headmaster entered, followed by a new boy not yet in school uniform and by the handyman carrying a large desk.

Gustave Flaubert

Most motorcars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and gasoline and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday.

Ian Fleming

James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat back in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.

Ian Fleming

Except for the Marabar Caves- and they are twenty miles off- the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.

EM Forster

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down to the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.

William Golding

This is my favourite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

William Golding

Everytime he drove through Yorkville, Rosenbaum got angry, just on general principles.

William Goldman

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.

Kenneth Grahame

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 peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.

Gunter Grass

Mr Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the Mexican sun.

Graham Greene

After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat: he had said 'I'll be with you at latest by ten,' and when midnight had struck I couldn't stay quiet any longer and went down into the street.

Graham Greene

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.

Mark Haddon

It is a curious thing that at my age, fifty-five last birthday, I should find myself taking up a pen to try and write a history.

H Rider Haggard

There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding detail seem to be graven on the memory in such a fashion that we cannot forget them.

H Rider Haggard

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting 'V' under the more flexible 'V' of his mouth.

Dashiell Hammett

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.

Thomas Hardy

The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.

Thomas Hardy

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.

Thomas Hardy

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was love at first site.

Joseph Heller

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish.

Ernest Hemingway

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.

Ernest Hemingway

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying.

Robert Herrick

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, Siddharta, the handsome Brahmin's son, grew up with his friend Govinda.

Hermann Hesse

By now the other warriors, those that had escaped head-long ruin by sea or in a battle, were safely home.

Homer

It was three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen 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.

Victor Hugo

In 1815, Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D-.

Victor Hugo

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.

Aldous Huxley

Along this particular stretch of line, no express had ever passed.

Aldous Huxley

The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born- we weren't even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Fanny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg.

John Irving

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.

John Irving

Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theatre.

John Irving

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.

Henry James

Riverrun, past Eve's and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay...

James Joyce

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.

James Joyce

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

James Joyce

There was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself...

Norton Juster

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a giant insect.

Franz Kafka

It was late in the evening when K. arrived.

Franz Kafka

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

Franz Kafka

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale...

John Keats

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

John Keats

Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.

Stephen King

Not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.

Stephen King

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

Rudyard Kipling

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.

Rudyard Kipling

He sat in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun of Zam-Zammeh on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaibgher- the Wonder House, as the natives called the Lahore Museum.

Rudyard Kipling

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

DH Lawrence

'The Bottoms' succeeded to 'Hell Row'.

DH Lawrence

Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working and talking.

DH Lawrence

The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, 'Why don't you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up.'

John Le Carre

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood's at all.

John Le Carre

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

Harper Lee

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.

Ursula K Le Guin

It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement.

Gaston Leroux

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse had signed a lease on a five-room apartment in a geometric white house on First Avenue when they received word, from a woman named Mrs. Cortez, that a four-room apartment in Bramford had become available.

Ira Levin

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy.

CS Lewis

Buck did not read the newspapers or he would have known that trouble was brewing.

Jack London

Should you ask me, whence these stories?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

HP Lovecraft

The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark furious sea like an awkward animal...

Robert Ludlum

The success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman, Mrs. Greenway said.

Larry McMurtry

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

My suffering left me sad and gloomy.

Yann Martel

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

Andrew Marvell

On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came..

Richard Matheson

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville

I am living at the Villa Borghese.

Henry Miller

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.

John Milton

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

Margaret Mitchell

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

124 was spiteful.

Toni Morrison

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

Vladimir Nabokov

It was Mrs May who first told me about them.

Mary Norton

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

George Orwell

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

Ovid

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Wilfred Owen

On they went, singing 'Rest Eternal,' and whenever they stopped, their feet, the horses, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their singing.

Boris Pasternak

Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity- Good.

Katherine Paterson

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

Sylvia Plath

Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary...

Edgar Allen Poe

For a long time I went to bed early.

Marcel Proust

Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall.

Philip Pullman

Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter.

Mario Puzo

A screaming comes across the sky.

Thomas Pynchon

Who is John Galt?

Ayn Rand

We are five miles behind the front.

Erich Maria Remarque

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

JK Rowling

I was born in the city of Bombay... once upon a time.

Salman Rushdie

To be born again, sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die'.

Salman Rushdie

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.

JD Salinger

Ex-Chief Minister Mohammed Ali Kasim was arrested at his home in Ranpur at 5am on August 9th 1942 by a senior English police officer who arrived in a car, with a motorcycle escort, two armed guards and a warrant for his detention under the Defence of India Rules.

Paul Scott

The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it.

Anna Sewell

Mr. Donnelly, the track coach, ended the day's practice early because Henry Fuller's father came down to the high-school field to tell Henry that they had just got a telegram from Washington announcing that Henry's brother had been killed in action in Germany.

Irwin Shaw

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

Mary Shelley

Not long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Misses Pongo.

Dodie Smith

A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine.

Edmund Spenser

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.

John Steinbeck

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green.

John Steinbeck

Kino awakened in the near dark.

John Steinbeck

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesy, ad the rest of those gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island.

Robert Louis Stevenson

3 May. Bistritz.- Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but the train was an hour late.

Bram Stoker

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlour in the town of P--, in Kentucky.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons.

Jonathan Swift

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Hunter S Thompson

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

JRR Tolkien

All happy families are all alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.

Leo Tolstoy

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.

Leo Tolstoy

If you want to find Cherry Tree Lane all you have to do is ask a policeman at the crossroads.

PL Travers

Mr Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No.7, Savile Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814.

Jules Verne

I sing of arms and the man.

Virgil

In the country of Westphalia, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a youth whom Nature had endowed with a most sweet disposition.

Voltaire

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

Kurt Vonnegut

All this happened, more or less.

Kurt Vonnegut

You better not tell nobody but God.

Alice Walker

When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view before me through the grey mist of early morning.

Evelyn Waugh

I do not propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the 'Lady Vain'.

HG Wells

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 scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

HG Wells

The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.

Irvine Welsh

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

Edith Wharton

Where's Papa going with that ax? said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

EB White

When Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.

EB White

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Oscar Wilde

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.

Virginia Woolf

For many days we had been tempest-tossed.

Johann Wyss