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 ...

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

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

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 ...

[Title Character] said she would buy the flowers herself.

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

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

Call me Ishmael.

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

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

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

When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyifirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk ...

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

You better not never tell nobody but God.

[Title Character], handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence...

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

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

1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.

As the Manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards, and, looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of ...

[Title Character] 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 ...

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

[Title Character], light of my life, fire of my loins.

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 ...

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

What’s it going to be then, eh?

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

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

All children, except one, grow up.

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.

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

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.

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

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

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.

A screaming comes across the sky.

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.

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

It was love at first sight.

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.

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 the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

It was a pleasure to burn.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day

To [Title Character] she is always the woman.

All this happened, more or less.

The primroses were over.

If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Marley was dead, to begin with.

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

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