Opening lines

"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."

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

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

"For a long time, I went to bed early."

"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"

"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."

"I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles."

"I am an invisible man."

"The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor."

"Kidnapping children is never a good idea; all the same, sometimes it has to be done."

"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."

"—Money . . . in a voice that rustled."

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."

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

"Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians."

"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."

"It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive."

"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."

""So you're all set for money, then?" the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice."

"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."

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

"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."

"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 Scopuli had been taken eight days ago, and Julie Mao was finally ready to be shot."

"This book was born as I was hungry."

"The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."

"The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth the effort."

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

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

"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."

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.”"

"You wouldn’t think we’d have to leave Chicago to see a dead body."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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.""

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

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

"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."

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

"As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

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

"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."

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

"When animal droppings and garbage and spoiled straw are piled up in a great heap, the rotting and moiling give forth heat."

"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."

"Call me Ishmael."