"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."

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

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

"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.""

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

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

"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."

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

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"This book was born as I was hungry."

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

"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."

"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 beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"I am an invisible man."

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

"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."

"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"

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

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

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

"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."

"I looked at my notes and I didn't like them. I'd spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica."

"When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - "To Whom It May Concern" - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."

"I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled."

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

"On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back."

""Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care;"

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold."