"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."

"All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania – that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him."

"In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes."

"One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister."

"Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table."

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."

"If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me thought Moses Herzog."

"Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror."

"The assassin came in and ordered waffles."

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

"In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together."

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."

"The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane."

"It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind."

"The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses of Privet Drive."

"The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it “the Riddle House,” even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there."

"Harry Potter was a very unusual boy in many ways."

"Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive."

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

"'Now what I want is, Facts.'"

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

"Gabby Gomez should have seen it coming. She had been blowing on that bubble for as long as anyone could remember, and it was bound to pop sooner or later. But how could Gabby have imagined that something as sweet and as simple as one teeny, tiny little piece of bubblegum could lead to such a terribly sticky situation? Even with her parents and teachers always warning that no good would come from so much gum chewing and bubble blowing. It would be hard to believe. But then again, Gabby was far from your normal, average, everyday gum chewer. She chewed bubble gum everywhere. She chewed it here. She chewed it there. She chewed it here. She chewed gum all day. Everyday. And all night. Every night."

"The old ram stands looking down over rock slides, stupidly triumphant."

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"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."

"A screaming comes across the sky."

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

"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."

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard."