"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned."

"Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: "Have they discovered evolution yet?""

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

"I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands."

"He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman."

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

"...and it's a story that might bore you but you don't have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that"

"When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years."

"Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean."

"I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me."

"Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the cornflake and peanut butter, not to mention caramel-cereal coffee, Bromose, Nuttolene and some seventy-five other gastronomically correct foods, paused to level his gaze on the heavyset women in front of him."

"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him."

"In the night-time heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality."

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York"

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment."

"The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

"I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing."

"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte."

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

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

"The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse."

"Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest."

"I have never begun a novel with more misgiving."

"Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten loreWhile I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."

"In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful."

"My wound is geography."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

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

"The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette."

"All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities."

"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."

"Mr. Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust."

"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..."

"Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."

"The faith that I love the best, says God, is hope."

"The small boys came early to the hanging."

"One winter night, at half past nine, Cold, tired, and cross, and muddy, I had come home, too late to dine"

"All children, except one, grow up."

"As I left the railway station at Worchester and set out on the three-mile walk to Ransom's cottage, I reflected that no one on that platform could possibly guess the truth about the man I was going to visit."

"It was a dark and stormy night; 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."

"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, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat"

"They shoot the white girl first."

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane"

"The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut-tree into the middle of the road."

"As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor."

"The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a challenge."

"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."

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

"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."