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Quotations #26: Good Starts

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Author's Last Name Index: A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

- A -

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created.
--The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams, 1800

It was dusk -- winter dusk.
--The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, 1962

This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.
--The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom, 2003

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," mumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
--Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, 1868

Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horse-shoes.
--The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander, 1964

Under a chill, gray sky, two riders jogged across the turf.
--The High King, by Lloyd Alexander, 1968

The captain never drank.
--The Man with the Golden Arm, by Nelson Algren, 1949

Night was running ahead of itself.
--Sea of Death, by Jorge Amado, 1984

The tall man stood at the edge of the porch.
--Sounder, by William H. Armstrong, 1969

From the doorway of the short corridor between the only two rooms in the travel-head of the spaceship, Mario Esteban Rioz watched sourly as Ted Long adjusted the video dials painstakingly.
--The martian Way, by Isaac Asimov, 1984

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
--Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, 1813

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
--Emma, by Jane Austen, 1815

- B -

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
--Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach, 1970

He was facing Seventh Avenue at Times Square.
--Another Country, by James Baldwin, 1960

Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.
--Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin, 1952

The storm came up out of the southwest like a fiend, stalking its prey on legs of lightning.
--Abarat, by Clive Barker, 2002

All children, except one, grow up.
--Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, 1911

There is a young legend developing on the west side of the mountains.
--Lilies of the Field, by William E. Barrett, 1962

The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.
--Jaws, by Peter Benchley, 1973

I am a white man and never forgot it, but I was brought up by the Cheyanne Indians from the age of ten.
--Little Big Man, by Thomas Berger, 1964

Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.
--The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty, 1971

It was a pleasure to burn.
--Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, 1953

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.
--Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury, 1962

1801--I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with.
--Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, 1847

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
--Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, 1847

Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.
--The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown , 2003

It was Wang Lung's marriage day.
--The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, 1931

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream.
--The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, 1675

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
--The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.
--Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1914

When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick.
--The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler, 1916

- C -

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.
--Breakfast at Tiffany's, by Truman Capote, 1958

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there".
--In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, 1965

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one."
--Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, 1965

Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London's secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin.
--The Honourable Schoolboy, by John le Carré, 1977

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?'
--Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, 1866

At a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to remember, there lived a little while ago one of those gentlemen who are wont to keep a lance in the rack, an old buckler, a lean horse and a swift greyhound.
--Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, 1605

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.
--The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler, 1939

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.
--The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler, 1954

Freedom was one of those placee honest ships avoided, a pleasant world of a pleasant star, but lacking a station at which ships could dock, and by reason if its locationon the limb's sparse edge, inconvenient for ships on fixed schedules.
--Wave Without a Shore, by C.J. Cherryh, 1981

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: "Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!
--The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, 1899
Miss Jane Marple was sitting by her window.
--The Mirror Crack'd, by Agatha Christie, 1962

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.
--2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke, 1968

Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun.
--The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter van Tilburg Clarke, 1940

The customs agent spent more time than usual examining the sword that my wife had brought into the country and then asked what we intended to do with it.
--The Pilgrimage, by Paul Coelho (English Translation), 1992

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
--The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, 1860

In the first part of Robinson Crusoe, at page one hundred and twenty-nine, you will find it thus written: "Now I saw, though too late, the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost, and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it."
--The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins, 1868

It was sunny in San Francisco; a fabulous condition.
--The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon, 1959

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of her sails, and was at rest.
--Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, 1902

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.
--Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad, 1900

Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.
--The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad, 1906

To begin with, I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril of Isidor--Kiryo Sidorovitch--Razumov.
--Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad, 1910

A long sultry Syrian day was drawing near its close.
--Barabbas, by Marie Corelli, 1893

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet.
--The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826

He did not expect to see blood.
--Kramer vs.Kramer, by Avery Corman, 1977

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
--The Red badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, 1895

He stood at the wheel, watching the current stream, and the bald eagles fishing for herring that waited until the boat was almost upon them to lift, to drop the instant it had passed.
--I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven, 1973

In the end, write it down.
--Whale Talk, by Chris Crutcher, 2001

- D -

The fourteenth of August was the day fixed upon for the sailing of the brig Pilgrim on her voyage from Boston round Cape Horn to the western coast of North America.
--Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, 1840

My true name is so well known in the records, or registers, at Newgate and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence still depending there relating to my particular conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to this work; perhaps after my death it may be better known; at present it woud not be proper, no, not though a general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions of persons or crimes.
--Moll Flanders, by Daniel Defoe, 1722

A merry little surge of electricity piped by automated alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.
--Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick, 1968 (the basis for Bladerunner)

Marley was dead, to begin with, there is no doubt whatever about that.
--A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, 1843

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
--The Personal History of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, 1850

Now, what I want is Facts.
--Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, 1854

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, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
--A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, 1859

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills.
--Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen, 1937

General Miles with his gaudy uniform and spirited charger was the center for all eyes, especially as his steed was extremely restless.
--The 42nd Parallel, by John Dos Passos, 1930

Jim Pignatelli was born in the year of victories.
--Chosen Country, by John Dos Passos, 1951

Mr. Sherlock Holmes,who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.
--The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth--a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own self.
--The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912

Dusk--of a summer night.
--An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser, 1925

Landscape tones: brown to bronze, steep skyline, low cloud, pearl ground with shadowed pearl and oyster reflections.
--Balthazar, by Lawrence Durrell, 1958

During the early part of June, 1947, a small party of sightseers found itself trapped in what was then the newly-discovered labyrinth of Cefalû, on the island of Crete.
--Dark Labyrinth, by Lawrence Durrell, 1947 (published as Cefalû)

- E -

That was when I saw the Pendulum.
--Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco, 1988

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past.
--Adam Bede, by George Eliiot, 1858

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
--Middlemarch, by George Eliot, 1872

I am the invisible man.
--The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison, 1947

All the beasts in Howling Forest were safe in their caves, nests, and burrows.
--The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende, 1979

Take care to chop the onion fine.
--Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, 1989

There was death at its beginning, as there would be death again at its end.
--The Horse Whisperer, by Nicholas Evans, 1995

- F -

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
--The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, 1929

Jewell and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.
--As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, 1930

From beyond the screen of bushes that surrounded the spring, Popeye watched the man drinking.
--Sanctuary, by William Faulkner, 1931

Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill beside her, Lena thinks, 'I have come from Alabama: a fur piece.'
--A Light in August, by William Faulkner, 1932

The jury said "Guilty" and the Judge said "Life" but he didn't hear them.
--The Mansion, by William Faulkner, 1955

This is the kind of man Boon Hoggenbeck was.
--The Reivers, by William Faulkner, 1962

In the Abalone (Arizona) Morning Tribune for August third there appeared on page five an advertisement eight columns wide and twenty-one inches long.
--The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles G. Finney, 1935

I warn you that what you're about to read is full of lose ends and unanswered questions.
--Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney, 1955

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
--The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

Though I haven't ever been on the screen, I was brought up in pictures.
--The Last Tycoon, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1941

The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since.
--Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg, 1987

It was the saddest story I have ever heard.
--The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford, 1927

Although she herself was ill enough to justify being in bed had she been a person weak minded enough to give up, Rose Sayer could see that her brother, the Reverend Samuel Sayer, was far more ill.
--The African Queen, by C.S. Forester, 1935

"The Signora had no business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all."
--A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster, 1908

"The cow is there," said Ansell, lighting a match and holding it out over the carpet.
--The Longest Journey, by E.M. Forster, 1907

- G -

On the fifteenth of may, in the Jungle of Nool,
In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
He was splashing...enjoying the jungle's great joys...
When Horton the elephant heard a small noise.
--Horton Hears a Who!, by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), 1954

When you're traeling in India--especially through holy sites and Ashrams--you see a lot of people wearing beads around their necks.
--Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006

This is the story of a group of people who had a bizzare and unexpected thing happen to them.
--The Cabal, by Ellen Gilchrist, 2000

Freddy Harwood sat in his office at his bookstore in Berkeley, California, with his feet up on the desk and chewed the edge of his coffee cup.
--Drunk With love, by Ellen Gilchrist, 1986

When I was in the third grade I knew a boy who had to have fourteen shots in the stomach as the result of a squirrel bite.
--Victory Over Japan, by Ellen Gilchrist, 1984

An extraordinary thing happened today.
--The Diary of a Madman, by Nikolai Gogol, 1915

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.
--Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, 1954

The Year that Buttercup was born the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.
--The Princess Bride, by William Goldman, 1973

The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
--The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, 1908

There is an old legend that somewhere in the world every man has his double.
--The Tenth Man, by Graham Greene, 1985

To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to have a guiding principle.
--Ordinary People, by Judith Guest, 1976

- H -

Halfway down a bystreet of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.
--The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

If he had his way, peter McDermott thought, he would have fired the chief house detective long ago.
--Hotel, by Arthur Hailey, 1965

At half-past six on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with difficulty.
--Airport, by Arthur Hailey, 1968

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting V under the more flexible v of his mouth.
--The Maltese Falcon, by Dashell Hammett, 1930

The schoolmaster was leaving the village and everybody seemed sorry.
--Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, 1895

Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
--Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein, 1961

Our troop had been up in the High Sierras that day and we were late getting back.
--Farmer in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein, 1950

It was love at first sight.
--Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, 1955

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
--A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, 1929

The strange thing was, he said, how they screamed every night at midnight.
--In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway, 1925

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty four days now without taking a fish.
--The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway, 1951

"The marvelous thing is that it's painless," he said.
--The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway, 1927

Then there was the bad weather.
--A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway, 1964

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.
--Dune, by Frank Herbert, 1965

I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.
--Demian, by Herman Hesse, 1925

The day had gone by just as days go by.
--Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse, 1929

It was my destiny to join in a great experience.
--The Journey to the East, by Herman Hesse, 1961

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin's son, grew up with his friend Govinda.
--Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, 1951

On the second day of January, windswept and bright, a half-blood seminole named Billy Tigertail dumped a dead body in the Lost-mans River.
--Nature Girl, by Carl Hiaasen, 2006

When you are getting on in years (but not ill, of course), you get very sleepy at times, and the hours seem to pass like lazy cattle moving across a landscape.
--Goodbye, Mr. Chips, by James Hilton, 1934

Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had.
--The Lost Horizon, by James Hilton, 1933

It was three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and ninteen days ago today that the citizens of Paris were awakened by the pealing of all the bells in the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town.
--The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo, 1831

An hour before sunset, on the evening of a day in the beginning of October, a man traveling on foot entered the little town of D---.
--Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, 1862

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.
--Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, 1932

- I -

Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.
--The World According to Garp, by John Irving, 1978

- J -

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
--The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, 1881

The evening his master died he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins.
--The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, 2003

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them.
--Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong, 1973

- K -

A cool heavenly breeze took possession of him.
--The last temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1960

I first met him in Piraeus.
--Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1952

It has been a quiet week in lake Wobegon.
--Leaving Home, by Garrison Keillor, 1987

They're out there.
--One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, 1962

Dr. Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on..
--Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys, 1966

Nobody was really suprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.
--Carrie, by Stephen King, 1974

Not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.
--Cujo, by Stephen King, 1981

There it was.
--Beggars Ride, by Nancy Kress, 1996

- L -

He rolled the cigarette in his lips, liking the taste of the tobacco, squinting his eyes against the sun glare.
--Hondo, by Louis L'amour, 1953

The ranch house on Malibu was a low-roofed adobe with a porch across the front corner-to-corner.
--The Californians, by Louis L'amour, 1974

Everyone knows how they hung there on the crosses, and who they were that stood gathered around him.
--Barabbas, by Pär Lagerkvist, 1951

The truth is, if old Major Dover had not dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would have never come to Thurgoods at all.
--Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carré, 1974

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
--To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, 1960

This is the first page of the Book of the Dark, written some six hundred years ago in Berila, on Enlad:
--The Finder, by Ursula K. LeGuin, 2001

Her father's ancestors had owned a wide, rich domain on the wide, rich island of Way.
--Dragonfly, by Ursula K. LeGuin, 2001

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.
--The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin, 1969

It was a dark and stormy night.
--A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle, 1962 (you were thinking Snoopy, perhaps?)

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.
--The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis, 1950

Once there was a boy called Eustace Ckarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
--The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis, 1952

In the last days of Narnia, far up beyond Lantern Wastee and close beside the great waterfall, there lived an Ape.
--The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, 1956

On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky.
--Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, 1920

The driver of the wagon swaying through the forest and swamp of Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen.
--Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis, 1925

Elmer Gantry was drunk.
--Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis, 1927

The handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its guilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies' Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.
--It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis, 1935

I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the litle blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.
--How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn, 1940

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
--The Call of the Wild, by Jack London, 1903

All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.
--The Star Rover, by Jack London, 1914

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway.
--White Fang, by Jack London, 1915

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