Quotes tagged ‘first lines of books’

“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.”

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez, amazon.com

“Call me Ishmael.”

— Herman Melville, amazon.com

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com

“A WOLF, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf’s right to eat him.”

— Aesop, amazon.com

“Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.”

— Dante Alighieri, amazon.com

“IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, amazon.com

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

— Jane Austen, amazon.com

“Wars and a man I sing— an exile driven on by Fate, he was the first to flee the coast of Troy, destined to reach Lavinian shores and Italian soil, yet many blows he took on land and sea from the gods above— thanks to cruel Juno’s relentless rage— and many losses he bore in battle too, before he coul…”

— Virgil, amazon.com

“When I was seventeen and in full obedience to my heart’s most urgent commands, I stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moment’s time ruined everything I loved— I loved so deeply, and when the love was interrupted, when the incorporeal body of love shrank back in terror and my own body…”

— Scott Spencer, amazon.com

“THE AMERICAN ACADEMY of Emergency Medicine confirms it: Each year, between one and two dozen adult US males are admitted to ERs after having castrated themselves.”

— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com

“SQUIRE Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen…”

— Robert Louis Stevenson, amazon.com