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.
Hale knew, before he had been in --------- three hours, that they meant to murder him.
[To leave in the name of the place would be too much of a giveaway!]
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Call me Ishmael.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.
When Mr ------- -------- announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in --------.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
You better not never tell nobody but God.
------- ----------, 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.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
------ was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of 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 ------, 'without pictures or conversation?'.
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
-------, light of my life, fire of my loins.
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
'What’s it going to be then, eh?'
The play – for Which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.
All children, except one, grow up.
It was the day my grandmother exploded.
Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.
------- ------- was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand.
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
It was love at first sight.
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.
No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
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.
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
All this happened, more or less.
The primroses were over.
Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.
The beginning is simple to mark.
For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.
Marley was dead, to begin with.
Mother died today.
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.
It was a pleasure to burn.
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
James Joyce - Ulysses
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.
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.
Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
For a long time, I went to bed early.
Marcel Proust - Swann's Way from In Search Of Lost Time