The broken flower drooped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place.
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988)
April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didn't prove there was no America.
Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle (1963)
I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my ___.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
Chicago will be ours!
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906)
But that is the beginning of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866)
She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all.
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (1940)
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
"Okay, baby, hold tight", said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978)
For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)
I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
"Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."
Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)
Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead.
Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to (the title) did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847-48)
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of ___ ___ to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981)
The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)
He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)
He loved Big Brother.
George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
The aircraft rise from the runways of the airport, carrying the remnants of Vaughan's semen to the instrument panels and radiator grilles of a thousand crashing cars, the stances of a million passengers.
J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)
One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet?'
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse- Five (1969)
The old man was dreaming about the lions.
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.
A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (1928)
He heard the ring of steel against steel as a far door clanged shut.
Richard Wright, Native Son (1940)
She's never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she's as he is now!
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895)
It was a fine cry-loud and long-but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.
Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)
Leave me alone for ever.
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)
He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960)
'Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold.' But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled.
Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth (1931)
Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
This stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man. No name can be read there.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)
It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east....
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)