randompecans

Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, on the teeth.

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

All this happened, more or less.

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Animal Farm

George Orwell

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

The Stranger

Albert Camus

Mother died today. (Stuart Gilbert translation)Maman died today. (Matthew Ward translation)Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.

The Catcher in the Rye

J. D. Salinger

"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 the truth."

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.