#sentence

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 scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#first-sentence #opening-lines #business

My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o'clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old. ↗

— Robertson Davies

#business

For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilization progressed. ↗

— H.G. Wells

#the-war-of-the-worlds #business

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#life

They say that just before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#first-sentence #death

I often dream about the Dolphin Hotel. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#dreams

The way other people fantasize about surprise inheritances, firts-glance love, and endless white empyreal pastures, Mitchell dreamed of an erupting supervolcano that would bury North America under a foot of hot ash. ↗

— Nathaniel Rich

#dreams

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. ↗

— Katherine Dunn

#chicken #family #first-sentence #freaks #family

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. ↗

— J.D. Salinger

#holden #parenting

The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized! ↗

— Roland Barthes

#clearly #deal #ending #entire #great