I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt any-
where, nor a chair misplaced. We are alone here and we are dead.
~ Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
It was a pleasure to burn.
~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
~ George Orwell, 1984
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village
that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In
the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white
in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in
the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the
dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the
trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw
the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves,
stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and after-
ward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we
were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other
way
~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Justice? — You get justice in the next world, in this world you
have the law.
~ William Gaddis, A Frolic Of His Own
It began as a mistake.
~ Charles Bukowski, Post Office
In The Arms of a Crazy Life 