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Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, General Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude Gentle reader, I was born upon the water - not upon the salt and angry ocean, but upon the fresh and rapid-flowing river. It was in a floating sort of box, called a lighter, and upon the river Thames, at low water, when I first smelt the mud. This lighter was manned (an expression amounting to bullism, if not construed KIND-ly) by my father, my mother, and your humble servant. My father had the sole charge - he was monarch of the deck: my mother, of course, was queen, and I was the heir-apparent. - Captain Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful [1834] (ch. 1) Mr Nicodemus Easy was a gentleman who lived down in Hampshire; he was a married man, and in very easy circumstances. Most couples find it very easy to have a family, but not always quite so easy to maintain them. Mr Easy was not at all uneasy on the latter score, as he had no children; but he was anxious to have them, as most people covet what they cannot obtain. - Captain Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy [1836] (ch. 1) If I cannot narrate a life of adventurous and daring exploits, fortunately I have no heavy crimes to confess: and, if I do not rise in the estimation of the reader for acts of gallantry and devotion in my country's cause, at least I may claim the merit of zealous and persevering continuance in my vocation. We are all of us variously gifted from Above, and he who is content to walk, instead of to run, on his allotted path through life, although he may not so rapidly attain the goal, has the advantage of not being out of breath upon his arrival. - Captain Frederick Marryat, Peter Simple [1834] (ch. 1) There is perhaps no event in the annals of our history which excited more alarm at the time of its occurrence, or has since been the subject of more general interest, than the Mutiny at the Nore, in the year 1797. Forty thousand men, to whom the nation looked for defence from its surrounding enemies, and in steadfast reliance upon whose bravery it lay down every night in tranquillity, - men who had dared everything for their king and country, and in whose breasts patriotism, although suppressed for the time, could never be extinguished, - irritated by ungrateful neglect on the one hand, and by seditious advisers on the other, turned the guns which they had so often manned in defence of the English flag against their own countrymen and their own home, and, with all the acrimony of feeling ever attending family quarrels, seemed determined to sacrifice the nation and themselves, rather than listen to the dictates of reason and of conscience. - Captain Frederick Marryat, The King's Own [1830] (ch. 1) I am about to write a very curious history, as the reader will agree with me when he has read this book. We have more than one narrative of people being cast away upon desolate islands, and being left to their own resources, and no works are perhaps read with more interest; but I believe I am the first instance of a boy being left alone upon an uninhabited island. Such was, however, the case; and now I shall tell my own story. - Captain Frederick Marryat, The Little Savage [1848] (ch. 1) Only my father saw me to the Asheville station that Sunday morning in 1912. Mother had gotten up early to fix us a hot breakfast. It was one of those moments that would be as sharp and real in my mind years later as it was that January morning: that particular look of love and longing in mother's eyes; the smell of the starch in her crisp white apron; the hissing of the pine resin in the big iron stove; the lake of melted butter in the steaming mound of hominy grits on my plate. - Catherine Marshall (Sarah Catherine Wood Marshall), Christy [1967] (ch. 1) On that November afternoon when I first saw Cutter Gap, the crumbling chimney of Alice Henderson's cabin stood stark against the sky, blackened by the flames that had consumed the house. The encroaching field grass and chickweed and pennyroyal had all but obliterated even the outline of the foundations. - Catherine Marshall (Sarah Catherine Wood Marshall), Christy [1967] (prologue) The day I became a genius I locked the keys in the car with the motor running. - Bonnie Marson, Sleeping with Schubert [2004] My suffering left me sad and gloomy. - Yann Martel, Life of Pi [2001] (pt. 1, ch. 1) On the night it happened--July 5--the sun didn't set until 8:33. - Lee Martin, The Bright Forever [2005] Lieutenant Sutch was the first of General Feversham's guests to reach Broad Place. He arrived about five o'clock on an afternoon of sunshine in mid June, and the old red-brick house, lodged on a southern slope of the Surrey hills, was glowing from a dark forest depth of pines with the warmth of a rare jewel. - Alfred Edward Woodley (A.E.W.) Mason, The Four Feathers [1902] This mid-May evening was as fresh and fine as any Harry Morgan could recall. Like the plumes of so many warriors, clumps of soft greenery nodded jauntily above such dull red, brown and black roofs as were visible above a line of gray ramparts protecting the heart of Bristol Town. Above the stout twin towers defending Frome Gate a handful of rooks still were circling and cawing and, at this hour, only the loftiest of those turrets designed to protect the city remained gilded by a sun swinging ever lower over the scarlet-tinted Avon River. - F. (Francis) van Wyck Mason, Cutlass Empire [1949] (bk. 1, ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK The clouds darkening Boston Harbor looked so low and ghostlike Sergeant Timothy Bennett guessed snow would soon begin falling. In fact, the jumbled dark roofs and church spires of distant Cambridge were already graying out of sight. - F. (Francis) van Wyck Mason, Stars on the Sea [1940] The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed. - William Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage [1915] (ch. I) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it. I have little story to tell and I end neither with a death nor a marriage. - William Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge [1944] BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK The door opened and Michael Gosselyn looked up. Julia came in. - William Somerset Maugham, Theatre [1937] One evening about eight months ago I met with some college comrades at the lodgings of our friend Louis R. We drank punch and smoked, talked of literature and art, and made jokes like any other company of young men. Suddenly the door flew open, and one who had been my friend since boyhood burst in like a hurricane. - Guy de Maupassant, The Flayed Hand [1880], a short story The village postmaster stood staring at an official envelope that had just been shaken out a mailbag upon the sorting table. It was addressed to himself; and for a few moments his heart beat quicker, with sharp, clean percussions, as if it were trying to imitate the sounds made by two clerks as they plied their stampers on the blocks. Perhaps this envelope contained his fate. - William Babington Maxwell, The Devil's Garden [1913] (ch. 1) BUY VARYING HARE USED BOOK I'm dead. You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty years. Leave me alone. Don't bother me. They want no parts of me and me I don't want no parts of them. Hurry up and get this interview over with. I want to watch Dallas. - James McBride, The Color of Water [1996] (ch. 1) The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. - Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses [1992] See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian [1985] They stood in the doorway and stomped the rain from their boots and swung their hats and wiped the water from their faces. Out in the street the rain slashed through the standing water driving the gaudy red and green colors of the neon signs to wander and seethe and rain danced on the steel tops of the cars parked along the curb. - Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain [1998] (ch. 1) Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you. - Cormac McCarthy, Suttree [1979] When they came south of Grant County Boyd was not much more than a baby and the newly formed county they'd named Hidalgo was itself little older than the child. In the country they'd quit lay the bones of a sister and the bones of his maternal grandmother. The new county was rich and wild. You could ride clear to Mexico and not strike a crossfence. - Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing [1994] (ch. 1) Displaying page 56 of 95 for this topic: << Prev Next >> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 [56] 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95
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