“Choke” by that guy that wrote “Fight Club”.
Here’s mine:
“‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die, Ho Ji! Ho Ji!”
Chuck Palahniuk.
As for yours, Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie?
Northern Piper’s is Kim, by Rudyard Kipling
Correct.
On Christmas eve, many years ago, I lay quietly in my bed.
Peter de Vries, I Hear America Swinging. (I had to dig for that one - I knew I’d read it, but my mind went blank over the title … )
How’s about this one …
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
Here’s on from my book swap. I’ll give you the first two sentences.
“Slowly, she approached the sea. Her bare feet could feel the pulsing of the waves as they moved against the sand, gently depositing moreofferings of life before her, as if starfish and empty shells could atone for what had been taken”
I’m prepared to be very impressed.
As a side note to Steve - I hope you understood my anwer to your question
“Lolita.”
…oops. (Now, if it had been opening paragraph, I would have posted the entirety of the best. Opening paragraph. Ever.
That has got to be P.G Wodehouse, and one of the Jeeves books. Other than that, I don’t know, but hey; surely I get half-marks or something?
Here’s one, with a scrap of dialogue included, from my homeland:
Friday, in the evening, the landlady shouted up the stairs:
‘Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Sacred Heart. Boy, there’s two gentlemen to see you’.
Try this one. Non-fiction.
Who thought anyone here would read Bredan Behan? Borstal Boy
You’re correct, sir. Here’s an easy one:
The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock.
Imagine that you have to break someone’s arm.
[I’ll give you a clue. The author of this novel is also an actor.]
I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.
Close enough - The Mating Season, in my opinion one of the best of the Jeeves books. (Edged only by the one that has Gussie Fink-Nottle awarding the school prizes, name of which escapes me at this hour.)
How about:
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Kinda easy…reading it right now.
“That was when I saw the Pendulum”
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Ecco, of course. One of my favorites.
Try this one:
War is a matter of vital importance to the state; a matter of life or death, the road either to survival or ruin
How about this: