Books ~

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
"Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort…..."

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
"But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music…..."

All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
"In the days to follow the hacendado would come up to the corral..."

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
"Everything failed to subdue me..."

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
"Imagine the silence now, in that place which is no-place..."

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
"When they leave the church, the last light is vanishing into the sky..."

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
"He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief..."

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
"How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false...."

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
"If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora..."

Empire Falls, Richard Russo
"Being in high school, Miles had no idea there were girls…..."

Ghostwritten, David Mitchell
"They look so fine, and young, and wrapped up in each other...."

Gould's Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan
"But Art is a punitive sentence, not a birthright…..."

Gould's Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan
"Then, perhaps overcome with nostalgia for happier times..."

Gould's Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan
"I hoped she did not dislike me, but I was under no illusions that she might remember me in any way fondly..."

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
"I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing where I was going to..."

Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people…..."

Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"So what is the answer? How can you stand your ground…..."

Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"As for the leaflets reporting the creation of the ROA…..."

Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration?..."

Hard times, Charles Dickens
"In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind’s stock of facts in general was woefully defective…..."

Hard Times, Charles Dickens
"‘My dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind began in reply...."

Hard Times, Charles Dickens
"It was but a hurried parting in a common street..."

Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie
"Looking back on those incidents, he was always appalled by the memory of his passivity..."

Killed at Resaca, Ambrose Bierce
"On foot, from necessity or in deference to his dismounted commander or associates..."

Life is Elsewhere, Milan Kundera
"Revolution and youth are closely allied..."

Life is Elsewhere, Milan Kundera
"The old scholar was watching the noisy young people..."

Life is Elsewhere, Milan Kundera
"Lyrical poetry is a realm in which any statement immediately becomes truth..."

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
"Sometimes… Come on, how often exactly, Bert?..."

Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
"He ran as he’d never run before, with neither hope nor despair...."

May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes
"In the hospital men’s room, as I’m washing my hands..."

Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
"On Saturday nights I would sit by the phone in the lobby…..."

Regeneration, Pat Barker
"She would never know, because he would never tell her...."

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence
"All men dream, but not equally...."

Something to Tell You, Hanif Kureishi
"Later, on my walk, I wondered why I felt I had to be suspicious of ‘normality’...."

Stoner, John Williams
"He buried her beside her husband..."

The Boarded Widow, Ambrose Bierce
"He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and putting the finishing touches to the simple toilet..."

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
"Each failed overture of peace made the next overture less likely to succeed...."

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
"He let the phone slip from his hand and lay crying for a while, silently, shaking the cheap bed..."

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
"A secret always has a strengthening effect upon a newborn friendship..."

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
"For although a man is judged by his actions..."

The Magus, John Fowles
"Like all men not really up to their job, he was a stickler for externals…..."

The Magus, John Fowles
"I knew that on the island one was driven back into the past..."

The Magus, John Fowles
"What was I after all? Near enough what Conchis had had me told: nothing but the net sum of countless wrong turnings..."

The Possibility of an Island, Michel Houellebecq
"Your only chance of survival, if you are sincerely smitten, lies in hiding this fact from the woman you love..."

The Possibility of an Island, Michel Houellebecq
"During the first part of your life, you only become of happiness once you have lost it..."

The Sea, John Banville
"Happiness was different in childhood…..."

The Tailor of Panama, John le Carré
"The embassy’s door was of bulletproof steel lined with a veneer of English oak...."

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
"Act, implores the Ghost of Future Regret.I shan’t give you another chance...."

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell
"The ship rolls and her timbers creak like a barn in a gale...."

Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
"The point was we took this shit very seriously..."

To Rise at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris
"But just as I didn’t want to resent my kids..."

War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy
"He could find no answer, except life’s usual answer…..."

Wolf Border, Sarah Hall
"Were you in love with her?..."

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
"All Hallows Day: grief comes in waves…..."

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
"When a woman withdraws to give birth the sun may be shining..."

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
"Sometimes, when Chapuys has finished digging up Walter’s bones..."

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
"Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know..."