Literature Flashcards
(131 cards)
1
Q
A screaming comes across the sky
A
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
2
Q
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
A
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877)
3
Q
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
A
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
4
Q
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen
A
George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
5
Q
I am an invisible man
A
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
6
Q
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.
A
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
7
Q
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
A
Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)
8
Q
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
A
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
9
Q
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.
A
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
10
Q
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
A
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
11
Q
This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
A
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)
12
Q
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
A
Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
13
Q
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
A
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
14
Q
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
A
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
15
Q
It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
A
Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)
16
Q
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
A
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)
17
Q
124 was spiteful.
A
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
18
Q
Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
A
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605)
19
Q
Mother died today.
A
Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942)
20
Q
I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man
A
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864)
21
Q
All this happened, more or less.
A
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
22
Q
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
A
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
23
Q
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
A
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
24
Q
It was a pleasure to burn.
A
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
25
A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)
26
I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
27
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)
28
It was love at first sight.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)
29
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
30
You better not never tell nobody but God.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)
31
"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)
32
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)
33
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.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)
34
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)
35
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)
36
He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.
Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)
37
They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
38
Like most people I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle: it didn’t matter what. She was in the white corner and that was that.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
39
All stories are love stories.
Eureka Street, Robert McLiam Wilson
40
Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler
41
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
42
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson
43
But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction.
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolfe
44
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
45
The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
46
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
47
1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
48
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
49
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
50
'Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
51
This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
he Princess Bride, William Goldman
52
If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.
A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket
53
This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.
Breakfast of Champions,Kurt Vonnegut
54
Amergo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
55
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
2001 - A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
56
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 being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells
57
Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all.
The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty
58
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
59
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte.
60
My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
61
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.
Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia , Arthur Conan Doyle
62
All this happened, more or less.
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
63
The primroses were over.
Watership Down , Richard Adams
64
Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
65
Marley was dead, to begin with.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
66
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
67
I was running away. I was running away from England, from my childhood, from the winter, from a sequence of untidy, unattractive love-affairs, from the few sticks of furniture and jumble of over-worn clothes that my London life had collected around me…
Ian Fleming, The Spy Who Loved Me
68
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
69
On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night
70
Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.
PG Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkin
71
Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.
Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
72
It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.
Roald Dahl, Matilda
73
I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
74
The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain
It, Stephen King
75
We moved into our flat in Littlemead, in the tiny Sussex town of Nutley, in the South of England in 1987.
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
76
Nobody died that year
Renata Adler, Speedboat
77
It was a dark and stormy night…
Paul Clifford, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
| A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine l'Engle
78
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known (closing line)
A Tale of Two Cities
79
The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980)
80
The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (1993)
81
Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.
High Rise by J.G. Ballard
82
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 - Fight Club
83
The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.
Stephen King, The Dark Tower.
84
There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire.
Neil Gaiman, Stardust
85
When he was nearly 13, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
86
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
87
My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons. He sent me to Emanuel College in Cambridge at fourteen years old, where I resided three years, and applied myself close to my studies; but the charge of maintaining me, although I had a very scanty allowance, being too great for a narrow fortune, I was bound apprentice to Mr. James Bates, an eminent surgeon in London, with whom I continued four years.
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathon Swift
88
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
| By Robert Louis Stevenson
89
Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.
Invisible Cities
| By Italo Calvino
90
I am extremely concerned, my dearest friend, for the disturbances that have happened in your family. I know how it must hurt you to become the subject of the public talk: and yet, upon an occasion so generally known, it is impossible but that whatever relates to a young lady, whose distinguished merits have made her the public care, should engage every body's attention. I long to have the particulars from yourself; and of the usage I am told you receive upon an accident you could not help; and in which, as far as I can learn, the sufferer was the aggressor.
Clarissa, Samuel Richardson
91
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.
Tristam Shandy, Laurence Stern
92
On the 24th of February 1815, the lookout at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, coming from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas
93
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
94
This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
95
Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the secret of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her glance? Was the good or the evil genius dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was the effect that of unrest rather than of undisturbed charm? Why was the wish to look again felt as coercion and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?
Daniel Deronda, George Elliot
96
Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among mus) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and I which I shall speak of in its proper place.
The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
97
There were four of us—George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were—bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.
Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome
98
The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
99
In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo.
Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
100
Except for the Marabar Caves – and they are twenty miles off – the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.
A Passage to India, EM Forster
101
A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
102
While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, 'achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters'. His novels sold fifteen thousand copies in their first year and were read by the people whose opinion John Boot respected.
Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
103
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
104
There is a photograph in existence of Aunt Sadie and her six children sitting round the tea-table at Alconleigh. The table is situated, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, in the hall, in front of a huge open fire of logs. Over the chimney-piece plainly visible in the photograph hangs an entrenching tool, with which, in 1915, Uncle Matthew had whacked to death eight Germans one by one as they crawled out of a dug-out. It is still covered with blood and hairs, an object of fascination to us as children.
The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
105
The unusual events described in this chronicle occured in 194- at Oran.
The Plague, Albert Camus
106
3 May. Bistritz. Left Munich at 8.35pm, on 1 May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46pm, but train was an hour late.
Dracula, Bram Stoker
107
Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
108
The boys, as they talked to the girls from Marcia Blaine School, stood on the far side of their bicycles holding the handlebars, which established a protective fence of bicycle between the sexes, and the impression that at any moment the boys were likely to be away.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
109
The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o'clock.
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
110
WHY IS LONDON like Budapest?
A. Because it is two cities divided by a river.
Good morning! Let me introduce myself. My name is Dora Chance. Welcome to the wrong side of the tracks.
Wise Children, Angela Carter
111
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
112
‘Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des estates, de la famille Buonaparte.’ ” (Well, my prince, Genoa and Lucca are now no more than possessions, estates, of the Buonaparte family.)
War and Peace, Tolstoy
113
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Call of the Wild, Jack London
114
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Hardy
115
One hot spring evening, just as the sun was going down, two men appeared at Patriarch's Ponds.
The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov
116
They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up in the hall before I can catch them.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey.
117
On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
118
When Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread, till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to mere chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
Far From the Madding Crowd, Hardy
119
One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy
120
A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.
The Return of the Native, Hardy
121
Night is generally my time for walking. In the summer I often leave home early in the morning, and roam about fields and lanes all day, or even escape for days or weeks together; but, saving in the country, I seldom go out until after dark, though, Heaven be thanked, I love its light and feel the cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth, as much as any creature living.
The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens
122
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
Great Expectations, Dickens
123
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
Bleak House, Dickens
124
NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!
Hard Times, Dickens
125
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
Little Dorrit, Dickens
126
There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere
Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens
127
An ancient English Cathedral Tower? How can the ancient English Cathedral tower be here! The well-known massive gray square tower of its old Cathedral? How can that be here!
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens
128
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women.
Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell
129
Edith!” said Margaret, gently, “Edith!”
But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep.
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
130
In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.
Our Mutual Friend, Dickens
131
I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time.
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
