"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

"The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended."

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard"

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."

"All this happened, more or less."

"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 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."

"It was the day my grandmother exploded"

"Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father."

"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."

"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen."

"You better not never tell nobody but God."

"There was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always."