100 Best First Lines From Novels

Also by American Book Review. Here are some:

1. Call me Ishmael. ~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. ~ Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

10. I am an invisible man. ~ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. ~Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. ~ Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

24. 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. ~ Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

28. Mother died today. ~ Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

32. Where now? Who now? When now? ~ Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. ~ Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. ~ C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

59. It was love at first sight. ~ Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

64. 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)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. ~ L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. ~ Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

The whole list is here.

Stupidest Things I've Said: Part#2

Two shops next to each other. One sells meat, and the other sells coffee. I am walking toward them while chatting with my friend.

I enter a shop without looking at the sign:

Me: "Hi, can I have a pound of Turkish coffee, please?"

The Butcher (freezes while wielding a big knife and attempting to hack a chunk of meat) : ...

Staying Awake

Twilight...the hours before daybreak are always haunting.

The stillness of the air lulls me into that suspended state between sleep and awakening. My body rests while my mind flutters like a baby sensing the moment of birth closing by. I gaze at the sky, and my cousin's face comes vividly to me. I smile inwardly. I remember her animated voice, and I replay the conversations we had at this hour of dusk years ago over and over.

We were two small girls wrapped up in blankets on the roof of her family's house. The house, situated on a small hill in the city of Hoson, was surrounded by fields of olive, grape, and apple trees. We would spend the night eating green almonds, peaches, labneh sandwiches, and drinking tongue-burning tea.

We would gaze at the night sky and wait breathlessly to catch a falling star. The cold would sting our faces, but we would continue talking about our dreams, our hopes, and our little adventures. The moon would rise high, the trees would bathe in a soft glow, the earth would sigh, the lights of streets would turn off one by one, and we would be awake still.

The first rays of light would caress our faces and warm us through and through. We would go downstairs then and crash on our beds and sleep peacefully.

I heard her voice again yesterday. I was sitting at my desk in LA, and she was sitting on her couch in Duabi. I looked at the clock on the wall. "What time is it in Dubai now?" I asked. I heard her smile through thousands of miles and wires. "It is 4 AM in the morning," she replied.

Photo by catmadongam.

Um..Evolution Theories?

A little girl asked her mother: How did the human race appear?

The mother answered: God made Adam and Eve, they had children, and so was all mankind made.

Two days later, she asked her father the same question. The father answered:
Many years ago, there were monkeys from which the human race has developed.

The confused girl returned to her mother and said: Mom, how is it possible that you told me that the human race was created by God, and Papa says that they were developed from monkeys?

The mother answered: Well dear, it is very simple. I told you about the origin of my side of the family while your father told you about the origin of his side...

For Noodle Lovers

Shinyokohama Raamen Museum is a paradise for noodle lovers, but not just because of the informative exhibits of the history of instant ramen noodles; the centerpiece here is the basement, which contains a recreation of 1950s-era Tokyo done in incredible detail, complete with operating branches of 10 famous ramen joints.

Wikipedia

To read more about it, check this interesting article here.

Photo source: Flickr. Please click on each photo to go to its original page.