“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.” —The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

“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.”—A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” —Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov

“Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.”—This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” —Ulysses, James Joyce

“This morning I got a note from my aunt asking me to come for lunch.”—The Moviegoer, Walker Percy

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” —The Secret History, Donna Tartt

“My friend Mel McGinnis was talking.” — “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” Raymond Carver