"Anthem" by Ayn Rand

Chapter 1:

It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!

But this is not the only sin upon us. We have committed a greater crime, and for this crime there is no name. What punishment awaits us if it be discovered we know not, for no such crime has come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for it.


It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands still in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper. We are alone here un-der the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgres-sion and the root of all evil. But we have broken many laws. And now there is nothing here save our one body, and it is strange to see only two legs stretched on the ground, and on the wall before us the shadow of our one head.

The walls are cracked and water runs upon them in thin threads without sound, black and glistening as blood. We stole the candle from the larder of the Home of the Street Sweepers. We shall be sentenced to ten years in the Palace of Corrective Detention if it be discovered. But this matters not. It matters only that the light is precious and we should not waste it to write when we need it for that work which is our crime. Nothing matters save the work, our secret, our evil, our precious work. Still, we must also write, for—may the Council have mercy upon us!—we wish to speak for once to no ears but our own.

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"Pride and prejudice" by Jane Austen

Chapter 1

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

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day,"have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"

Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it."

Mr. Bennet made no answer.

"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.

"Youwant to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it."

This was invitation enough.

"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week."

"What is his name?"

"Bingley."

"Is he married or single?"

"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"

"How so? How can it affect them?"

"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."

"Is that his design in settling here?"

"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he mayfall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."

"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party."

"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly havehad my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over  thinking of her own beauty."

"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."

"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood."

"It is more than I engage for, I assure you."

"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merelyon that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for itwill be impossible for usto visit him if you do not."

"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."

"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not abit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humouredas Lydia. But you are always giving herthe preference."

"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters."

"Mr. Bennet, how canyou abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves." 

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"Three Weeks with My Brother" by Nicholas & Micah Sparks

This book came about because of a brochure I received in the mail in the spring of 2002. It was a typical day in the Sparks household. I’d spent a good part of the morning and early afternoon working on my novel Nights in Rodanthe, but it hadn’t gone well and I was struggling to put the day behind me. I hadn’t written as much as I’d intended nor did I have any idea what I would write the following day, so I wasn’t in the best of moods when I finally turned off the computer and called it quits for the afternoon.

It isn’t easy living with an author. I know this because my wife has informed me of this fact, and she did so again that day. To be honest, it’s not the most pleasant thing to hear, and while it would be easy to get defensive, I’ve come to understand that arguing with her about it has never solved anything. So instead of denying it, I’ve learned to take her hands, look her in the eyes, and respond with those three magic words that every woman wants to hear: “You’re right, sweetheart.”

Some people believe that because I’ve been relatively successful as an author, writing must come effortlessly to me. Many people imagine that I “jot down ideas as they come to me” for a few hours each day, then spend the rest of my time relaxing by the pool with my wife while we discuss our next exotic vacation.

In reality, our lives aren’t much different from that of your average middle-class family. We don’t have a staff of servants or travel extensively, and while we do have a pool in the backyard surrounded by pool chairs, I can’t remember a time that the chairs have ever been used, simply because neither my wife nor I have much time during the day to sit around doing nothing. For me, the reason is my work. For my wife, the reason is family. Or more specifically, kids. We have five children, you see. Not a big number if we were pioneers, but these days it’s enough to raise a few eyebrows. Last year, when my wife and I were on a trip, we happened to strike up a conversation with another young couple. One topic led to another, and finally the subject of kids came up. That couple had two kids and mentioned their names; my wife rattled off the names of ours.

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"The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks

Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?
The sun has come up and I am sitting by a window that is foggy with the breath of a life,,,. gone by. I'm a sight this morning: two shirts,heavy pants, a scarf wrapped twice around my neck  and  tucked into a thick  sweater  knitted  by  my  daughter thirty birthdays ago. The thermostat in my room is  set as high  as it will go , and a smaller space heater sits directly behind me. It clicks and groans and spews hot air like a fairy-tale dragon , and still my body shivers  with  a  cold  that  will  never  go away, a cold that has been eighty years in the making.

Eighty years, I think sometimes, and despite my own acceptance of my age, it still amazes me that I haven't been warm since George Bush was president.I wonder if this is how it is for everyone my age.

My life ?  It  isn't  easy   to explain  .  It has not been the rip-roaring spectacular Ifancied it would be , but  neither  have  I  burrowed  around  with  the  gophers. I suppose  it  has  most  resembled  a  blue-chip  stock:  fairly  stable ,  more  ups than downs , and gradually  trending  upward  over  time .  A good buy , a lucky Buy , and  I've  learned  that not  everyone  can  say  this  about  his life .  But  do not be misled .  I am  nothing  special  ; of  this I am sure .  I  am  a  common man with common thoughts , and I've led  a  common life . There are no monuments Dedicated  to  me  and  my  name  will  soon be forgotten,but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.

The  romantics  would  call  this  a  love  story , the cynics  would  call  it  a  tragedy.  In my mind it's a little bit of both , and no matter how you choose to view it in the end, it does not change the fact that it  involves  a  great  deal  of  my  life  and  the  path  I've chosen to follow . I have no complaints about my path  and  the places it  has taken me; enough  complaints  to  fill a circus tent about  other things, maybe,  but the path I've chosen has always been the right one, and I wouldn't have had it  any other way.

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"A Walk to Remember" by Nicholas Sparks

In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near Morehead City, was a place like many other small southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their cars whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in the Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal Waterway. Only three channels came in on the television, though television was never important to those of us who grew up there. Instead our lives were centered around the churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits alone. They went by names like the Fellowship Hall Christian Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church of Sunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist churches.

When I was growing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination around, and there were Baptist churches on practically every corner of town, though each considered itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists, Congregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Independent Baptists . . . well, you get the picture.

Back then, the big event of the year was sponsored by the Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to know-in conjunction with the local high school. Every year they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort Playhouse, which was actually a play that had been written by Hegbert Sullivan, a minister who'd been with the church since Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasn't that old, but he was old enough that you could almost see through the guy's skin. It was sort of clammy all the time, and translucent-kids would swear they actually saw the blood flowing through his veins-and his hair was as white as those bunnies you see in pet stores around Easter.Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel, because he didn't want to keep on performing that old Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. In his mind Scrooge was a heathen, who came to his redemption only because he saw ghosts, not angels-and who was to say whether they'd been sent by God, anyway? 

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"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain

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. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round-- more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.

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The Journey of the Noble Gnarble

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"Guts" by Chuck Palahniuk

Inhale.

Take in as much air as you can. This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.

A friend of mine, when he was 13 years old he heardabout "pegging." This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. Stimulate the prostategland hard enough, and the rumor is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off. He goes out to buya carrot and some petroleum jelly. To conduct a little private research. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkout counter, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyer belt toward the grocery store cashier. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned.

So my friend, he buys milk and eggs and sugar and a carrot, all the ingredients for a carrot cake. And Vaseline.

Like he's going home to stick a carrot cake up his butt.

At home, he whittles the carrot into a blunt tool. Heslathers it with grease and grinds his ass down on it. Then, nothing. No orgasm. Nothing happens except it hurts.

Then, this kid, his mom yells it's suppertime. She says to come down, right now.
He works the carrot out and stashes the slippery, filthy thing in the dirty clothes under his bed. 

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"Lullaby" by Chuck Palahniuk

Prologue

At first, the new owner pretends he never looked at the living room floor. Never really looked. Not the first time they toured the house. Not when the inspector showed them through it. They'd measured rooms and told the movers where to set the couch and piano, hauled in everything they owned, and never really stopped to look at the living room floor. They pretend.

Then on the first morning they come downstairs, there it is, scratched in the white-oak
floor:

GET OUT

Some new owners pretend a friend has done it as a joke. Others are sure it's because they didn't tip the movers.

A couple of nights later, a baby starts to cry from inside the north wall of the master bedroom.

This is when they usually call. And this new owner on the phone is not whatour hero, Helen Hoover Boyle, needs this morning.
This stammering and whining.

What she needs is a new cup of coffee and a seven-letter word for "poultry." She needs to hear what's happening on the police scanner. Helen Boyle snaps her fingers until her secretary looks in from the outer office. Our hero wraps both hands around the mouthpiece and points the telephone receiver at the scanner, saying, "It's a code nine-eleven."

And her secretary, Mona, shrugs and says, "So?"
So she needs to look it up in the codebook.
And Mona says, "Relax. It's a shoplifter." 

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"Invisible Monsters" by Chuck Palahniuk

Chapter 1:

Where you're supposed to be is some big West Hills wedding reception in a big manor house with flower arrangements and stuffed mushrooms all over the house. This is called scene setting: where everybody is, who's alive, who's dead. This is Evie Cottrell's big wedding reception moment. Evie is standing halfway down the big staircase in the manor house foyer, naked inside what'sleft of her wedding dress, still holding her rifle.
Me, I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs but only in a physical way. My mind is, I don't know where.Nobody's all-the-way dead yet, but let's just say the clock is ticking.

Not that anybody in this big drama is a real alive per-son, either. You can trace everything about Evie Cottrell's look back to some television commercial for an organic shampoo, except right now Evie's wedding dress is burned down to just the hoopskirt wires orbiting her hips and just the little wire skeletons of all the silk flowers that were in her hair. And Evie's blonde hair, her big, teased-up, backcombed rainbow in every shade of blonde blown up with hairspray, well, Evie's hair is burned off, too.The only other character here is Brandy Alexander, who's laid out, shotgunned, at the bottom of the staircase, bleeding to death.

What I tell myself is the gush of red pumping out of Brandy's bullet hole is less like blood than it's some sociopolitical tool. The thing about being cloned from all those shampoo commercials, well, that goes for me and Brandy Alexander, too. Shotgunning anybody in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the world. We're all such products.

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"Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk

Chapter 1

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. For a long time though,Tyler and I were best friends.
People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden.

The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my throat,Tyler says "We really won't die."

With my tongue I can feel the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun. Most of the
noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there's the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes
because it travels so fast. To make a silencer, you just drill holes in the barrel of the gun, a lot
of holes. This lets the gas escape and slows the bullet to below the speed of sound.

You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand.

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