Opening Lines Quotes

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

It's a sunny, woodsy day in Lumberton, so get those chainsaws out...

I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm - Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the Black Market. We'd run anything, if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay...

This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania. These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?

What am I working on? Uhhh... I'm working on something that'll change the world and human life as we know it.

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

I'd never given much thought to how I would die. But dying in the place of someone I love seems like a good way to go.

Are you watching closely?

Saigon. Shit! I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle...

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink...

Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jewelled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden…

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on, you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be 'Sir!' Do you maggots understand this?

God will forgive them. He'll forgive them and allow them into Heaven. I can't live with that.

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Way out west there was this fella I wanna tell ya about. Goes by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least that was the handle his loving parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. See, this Lebowski, he called himself ‘The Dude.’

There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.