Bookends of Brilliance

Now, free from them all, for good, he could be what he wanted to be. He’d stand or fall alone. This thought both terrified and excited him as he contemplated life in Amsterdam. Irvine Welsh , Trainspotting This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an...

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First. Bret Easton Ellis , American Psycho This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series expl...

It was the photograph of Joe. She'd taken it from Molly Beth's valise. Taken it out of the frame. Trimmed it with scissors to fit my pocket. On the back she had written her telephone number. But I didn't need that. I had already committed it to memory. Lee Child , Killing Floor This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a...

"It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance." Diana Gabaldon , Outlander This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of literary openings and closings. Just as a sym...

"His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in little while, he too, like Rusty Regan would be sleeping the big sleep. On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig and I never saw her again." Raymond Chandler, The_Big_Sleep This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance:...

"Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast." Celeste Ng , Everything I Never Told You This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an en...

"All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place." Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brill...

"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him." Graham Greene , Brighton Rock This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of literary openings and closings....

"The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room." Sylvia Plath , The Bell Jar This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and...

"The circus arrives without warning." Erin Morgenstern , The Night Circus This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of literary openings and closings. Just as a symphony's first note sets the ton...

"For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred." Albert Camus , The Stranger This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilli...

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. J. R. R. Tolkien , The Hobbit This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a coll...

"Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision." Virginia Woolf , To The Lighthouse This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of literary openings and closings....

I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg Airport. Cold November rains drenched the earth. lending everything the gloomy air of a Flemish landscape: the ground crew in waterproofs, a flag atop a BMW billboard. So - Germany again. Norwegian Wood ( Haruki Murakami ) This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brill...

"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." Vladimir Nabokov , from "Lolita" This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an...

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.“ Franz_Kafka , Metamorphosis This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of lit...

"He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was." Oscar Wilde , from "Picture Of Dorian Gray" This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series explori...

"Dark spruce forest frowned on either side of the frozen waterway.“ Jack London , from "White Fang" This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of literary openings and closings. Just as a symphony...

„Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and...

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.“ Albert Camus , from "The Stranger" This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox....

„I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.“ Emily Brontë , from Wuthering Heights This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Ope...

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God." John Irving , from "A Prayer for Owen Meany" This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings...

„But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.“ Emma (Jane Austen) This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. B...

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina" This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging podcast series exploring the art and impact of literary openings and closings. Just as a...

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." James Joyce, The Dead This captures yet another profound revelation from 'Bookends of Brilliance: Exploring Literary Openings and Closings,' a collection curated exclusively by Cala Vox. Bookends of Brilliance is an engaging...