This is a short story I have "written" using only the opening lines of published novels. Tee hee.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. History has been described as one damn thing after another. All this happened, more or less.
It started in mud, as many things do. I was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. For a long time, I went to bed early. Midway along the journey of our life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. The Syrians don't fuck around if they think you're invading their air space. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
I was awake a long time before I remembered that my heart was broken. If I had cared to live, I would have died. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. To have a reason to get up in the morning, it is necessary to possess a guiding principle. Now what I want is, Facts.
I am living once again in the town where I grew up, having returned here several weeks ago in a state of dull torment for which the Germans probably have a word. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.
All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.