Name book from first lines:

"Horselover Fat's nervous breakdown began the day he got the phonecall from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals. He asked why she wanted them and she said she was going to kill herself. She was calling everyone she knew.......by now she had fifty of them, but she needed thirty of forty more to be on the safe side."

'Valis'Phillip K. Dick

yes, wd,,,your turn-.

OK Another Starter for Ten...
What book starts like this:
"Now , what Ï want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else , and root out everything else......."

You all are so smart and funny ! I knew a couple of the answers, but only because I'm a good guesser, most of the time. "jazz", you really should read "The Exorcist", I read it about a year, prior to the movie's debut, I went to a Catholic school and someone there suggested it. (probably one of the nuns, to scare me into behaving!). When the film came out, people nicknamed me Regan, since I resembled her so much. Plus, I can do an awesome imitation of the devil, when he was a part of Regan.

nice opening lines...Hard Times..by the Boz..
reasoning animals can only be trained by solid facts, too bad facts do not exist...perhaps, that is why rationality is an abstract concept...

Too easy , I know, but what a great opening, I agree.

Name a book or work containing this droll quote from Faust: "Wir sind gewohnt dass die Menschen verhoehnen was sie nicht verstehen"...........

"We are used to seeing that Man despises what he never comphrends"...

[ 09-23-2001: Message edited by: profchallenger1 ]

[ 09-23-2001: Message edited by: profchallenger1 ]

Is it Dr. Faustus by T. Mann?

nope...

A hint, sir!

In this work: Jonathan Small planned to sail on the Esmeralda to a foreign country.....

My instincts are telling me that it's "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift. I don't know why though.
My intellect is Lilliputian this morning.
I have a lovely page of quotations but not that one.

Jonathan Small & Esmeralda? Methinks Holmes is busy with "The Sign of Four"......

and if I'm correct, pass to Bruyere.

Yes muy bien, my partner in crime...please Bruyere...do us the honors with a query...

An orthographically challenged quadripede

Aha!!!
"Tyger, Tyger, burning bright ,
In the forests of the night..."William Blake.
Well it was a thought....

Not bad, but not it. Think of a centennial forest.

Winnie the Pooh! He couldn't spell and lived in Hundred Acre Wood! lol!

Chacal it was staring us all in the face, Jazz must have been otherwise occupied as I know he's a Pooh fan.
Your turn!

Ok team. First line from a famous adventure story which has been made into a film a few times.

'It is a curious thing that at my age-I shall never see sixty again, I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history'.

Robinson Crusoe?

No, it's not Robinson Crusoe.

Actually, it's really "It is a curious thing that at my age-fifty-five last birthday-I should find myself taking up a pen to try and write a history." The first sentence of H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines". I have both the book and the 50's film with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr. Okay, now who wrote a novel (NOT Mark Twain!) with a Mississippi steamboat as the setting? Hint: he was once an American sailor. tjoeb};>

Sorry tjoeb, that was careless of me. Not that it threw you!