Сто лучших первых фраз в мировой литературе / 100 best first lines from novels — 100 книг — стр. 5

Воан умер вчера, в своей последней автокатастрофе.

Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:28

Я сижу в раковине.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:28

– Когда ваша мама была гиком, мои причудки, – говорил папа, – она превращала свои представления с откусыванием куриных голов в настоящее хрустальное чудо, и сами куры к ней льнули, танцевали вокруг, завороженные, вожделеющие.

"When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing."

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:28

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:30

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:30

Это было в то воскресенье, ровно в полдень шериф подъехал к тюрьме с Лукасом Бичемом, хотя весь город (да уж если на то пошло, весь округ) ещё со вчерашнего вечера знал, что Лукас убил белого человека.

It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:31

Я, Тиберий Клавдий Друз Нерон Германик, и прочая, и прочая (не стану докучать вам перечислением всех моих титулов), которого некогда, и не так уж давно, друзья, родные и знакомые называли "идиот Клавдий", или "этот Клавдий", или "Клавдий-заика", или "Клав-Клав-Клавдий", или в лучшем случае "бедный дядя Клавдий", намерен написать историю своей не совсем обычной жизни, начиная с раннего детства, год за годом, пока не достигну того рокового момента, изменившего мою судьбу, когда восемь лет назад, в пятьдесят один год, я попал в — если можно так сказать — золотые сети, из которых до сих пор не могу выпутаться.

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:32

Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:35

Я американец, родился в Чикаго - мрачноватый город этот Чикаго, - держусь независимо - так себя приучил и имею собственное мнение: кто первым постучит, того и впустят; иногда стук в дверь бывает вполне невинный, иногда не очень.

I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:36

Башни Зенита врезались в утреннюю мглу; суровые башни из стали, бетона и камня, несокрушимые, как скала, и лёгкие, как серебряные стрелы.

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:36

I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:37

Он появился на свет с обострённым чувством смешного и врождённым ощущением того, что мир безумен.

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:38

Psychics can see the color of time it's blue.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:39

В городе было двое немых, они всегда ходили вместе.

In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:40

Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another persona shy young man about of 19 years oldwho, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his unclea journalist, fluent in five languageswho himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young mana long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in schoolthat his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:42

Время — не прямая, а отдельное измерение, как измерения в пространстве.
Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:43

Он – потому что пол его не подлежал сомнению вопреки двусмысленным ухищрениям тогдашней моды – был занят тем, что делал выпады кинжалом возле головы мавра, покачивающейся на стропиле.

He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:43

Высоко-высоко в небе над Северным полюсом в первый день 1969 года с суммарной скоростью в две тысячи километров в час стремительно сближались два профессора английской литературы.

High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:44

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:45

Холод нехотя отступил от земли, и туман, поднимаясь, раскрыл спящую армию, раскинувшуюся по холмам.

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.

Velary 15 октября 2016 г., 23:45