I shall help you all celebrate by remaining a <millstone> around all your necks.

This brings back fond memories of other great opening sentences:

<Go traveler, go wherever you want, the universe is a big place. Probably the biggest.> Venus on the Half Shell by Kilgore Trout and

<It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.> from <Love in the Time of Cholera> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The wonderful, late great Phillip K. Dick started <Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?>, which has to win a prize for one of the great titles, with: <A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard.>

And a special mention for Lem:

<When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, so you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade, when there was not a speck of dust to be found in outer space, nor any nebular debris - in those good old days it was the custom for constructors, once they had received their Diploma of Perpetual Omnipotence with distinction, to sally forth ofttimes and bring to distant lands the benefit of their expertise.> - The First Sally or The Trap.

What are great opening sentences without complementary famous last words:

<I owe much; I have nothing; the rest I leave to the poor.> Rabelais

<I feel here that this time they have succeeded.> Trotsky

<Am I still here? How much @#$%@#$ longer is this going on for?> Kerry Packer

<Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.> Oscar Wilde.

Reminds me of the last words of the benighted <Bobby Sands>:

"Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a deep impression on me at the time." "An Imperfect Conflagration"

"A Judge was awakened by the noise of a lawyer prosecuting a Thief." "Lion and Mouse" Fantastic Fables

And I always loved this one from William Gaddis's brilliant satire on the law, A Frolic of His Own (Gaddis being cut from more or less the same satiric cloth as Bierce):

"'Justice?--You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.'"

Here's a bit from the <middle> of a book. I like middles:

"Forget being modern. Accept it, Richard, the whole modernist enterprise was intensely divisive. Modernism taught us to distrust and dislike ourselves. All that individual conscience, the solitary ache. Modernism was driven by neurosis and alienation. Look at its art and architecture. There's something deeply cold about them... I advise people to steer clear of reason. Consumerism celebrates the positive side of the equation ... consumerism is a redemptive ideology."

There were rumors he was spotted in <Mexico>.

I think he simply didn't like his WIFE and just scarpered.

<ANTS do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time. They are trying to think of what can usefully be done next. And this is in spite of their reputation - shared with beavers and bees - as hard-working role models for the human race[...]>

<MYRMECOPHAGA JUBATA Anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 per cent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it. See ANTS.>

From the <Doubter's Companion>.

<"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit. "Oh, look at that sweet little star up there all by itself."

I saw the one she meant, a little chap operating in a detached sort of way above a spinney.

"Yes," I said.

"I wonder if it feels lonely."

"Oh, I shouldn't think so."

"A fairy must have been crying."

"Eh?"

"Don't you remember? 'Every time a fairy sheds a tear, a wee bit star is born in the Milky Way.' Have you ever thought that, Mr. Wooster?"

Singed

Well, maybe.

Ja, after Jess' previous debâcles on this issue, zou dat de meest plausibele optie zijn geweest..

So I should *think* less.. (But then I drink more..)