If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1].

On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%) seeing quotes they've already seen before. This is an example of the coupon collector's problem[2].

The way to avoid both these problems is to shuffle the quotes into a random order, just once, and remember that order. The first time a user comes to the page, start at a random index in that shuffled list, and from then on, simply move to the next item in the list. Every user will get a unique set of random quotes, but will see no repeats until the list is exhausted, and will be guaranteed to be able to see all available content in just 60 refreshes.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem

https://www.vldb.org/conf/1995/P311.PDF

https://pydistinct.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/readme_link...

But there were brave souls who tried, in the now-defunct Bulwer-Lytton Contest [0].

Where else could you find gems like these?

  > The day I lost my tractor was the same day I found out my wife was moonlighting as a hooker when she gave me a wad of cash and told me, “It’s from a John, dear."

Knowing I’ll never again check and find a year’s crop of perfect sentences dims the light more than I would have expected. Sad times.

> The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

I did not refresh to check if you already have that, but I really find it very strong. Its from Kings "Dark Tower - Black" (edit: its "The Gunslinger", not Black. its named "Schwarz" in the german translations) the first of 8 books in the series.

If you dont know it; its not like the usual King books. It mixes fantasy elements (inspired by LoTR), western, scfi (robots, AI-trains) cyberpunk and horror. Its a great series!

In his defense, that was early in his career, and in one of the countless afterwords or prefaces, he also mentions that he has, of course, evolved since then.

"The Gunslinger" is really a bit borderline. The next one, "The Drawing of the Three" is much more complex and better written. You could also read the last book first ("The Wind Through the Keyhole"); it’s separate from the main story and set somewhere in between, but it’s the final book.

> Cormac McCarthy

No country for old men? Its probably in my top 5 of all the books (and movies) that I read. A masterpiece.

Edit: i realized i mixed the names up. Its not black, its "The Gunslinger". Its translated as black in the german series and confused me.

I dropped it after Wizard and Glass, though. I really like the setting and the concepts in the Dark Tower but it started to feel a bit too self indulgent and up King's own ass, and I just kind of stopped caring.

Also the older I got the more cringe Susannah Dean became as a character.

In case it isn't clear, I think poster I'm replying to is referencing the fact that King went back decades later and re-wrote The Gunslinger, mostly for continuity I believe. I've not yet read the rewrite, so I'm unsure if it changes the writing style at all. (I didn't mind the first book, it's just a bit slow)

For a long time I refused to read King, but I've since read Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary and The Shining and all were great.

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French." - Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

"When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." - Harper Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."- Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind

For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem natur in hir courages, and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages.

Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.

"All this happened, more or less." - Slaughterhouse-Five

** ETA the full opening:

“The war tried to kill us in the spring. As grass greened the plains of Nineveh and the weather warmed, we patrolled the low-slung hills beyond the cities and towns. We moved over them and through the tall grass on faith, kneading paths into the windswept growth like pioneers. While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer.

Though for me it’s the second line that nails it: “We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

Hard to pick an absolute favourite, but one would be:

"There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls."

From Cortazar's short story Axolotl.

I don't know for certain why I find it so evocative, but it certainly draws me in, and makes me want to know more.

Quoting without looking attempt:

"I went to see them in the aquarium in the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now, I am an axolotl."

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

Being English, from the south, where learning French to only a poor standard is a common pastime, you can just picture it instantly.

(I suppose this technically isn't the opening line, but it's the first line used when most people quote the passage.)

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine

https://www.abebooks.com/Said-Duchess-First-Lines-Gemma-OCon...

And from a cursory few refreshes I didn't see the obvious one come up:

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Orwell, 1984

I gotta rep my favorite though, even if it's typical. "Call me Ishmael." It's not the narrator's actual name - he just feels like an outcast. It sets the pace for the mythic and worldly talk throughout the book. A high bar with complete follow-through. I'm a total sucker for it.

"(Supplied by a late consumptive usher..."

or:

"The pale Usher-threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now."

But straight fire either way. And, when it comes down to it, that "Call me Ishmael" is considered so consistently as the novel's opening line makes it the opening line. A testament to its power :-)

Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite:

> Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.

My translation:

"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Your favorite was the first I saw. Just FYI.

There's an okay Netflix mini series of it, FYI.

You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before.

A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e.ln(N) times ( iirc, for large N ).

( Or put another way: given N items, you expect the gap between discovering the penultimate one and the last one to be N. )

There are 60 quotes.

So expect ~280 refreshes to collect 'em all.

There's a small client-only app here to check out: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle https://loganintech.github.io/bookdle/

Or if you want to see the source code for the "platform" where I added a database and such: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle-platform

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

I recently re-read the sprawl trilogy and thought Neuromancer stood up very well, but the others not so much.

It's a line that does character, culture, and foreshadowing all at once without straining any of them.

Ok so I guess it is literally just openings of famous literary works, and not great first lines

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Inspired me to chase down rabbit holes about J.M Barrie (Peter Pan) and Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)

(What I particularly enjoy is that one can contribute to the database of quotations.)

"Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert."

Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Liebovitz"

I’d like to submit one:

“I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.” - David Foster Wallace, “Infinite Jest”

A River Runs Through It

Norman Maclean

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

You can have short poems (The fog comes / on little cat feet./ It sits looking / over harbor and city / on silent haunches /and then moves on.) or a passage of long poems (I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix).

sample: You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.[...] I been there before.

Attending Burning Man made me simultaneously one of the most photographed people on the planet and one of the least surveilled humans in the modern world.[...]I gathered Ange into a hug that started off stiff and awkward and then turned into the most familiar feeling in the world.

edit: added “please”

It was a dark and stormy night... /s