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I love epigraphs, those sparkling word gems that a writer places at the beginning of the novel. The epigraph is a chance for the author to share what was on his/her mind when writing the book, or perhaps an intriguing hint of what’s to come. If done well, it will compel the reader to turn the page and begin reading.
Back in August 2021, James Scott Bell wrote “The How and Why of Epigraphs.” While I can’t improve on Jim’s post, I’ll add a few things I’ve read recently.
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According to masterclass.com
An epigraph is a short standalone quote, line, or paragraph that appears at the beginning of a book. The word epigraph is derived from the Greek epigraphein meaning “to write on.” The use of epigraphs varies from book to book, but generally, authors use them to set up themes or place the events of their story in context. Epigraphs are most commonly a short quotation from an existing work. Epigraphs usually appear offset by quotation marks at the beginning of a text, but there are no set rules dictating how writers use them.
Epigraphs can be quotes from other works, quotes from famous people, Biblical quotes, or they can be newly-minted words by the author for his/her specific work.
Here are ten examples of epigraphs to inspire and encourage us:
FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley
“Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?” –John Milton, Paradise Lost
CORALINE by Neil Gaiman
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” –G.K. Chesterton
ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy
“Vengeance is mine, I shall repay, saith the Lord” –Romans 12:19
Version 1.0.0
DISTANT STAR by Roberto Bolano
“What star falls unseen?” –William Faulkner
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” –John 12:24
A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
“I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.” –T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
THE QUIET AMERICAN by Graham Greene
“This is the patent age of new inventions,
For killing bodies, and for saving souls,
All propagated with the best of intentions.” –Lord Byron
LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann
“All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.” –Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
INTO THIN AIR by Jon Krakauer
“Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world.” —José Ortega Y Gasset
THE END GAMES by T. Michael Martin
“Everything not saved will be lost”. –Nintendo “Quit Screen” message
So TKZers: What epigraphs have you used in your books? Do you have a favorite epigraph?
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Here’s the epigraph from Lacey’s Star:
“The truth is bitter, but with all its bitterness, it is better than illusion.” — Ahad Ha’Am
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, or Apple Books.
I’m guilty of including more than one epigraph in my new book. One is apropos for our times:
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.”―Virgil
(Perhaps someday, even these things will be a pleasure to recall.)
The other is germane to the book’s subject matter:
“. . . Remember that we deal with alcohol–cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us.”―Chapter 5, Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
The last line of a play is sometimes epigrammatic:
“Out of darkness shine the stars.”―Photeron, in Midnight in the Temple of Isis
Good morning, JG. Thanks for sharing those epigraphs. I especially like the Virgil quote.
I can understand having multiple epigraphs. Sometimes it’s hard to encapsulate an entire novel in just one.
Have a good week.
The two that come immediately to mind are from middle school English that formed the titles to two of Ernest Hemmingway’s works, _The Sun Also Rises_, (from Ecclesiastes), and _For Whom the Bell Tolls_, (the title of a poem by John Donne, with the ending lines “Therefore send not to know/For whom the bell tolls,/ It tolls for thee…” and I admit – I had to look that up – Donne was from the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries – and it seems that long since I was in middle school. It turns out the opening line is the oft used phrase “No man is an island”… [ain’t Google grand?]).
As for my uses – I tend to keep an eye out for the short and pithy lines when reading or listening – I think they work better as introduction than something longer than maybe two or three lines…
Good morning, George. Thanks for reminding me about the Donne poem. It must be nice to write something so profound that it’s remembered for hundreds of years.
Short and pithy is good. 🙂
Kay, I love epigraphs. I wrote about that here . I use two in my Romeo books. Here’s from Romeo’s Way:
Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles … – Homer, The Iliad
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. – Mike Tyson
Good morning, Jim. Your post on epigraphs inspired me to write this one, so thanks.
Love your epigraphs, especially the one from Homer.
I’ve always liked the Tyson quote…
I can’t think of a favorite but I love it when an epigraph is included in a book just for the reason you stated — to see what was on the author’s mind when they were writing the book & perhaps get an inkling of what’s ahead.
Good morning, Brenda. The epigraph makes me feel the author’s presence when I start the book. I think it makes reading the book a little more personal.
Have a good reading and writing week.
Loved the epigraph from A Handful of Dust, Kay. I’ve never used an epigraph, per se, but I do use an inspirational quote as my dedication in my Mayhem Series. Does that count?
Hi Sue. I love the poetry of T.S. Eliot.
I think your inspirational quote as a dedication would also serve as an epigraph. Would you like to share it here?
I have many (9 books in the Mayhem Series), but here’s one:
May Mother Earth guide your feet.
May Father Sky keep his arms around you.
May Grandfather Sun warm your cold days.
May Grandmother Moon keep the glow in your heart.
May the Star Nations light the way to the next destination,
And the Great Spirit always keep you shielded from pain.
~ Native American blessing
Beautiful, Sue.
Stephen King uses these a lot.
After reading a book it is cool to go back and reread them. They often hit different then.
Good morning, Warren. I hadn’t thought of going back and re-reading the epigraph after finishing the book. Then we know why the author chose it.
Have a good week.
The best epigraphs I read were from a mystery story in which two characters at odds with each other each had newspaper columns, and the epigraphs were quotes from the columns. (With passive-aggressive insults, of course!) Darn, wish I could remember what the title or author of the book was …
Good morning, Priscilla.
I hope you remember what book that was. I’d love to read it.
Have a good week.
Wonderful post, Kay. Your examples are evocative. Short and profound works for me, such as the examples from Tolstoy and Martin’s “The End Games.”
I have never used an epigraph, not in any of my novels. Perhaps I shall in the future, thanks to your post and JSB’s.
Dedications are a different matter–I always dedicate each book to someone.
Good morning, Dale. I enjoyed harvesting these quotes from the vast fields of epigraphs.
My favorite is the one for The End Games. Using a message from a computer game to represent a profound statement to humankind is brilliant. I haven’t read the book, but it’s on my TBR pile now just because of the epigraph.
Better minds than mine here, Kay. It’s all I can do to come up with a title.
Ha! I think the title is harder. The epigraph is already written; you just have to find it.
This weekend I was thinking about the biography a classmate wrote about her husband, who was also a classmate. She calls them ‘Ericisims’. They start each chapter. The book starts with, “Shit happens, and it doesn’t mean it’s somebody’s fault.”
The book is Flight through Fire by Carol Fiore. Her husband, Eric Fiore was a test pilot who was killed in test flight in 2000. Is it more touching for me because I knew Eric and Carol? Maybe. But it is a touching love story and a heartbreaking look at Eric’s last days.
A part of my flight training, and maybe a part of yours Kay, was Federal Air Regulations are written on tombstones. Your job is to follow, not write FARs.
Eric’s FAR is at the end of the book. Actually the pilot in command’s FAR. Eric was the senior pilot but was in the right seat.
Thanks for telling us about Flight Through Fire, Alan. I just ordered the book. Test pilots are a breed apart, and I can’t imagine what inspires them. Have you read The Right Stuff?
I received a lot of training on FAA regs. I don’t recall any discussion of those that are written on tombstones, but you gave me a good idea for a future blog post.
Read Right Stuff years ago.
I love epigraphs, too! Here’s my favorite from my second novel, No Tomorrows:
One today is worth two tomorrows. ~Ben Franklin
It sums up the theme of the novel almost perfectly.
Happy Monday, all! 🙂
Excellent epigraph, Deb! I hadn’t heard that quote by Franklin before, but it fits the title of your novel perfectly.
Have a great week.
I like to read epigraphs, Kay, but I don’t use them.
Hi Elaine.
It’s interesting that some of us use epigraphs in each novel, and others never use them. There’s a story in there somewhere.
Epigraphs aren’t a normal thing for popular fiction, but I used two for WIZARD SOUNDS, never published.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
“Ariel’s Song,” The Tempest, William Shakespeare
Nice epigraphs, Marilynn. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is my favorite poem. Lots of sections can be quoted from that one.
Good morning, Kay. Thanks for your thoughtful examples.
I loved the way Frank Herbert used chapter epigraphs as teasers in his Dune trilogy. They both foretold and gave a sense of a historical background set in our future for millennia to come. The fictional attributions hinted at key figures from ancient cataclysms, such as the “Butlerian Jihad,” and how those formative events might bode well or badly on Dune’s “present.” In Herbert’s hands, epigraphs carried the reader’s sense of a grand continuum of human inheritance that shaped and informed his characters.
Closer to home, for a carefully considered single epigraph to fit well, the writer must have a broad reading experience–although a visit to an AI resource might shorten the research time.
Good morning, Dan, and thanks for the reference to chapter epigraphs. I’ve never read Dune, but I just went out to read the sample on Amazon, and I see what you mean about the chapter epigraph.
This is a quote on the Amazon book detail page. It’s chilling.
“Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
You made me think back on how I chose the epigraphs for each of my books. None of them are quotes from fiction. Interesting.
Great examples, Kay. I enjoy epigraphs in books I read but haven’t used any in my own.
This quote by Anne Frank would make a good epigraph. It brings a lump to my throat every time:
“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”
Such a beautiful quote from Anne Frank. I agree with you — it would make a good epigraph.
Btw, I pre-ordered “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” yesterday. Best of luck with it!