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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40998
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40998
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A quote (called an epigraph) is added to the start of a book or a chapter **when it adds an insight to the story**. What kind of insight is up to you: it might be an additional understanding of events on a meta level, it can be foreshadowing, it can be extra information, etc. It is **never** a **random** quote found in google, since that adds no insight. The epigraph is as integral a part of the story you're writing as anything else. **If it adds nothing, it shouldn't be there at all.**

For example, Ernest Hemingway's _For Whom the Bell Tolls_ starts with a quotation from John Donne:

> No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of they friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

This epigraph should inform the reader's understanding of Hemingway's novel, convey that it is bigger than the story of one guy named Robert Jordan.

Original score: 28