Favourite Opening Lines

[The Curtmudgeon]

I'm sure we're all familiar with that "great" opening line by Edward Bulwer-Lytton:



It was a dark and stormy night.


If nothing else, Charles Schultz' Snoopy has made it pretty well-known. :rofl:

Anyway, what are some of your favourite opening lines? They can be from novels or non-fiction, or even short stories, just as long as, to you at least, they captured your attention and drew you into reading the book, or in any other way made themselves indelible in your memory even beyond the rest of the book itself.

I have two favourites, both from works of fiction. Rafael Sabatini starts out his classic novel Scaramouche, set during the early days of the French Revolution, with a description of Andre-Louis Moreau, his protagonist:



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


But my top favourite comes, believe it or not, from that other great "classic" :smile: , Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes (which really, really is very much better than anything Hollyweird was ever able to do with it!):



I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me.


With an opening like that, how can you not continue reading!?

Post your favourites here!

The (of course, a great start is no guarantee of a great finish) Curtmudgeon

[Patroclus]

They're out there.

One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

[Patroclus]

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

Danté, Divine Comedy: Inferno, (I.1-3)
Tans. Mark Musa (1971)

[Em7add11]

Who is John Galt?

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

It sums up the whole mystery of the book in the first four words. You spend the next 1000 pages trying to understand what it means.

[Jaltus]

C. S Friedman's Black Sun Rising


She wondered why she was afraid to go home.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana


In the autumn season of the wine, word went forth from among the cypresses and olives and the laden vines of his country estate that Sandre, Duke of Astibar, once ruler of that city and its province, had drawn the last bitter breath of his exile and age and died.

Read the books to find out why I like them, especially the latter.

[Woman]

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.

[Woman]

The Good Book


In the beginning...


Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again. -Rebecca-


Dr. Seuss

The sun did not shine
It was too wet too play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day.

-Cat in the Hat-

[hupertheos]

Can't remember exactly - no books to hand - but here goes my paraphrases:


It was a cold, grey day in April and the clock was striking thirteen. George Orwell, 1984


I am a bad man. I am an evil man. And I think there's something wrong with my liver. Doestoevsky, Notes from the Underground

As I say, they're paraphrases, so shoot me if they're not accurate. :wink:

[Dee Dee Warren]

A long time ago, in galaxy, far, far away....

[NeilUnreal]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... (etc.)

A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens

and


In a hole in the ground lived a Hobbit.

The Hobbit J.R.R.Tolkien

-Neil

[papabryant]

Seven dreamers, in search of a nightmare.
from the movie adaptation of "Alien". (The rest of the book was o.k. as I remember. I was thirteen at the time.)

Peace, Tom

[dublczek]

Do not think my brains squeezed tight like the ram's by the roots of horns.

Grendel by John Champlin Gardner

[Entropic Gnosis]

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before but there is nothing to compare to it now.

Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow


Suddenly, no, at last, long last, i couldn't any more, I couldn't go on.

Samuel Beckett Text For Nothing

[Elvis Rehnquist]

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

[Karl_Franz]

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more

Dagon, by H.P Lovecraft.



It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer

The Thing on the Doorstep, by the same author.

[themuzicman]

"Do you like green eggs and ham?"

[Queen]

When on board of the H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was struck with certain facts in distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.

Origin of species...... :tongue:

but to set aside my teasing nature: "Girl, interrupted" is one of my fav. books......I've read it in english

first line:

People ask, How did you get in there?

And this book I just started to read in....in English as well:

Virgina Woolf; "The Waves"


The sun had not yet risen.

Lots of love and sunshine,
Queen

[LeiLani]

"Tell us a story Dandelion!"

Tales from Watership Down


On Friday, June 12, I woke up at six o'clock and no wonder, it was my birthday

The Diary of Anne Frank

[brother vinny]

Jack Torrence thought:
Officious little prick.



--Stephen King, The Shining




Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.



--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy




A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows.



--Frank Herbert, Dune




In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.



--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

[BeHereNow]

The one that made me almost drop the book when I first read it, and now I can hardly finish the first paragraph without gasping for breath. Tis the 3rd line, but you'll live:


Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

This single line explains the entire book: the subject, the story, the action, the main characters, the prose, the sheer playfulness and daringness.

[charis humin]

10-17-2003 @ 05:26 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=247554#post247554)
Karl_Franz:


I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more

Dagon, by H.P Lovecraft.


"It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer


The Thing on the Doorstep, by the same author.

Those have to be two of the best opening lines ever...