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Best Book Opening Lines
Post your favourite book opening lines here!
For me, the best book opening of all time is from Willam Gibson's Count Zero: Quote:
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a screaming comes across the sky.
thomas pynchon: gravity's rainbow |
"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and tell you he's the one. Or at least as close as we're going to get."
Ender's Game Orson Scott Card |
Too many to choose from, but here's one of my many favourites—Henry James, The Europeans:
A narrow grave-yard in the heart of a bustling, indifferent city, seen from the windows of a gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of enlivening suggestion; and the spectacle is not at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funereal umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snow-fall. If, while the air is thickened by this frosty drizzle, the calendar should happen to indicate that the blessed vernal season is already six weeks old, it will be admitted that no depressing influence is absent from the scene. |
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed
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There are so many, I can't pick just one.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. " - from A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." - from Ulysses by James Joyce . |
"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
Adams - Restaurant at the End of the Universe. |
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As far as the first line of a book.. I'll have to quote my favorite when I get home, because I can't find it online. |
In the great green room
there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of... Ingrained in my memory as a new father. |
"Testing, testing, one, two, three.
One more time, you're listening to the flight recorder on flight 2039. And at this altitude, listen, and at this speed, with the plane empty, this is my story. And my story won't get bashed into a zillion bloody shreds and then burned with a thousand tons of burning jet. And after the plane wrecks, people will hunt down the flight recorder. And my story will survive. And, I will live on forever." Survivor- Chuck Palahniuk |
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
--Orwell, 1984 I left the following out at first because it's somewhat more than a line, but I just can't ignore it. If you pay close attention to this opening passage, the ground will dissolve below your feet. To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed. They said I was a boy named Rudolph Waltz, and that was that. They said the year was 1932, and that was that. They said I was in Midland City, Ohio, and that was that. They never shut up. Year after year they piled detail upon detail. They do it still. You know what they say now? They say the year is 1982, and that I am fifty years old. Blah blah blah. --Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick |
By the time he was twelve years old, Ranji knew he liked to kill. His parents, naturally, encouraged him.
-The False Mirror, Alan Dean Foster |
"Why is the measure of love loss..You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock hewn out of my own body."
Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson |
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."
Ignatius J. Reilly Confederacy Of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole |
No one has mentioned "Call me Ishmael".........
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"The West Indies squadron lay off Bridgetown, sheltered from the north-east tradewind and basking in the brilliant sun. It was a diminished squadron, consisting of little more than the ancient Irresistible, wearing the flag of Sir William Pellew, red at the fore, and two or three battered, worn-out, unmanned sloops..."
The Reverse of the Medal - Patrick O'Brian These lines are perhaps not as strikingly bold as those of Dickens or Orson Scott Card. However, they give me such a delicious sense of tall ships anchored in the sun-dazzled waters of Barbados, words of unpretentious jargon rumbling on about their business like fat, lazy bees, and the promise of exciting naval battles to come that I cannot escape sighing with anticipatory contentment. Aaaaahhh. In a time of term papers and final exams, it's like the apple of knowledge, the holy grail, and k.d. lang all rolled into one.... I cannot WAIT to read that book!!! |
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I picked up the book that is sitting on top of my PC right now. "Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire thread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face" |
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A few more: Although the thread asks of "books," I'm going to take the liberty of assuming it's okay to use opening lines of poems as well.... "The Waste Land" T. S. Eliot APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding"Howl" Allen Ginsberg I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by |
if you include Poems, you cant be "this be the verse" by Larkin
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad..." |
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And of course, what has become a cliche but which was once considered a great opening line: Quote:
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Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. |
John Varley is a sci-fi author that has always had great books with a multitude of different themes. I have yet to read a book of his that is not a page-turner.
I thought I remembered "Millenium" as having a great opening line...but I found that I no longer have the book. Browsing through his other works that I *do* still have, I found this one. It is crass compared to the other offerings here, but dammit now I have to read this book again: Quote:
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Seriously, when I read it, my heart starts pumping. |
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Although another favorite of mine would be Quote:
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you beat me to it, but I am glad that someone remembered it...... 67 was enough for him, but perhaps not enough for us.....
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two others that i like:
I CALL our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space. edward abbott: flatlands, a romance in many dimensions. It is a long trip. We are the only riders. So that is how we have come to know each other so well that the sound of his voice and image flickering over the tape recorder are as familiar to meas the movement of my intestines the sound of my breathing the beating of my heart. william s. burroughs: the ticket that exploded personally, i think the opening line to gravity's rainbow is the finest one ever, all the more now for having read alternatives--though i like many of the alternatives. on moby dick: it's a great book, but there's a sense in which had ishmael just had sex with the harpoonist, it wouldn't have gotten out of the first chapter. on jane austen: i don't get it. maybe because it seemed logical after reading her to read george eliot's middlemarch, which was interminable. a super-vivid account of a hellishly small english town. it reminded me of new hampshire. i couldn't get out of there fast enough. |
Many of the real quality openings that came to my mind have already been mentioned.
Here are a couple that I enjoy. They're nowhere near the grandiose level of, say, Dickens, but I do enjoy the way they caught my attention and thrust me into the book. Quote:
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Middlemarch, that is...not New Hampshire. |
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I want to hire a coach to London. |
Paul Auster, City of Glass:
It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. |
"He kept doing things without letting himself think about them. Safer that way. It was like having a circuit breaker in his head, and it thumped into place every time a part of him tried to ask: But why are you doing this?"
- Stephen King's Roadwork |
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It's my favorite book ever...
The start gives me chills. |
I think Survivor trumps Fight Club any day of the week. It ranks in my top three books of all time.
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Most definitely. Fight Club is a great book, but I'll take Survivor or Choke over it anytime.
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Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory: "I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped."
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"He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
scaramouche by raphael sabatini there are many others, some that have already been mentioned. this is one that hasn't been mentioned that i like. |
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:thumbsup: or a more fairly obvious choice i havn't seen mentioned: Quote:
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