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Khephra Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:03 AM
Original message
Best opening lines of a novel?
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. " -- Neuromancer W. Gibson
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Maple Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:22 AM
Response to Original message
1. Opening line that started a world wide contest
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

This year's winners are here:

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2003.htm
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leftofthedial Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:23 AM
Response to Original message
2. believe it or not, I was looking that one up!
great line.

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BrotherBuzz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:23 AM
Response to Original message
3. "When he was thirteen, my brother Jem
got his arm badly broken at the elbow." To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
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Jim Sagle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:30 AM
Response to Original message
4. Best opening science-fiction graf:
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 12:31 AM by Jim Sagle
"The doorknob opened a blue eye and looked at him. Cameron stopped moving. He didn't touch the knob. He pulled back his hand and stood motionless, watching." -- The Fairy Chessmen by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner).
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slack Donating Member (250 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:34 AM
Response to Original message
5. 2nd time, I have to choose the same
Neuromancer.
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:39 AM
Response to Original message
6. "We were halfway to Barstow on the edge of the desert...
when the drugs began to take hold." - HST, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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HEyHEY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:45 AM
Response to Reply #6
8. I knew someone would have already had that!
Damn you!
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leftofthedial Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:48 AM
Response to Reply #6
10. you HAVE been on the road recently!
LOL
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Toby109 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 03:45 AM
Response to Reply #6
17. Another vote for HST
On a side note does anyone have the HST quote that goes something like, "You could almost see the place where the tide turned..."?Something about the death of the American Dream in the late 60s. Would make a great sig line. Might be from The Great Shark Hunt.
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EOTE Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 08:18 AM
Response to Reply #17
23. I believe that was from Fear and Loathing in LV too.
Is this what you were referring to?

"you can go up a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:59 AM
Response to Reply #17
37. That's also Fear and Loathing
One of the most emotive portions of the book. On a clear day, and with the right kind of eyes, you can stand on a mountain in Vegas and see the high water mark, the place where the wave crested and fell back.
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Samuraimad Donating Member (400 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:39 AM
Response to Original message
7. I saw your thread title...
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 12:43 AM by Samuraimad
and thought Neuromancer...Gibson rules.

my contribution

"It was a pleasure to burn."-Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury.
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HEyHEY Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:47 AM
Response to Original message
9. I guess I'll go with a classic - cause Will took mine! Hope it's right
To begin with, marley was dead. Dead as a doornail.
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Lady President Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:53 AM
Response to Original message
11. The Dickens classic
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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.


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leftofthedial Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:54 AM
Response to Reply #11
12. Ooooooooh.
Aaaaaaah.
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SoCalDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:02 AM
Response to Original message
13. Call me Ishmael..
:) or not:)..you can call me Ray:)
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WannaJumpMyScooter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:11 PM
Response to Reply #13
40. Yeah...Melville rules still!
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4_Legs_Good Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:49 PM
Response to Reply #13
50. Agreed!
Moby Dick is one of the greatest literary achievements of all time. It's a shame most people read it too quickly to catch all the humor.

david

Kucinich 2004
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salmonhorse Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:05 AM
Response to Original message
14. Someone traduced, K.
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BlackRhino Donating Member (93 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:19 AM
Response to Original message
15. A screaming comes across the sky.
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
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deutsey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 05:57 AM
Response to Reply #15
18. That's one of my all-time favorites!
The opening line and the novel.
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Lisa Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:40 AM
Response to Original message
16. "Someone was shooting at me -- and I had to pee."

"The Frog King", a Harry Garnish mystery novel by Frank McConnell.
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deutsey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 05:59 AM
Response to Original message
19. "Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
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greatauntoftriplets Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 06:14 AM
Response to Original message
20. "Ours is essentially a tragic age,
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 06:14 AM by greatauntoftriplets
so we refuse to take it tragically."

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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mitchum Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 10:15 AM
Response to Reply #20
28. That's it!
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Palacsinta Donating Member (929 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 07:04 AM
Response to Original message
21. "It is a truth universally acknowledged.....
that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Pride and Prejudice........Jane Austen
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terryg11 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 07:52 AM
Response to Original message
22. You would think that such a day would tremble to begin....
no classic but still a decent book Hannibal, by Thomas Harris
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mrbill Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 08:20 AM
Response to Original message
24. "it was a dark and stormy night"
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 08:22 AM by mrbill
only one this tiny brain can remember.

on edit: that "best of times, worst of times" was a good one.
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northzax Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:12 AM
Response to Reply #24
31. ahh, "the Last Days of Pompei"
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 11:15 AM by northzax
a classic.

I can't think of any novel first lines right now, but I remember a guy in college who started a paper on existentialism with the grabby:

"So, I'm fucking this chick..."
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PATRICK Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:44 PM
Response to Reply #24
48. They still have that Bulwer-Lytton Contest online
for the worst opening line? Well worth the effort.
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Tom Yossarian Joad Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 09:33 PM
Response to Reply #48
53. I won a 1st place in the '97 Bulwer-Lytton contest with:
"The cells divided at an alarming rate as Dr. Bob gasped in amazement and told his lovely blond but intelligent assistant, Eureka! this is really neat, a baby monster is now growing in our hi-tech, whiz-bang laboratory -- I wonder if our hi-tech, whiz-bang containment field will contain this new, monstrous, really ugly, man eating being so it can't get out and destroy the world when it gets real big."

When it comes to writing really, really bad, I'm really, really good!
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JanMichael Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 08:23 AM
Response to Original message
25. From Anna Karenina...
"All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion."
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KCDem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:23 AM
Response to Reply #25
34. a second vote for that one!
I figured I'd read what everyone else had to say before posting... and, not surprisingly, my fellow slavophile has posted Tolstoy.

:hi:
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JanMichael Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 02:20 PM
Response to Reply #34
52. The first page of that book is pretty heavy handed foreboding.
We Slavophiles dig that sort of thing.
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Boudicea Donating Member (452 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:38 AM
Response to Reply #25
36. Anna Karenina taught me not to read the forward.
I didn't know what happened to Anna, and didn't want to know until I read the book, but the f*($ing forward told me! Never again. I read those last now.
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Richardo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 08:26 AM
Response to Original message
26. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clock was striking thirteen."
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 08:28 AM by Richardo
1984, of course.
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MiddleRiverRefugee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 08:53 AM
Response to Original message
27. "The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm."
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 08:56 AM by unidentifiedbassplay
Ray Bradbury, "Something Wicked This Way Comes"
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Boudicea Donating Member (452 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:02 AM
Response to Original message
29. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad,
Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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FlashHarry Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:11 AM
Response to Original message
30. THIS BEATS THEM ALL!!!
“It was the afternoon of my 81st birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.
Simon & Schuster, 1980. $24 — 607 pp.
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mac56 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:17 AM
Response to Original message
32. It was love at first sight.
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 11:20 AM by mac56
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Second choice:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

- Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
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Richardo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:33 AM
Response to Reply #32
35. I was going to submit that line from Catch-22 ...
Edited on Tue Aug-26-03 11:50 AM by Richardo
...but thought the opening of 1984 was more jarring and powerful.
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Aristus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 11:17 AM
Response to Original message
33. "Down in a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire
to recollect, there lived, not long ago, one of those gentlemen who usually keep a lance upon a rack, an old buckler, a lean horse, and a coursing greyhound."

Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes. Widely considered the first modern novel.
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Salviati Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:01 PM
Response to Original message
38. Since we had a HHGTTG thread earlier, I thought this would be appropriate:
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galasy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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charlie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:01 PM
Response to Original message
39. I can feel the heat closing in,
feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train...

-- Naked Lunch
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lazarus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:45 PM
Response to Original message
41. Steve Brust, "To Reign In Hell"
Steve Brust, "To Reign In Hell"

"Snow, tenderly caught by the eddying breezes, swirled and spun in to and out of bright, lustrous shapes that gleamed against the emerald-blazoned black drape of sky and sparkled there for a moment, hanging, before settling gently to the soft, green-tufted plain with all the sickly sweetness of an over-written sentence."
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lazarus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:46 PM
Response to Reply #41
42. "The penis will be obsolete within 5 years."
John Varley, "Steel Beach"

"The penis will be obsolete within 5 years."
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amazona Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 12:57 PM
Response to Original message
43. "Tell me, what is happiness?"
"Happiness? Happiness...is to wake up, on a bright spring morning, after an exhausting first night spent with a beautiful...passionate...multi-murderess."--Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks (ellipses in original text)
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playahata1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:19 PM
Response to Original message
44. "Amerigo Bonasera stood before the judge... and waited for justice."
-- from THE GODFATHER.

"I am an Invisible Man." -- from INVISIBLE MAN.
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Paragon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:22 PM
Response to Original message
45. Dear Penthouse Forum,
I've never written your publication before, but I just had to tell someone about my night at the freshman sorority house...
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Sequoia Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:23 PM
Response to Original message
46. "It was the best of times
it was the worst of times", Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities. I just love that book and the writer. So what if it was written in the 19th century.
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Richardo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:29 PM
Response to Original message
47. "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. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

- Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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BigMcLargehuge Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:47 PM
Response to Original message
49. "It can hardly be a coincidence...
that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport”.

Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
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4_Legs_Good Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-26-03 01:50 PM
Response to Original message
51. In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit...
Sorry, I can't help myself!

david

Kucinich 2004

Arianna YES
Recall No
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