Best Opening Line EVAR

[Anonymous]

Got into an argument (or disccusion) with a friend about what the best opening line from a book is. My fav has always been "Love in the Time of Cholera":

It never failed, the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of unrequited love.

But of course, is it worth restricting it to strictly first sentence? Another candidate is Chandler's "The Big Sleep":

It was about 11 o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and I was wearing my powder blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks, with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, clean, shaved, and sober. I didn't care who knew it. I was everthing the well dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

And what also came up was, "does the overall quality of a book have an impact on our perception?" As well as, should we only consider high quality books?

Anyway... any other nominations?

[Jason Cross]

My personal favorite is from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a classic tale of hope and good will and the Christmas Spirit, which starts out:

"Marley was dead, to begin with."

[Anonymous]

My two favorites are from two of my favorite books when I was growing up:

'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.'

From 'The Great Gatsby',and:

'If you really want to hear about it,the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born,and what my lousy childhood was like,and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me,and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.'

From 'The Cather in the Rye'.Since I'm probably not alone in choosing those,another one I really like is from Paul Theroux's 'My Secret History':

'I was born poor in rich America,yet my secret instincts were better than money and were for me a source of power.'

If you were to ask my favorite first pages,I would say all of the above,and add to it 'A Farewell to Arms'.

[Mark Asher]

That intial chapter in Farewell to Arms works more like a poem than prose. I've always admired it too.

It's much more than an opening sentence or first page, but the initial scene that opens Snow Crash, the pizza delivery scene, has always stayed with me. I'd say the rest of the book never lived up to it, and I enjoyed the book.

[Anonymous]

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." ( James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss.).

[Gordon Cameron]

Well, the opening sentence from "A Tale of Two Cities" is an evergreen. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of hope, it was the age of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..." it goes on; I don't remember exactly how it goes.

Neuromancer: "The sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel." A nice stylistic flourish to begin the cyberpunk era -- implying a narrator for whom technology is more real than nature, ergo he uses the former to supply metaphors for the latter.

The Aeneid: "I sing of Arms and of a Man..."

Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Okay, maybe that's not such a great sentence. Tolstoy is straining a bit hard for an epigram there. Great book, though.

I always remember the first sentence of "The Chocolate War": "They murdered him." Not a great first sentence, but it's stuck in my head all these years.

[Bub, Andrew]

A Tale of Two Cities also has one of the finest and most famous ending lines.

I always liked Dante for this good opener:

"Midway upon the journey of our life I found that I was in a dusky wood; For the right path, whence I had strayed, was lost. Ah me!"

[Gordon Cameron]

A Tale of Two Cities also has one of the finest and most famous ending lines.

Yep, in fact the whole last chapter is great -- Dickens in his "transcendent" mode. I don't think many writers could pull off something so overtly stentorian and moralistic, but it's one of my favorite prose passages. The cadences (and the sentiments expressed) are almost Biblical in their gravity.

[Mark Asher]

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon." ( James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss.).

Hey, I just read that book a few months ago. Enjoyable read. Damned if the book didn't make me want to go drink beer in a bar, though.

[Jessica]

My favorite line of all time was not an opening line, but teaser text on the cover for the first book in Mike Stackpole's Dark Conspiracy series:

"He woke up in a body bag; things went downhill from there."

[Troy S Goodfellow]

"Call me Ishmael"

[Rob de los Reyes]

"It was love at first sight, the first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

Catch-22, Joseph Heller


That novel produced many of my fondest literary moments, including the excellent working world practice of only allowing people to see you in your office when you're not there.

[Chris Floyd]

The first paragraph (or two) of The Virgin Suicides is pretty damn good. Sorry, I can't just post it here, but I think this link should work:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0446670251/reader/6/104-3648762-3247929#reader-link

I'll admit, I haven't read much more than that of the book, unfortunately. Anyone out there seen the film version? Tom? I thought it was a spectacular movie.

[Tyjenks]

Anyone out there seen the film version? Tom? I thought it was a spectacular movie.

Great flick. I wonder if Sofia(Sophia) Coppola is working on anything else. Maybe she will direct and star in "The Godfather IV: Chicks Rule"?

[Dean]

"You are not the type of guy who is in this type of place at this time of night."

From Bright Lights, Big City, which, while not the greatest of novels has some great style to it.

"A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world."

Is that a sentence or what? Boy that Thomas Wolfe could write. (Look Homeward, Angel, for the uninitiated.)

And just to show I'm still a geek:

"'Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man'"

From The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

[Andy A.]

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
From Metamorphosis. By Kafka. Of course.

Potental Hollywood pitch:

Producer: So there's this guy...
Big-time Studio Executive: Aha.
P:...and he's like a totally regular guy..
BTSE: Gotcha.
P: ...but one morning, by some strange force of will...
BTSE: Carry on.
P: ...he founds himself transformed into a giant cockroach.
BTSE: ...
P: It's pure gold, right?
BTSE:....
P:Gold, I tell you!...Gold!...[as he is slowly carried away by security]

[Erik]

Hollywood just doesn't get it!

[Anonymous]

"In this book I will take you the reader with me into the secret inner world of the pimp."


-Iceberg Slim, "Pimp"

[Bub, Andrew]

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."

A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Bad Beginning
-Lemony Snickett

[Anonymous]

"It comes down to this: if I had not been arrested by the Turkish police, I would have been arrested by the Greek police. I had no choice but to do as this man Harper told me. He was entirely responsible for what happened to me." (Eric Ambler, The Light of Day)

junior allen

[Jason Levine]

"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. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before."

[Lee Johnson]

"There are some things Man was not meant to know."
-- Larry Niven, Unfinished Story #2

The rest of the page is blank; the following page starts another story. :D

[Ben Sones]

My personal favorite is from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a classic tale of hope and good will and the Christmas Spirit, which starts out:

"Marley was dead, to begin with."

Well, A Christmas Carol is pretty upbeat, by Dickens' standards. For what it's worth, I also like:

"All this happened, more or less." (Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut)

"The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm." (Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury)

"The irreducible strangeness of the universe was first made manifest to Anthony Van Horne on his fiftieth birthday, when a despondent angel named Raphael, a being with luminous white wings and a halo that blinked on and off like a neon quoit, appeared and told him of the days to come." (Towing Jehova, by James Morrow)

[mono]

I've been reading Chandler's The Big Sleep, and a Qt3 Google search unearthed this thread. I just finished re-reading a bunch of Jorge Luis Borges short stories and always loved this opening sentence from the story The Circular Ruins:

No one saw him disembark from his canoe in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent.

Borges wrote a lot of great opening lines.

[tiohn]

I love the crap out of Borges.

Funes, His Memory:
I recall him (though I have no right to speak that sacred verb—only one man on earth did, and that man
is dead) holding a dark passionflower in his hand, seeing it as it had never been seen, even had it been
stared at from the first light of dawn till the last light of evening for an entire lifetime.

The Aleph:
That same sweltering morning that Beatriz Viterbo died, after an imperious confrontation with her illness in which she
had never for an instant stooped to either sentimentality or fear, I noticed that a new advertisement for some
cigarettes or other (blondes, I believe they were) had been posted on the iron billboards of the Plaza Constitución; the
fact deeply grieved me, for I realized that the vast unceasing universe was already growing away from her, and that
this change was but the first in an infinite series.

[Miramon]

"Call me Ishmael"

Famous, but not good.

[triggercut]

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. 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.

/thread.

[Trashcan]

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beats are deadly serious.

That's the opening paragraph but, skipping down a few lines, I think I prefer this:

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sail of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth, now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

Beets, baby! The unholy offspring of carrots left abused and beaten by their cherry lovers.

[ElGuapo]

Jesus Christ, mono. Six and a half, years, man. Six and a half years.

[Rimbo]

"No doubt about it, I've been hitting the basil hard tonight." From Anonymous Rex

[mono]

Jesus Christ, mono. Six and a half, years, man. Six and a half years.

That's how I roll.

[Funkula]

I don't have a copy handy (and Amazon doesn't have the ability to browse the book), but the opening paragraph of The Stainless Steel Rat is a classic.

[Damien Falgoust]

Since Gatsby's been mentioned, and since A Tale of Two Cities has been noted as having a great opening and closing line, let me add one of my favorite closing lines, from Gatsby:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

[Talisker]

"Because they had not repented, the angel stabbed the unrepentant couple thirteen times, with its sword." --Graham Swanson

[malphigian]

Since Gatsby's been mentioned

Yeah, I'm with you, Gatsby is really more about the last line (which is another thread entirely - a thread which should begin and end with the last paragraph of Joyce's Ulysses).

Ive got fewer ideas for first lines, but how about:
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."

[Morberis]

"It was a pleasure to burn" - Fahrenheit 451

[Rimbo]

Oh, and of course:

"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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

Can't believe no one's mentioned that one yet.

[Wisbechlad]

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

Though Lolita runs it close...

Worst? There's a whole competition

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

[Talisker]

Worst? There's a whole competition

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
The Bulwer-Lytton entries are always way too long-winded, which drains them of the funny. I much prefer the Little Lytton:

http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html

[alexlitel]

The Bulwer-Lytton entries are always way too long-winded, which drains them of the funny. I much prefer the Little Lytton:

http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.htmlHow about a QT3 Lytton contest?

[dermot]

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

[Manta]

The only one I can remember off the top of my head. Concise and evocative.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
- Stephen King's The Gunslinger

[madkevin]

Besides Lolita, which really and truly is my favourite opening in literature, I always liked the first line of Neuromancer:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

[Robert Sharp]

Famous, but not good.

You're wrong. "Call me Ishmael" is famous because it is a fantastic opening line. It's chock full of meaning in so few words. Call me Ishmael? So that isn't your real name? Why use it? Oh, it's a reference to the Biblical Ishmael, who was cast from his family to wander the earth for reasons that weren't really his fault. So I guess you feel the same way. You are a wanderer with a hard past, never really feeling at home anywhere.

All of that is in three words. Fantastic.

[milo]

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

[The Bird Flu]

"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time." - Slaughterhouse 5, my favorite book of all time.

'It's not like I'm using,' Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. `It's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency.' - Neuromancer 2nd paragraph.

[BlueJackalope]

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

- HST

[Houngan]

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

- HST

Close, but the paragraph describing the kit bag is so good, I can't think of anything else about the book.

H.

[Rimbo]

"In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth."

I have now contributed THREE "best opening lines evar"

[Case]

"I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the Army."

From "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi.

[Siren]

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

[mono]

Besides Lolita, which really and truly is my favourite opening in literature, I always liked the first line of Neuromancer:

Gordon Cameron was 6 1/2 years ahead of you on that one.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Wisbechlad shared your enthusiasm 13 hours ago.

C'mon people, the thread is only 2 pages, and you've had years to contribute!

[Gramuxius]

Ok, so it's three lines, but it's still a great opening:

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was beginning with God and the duty of every faithful monk would be to repeat every day with chanting humility the one never-changing event whose incontrovertible truth can be asserted. But we see now through a glass darkly, and the truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on evil." - The Name of the Rose.


More Eco fanboyism:

"That was when I saw the Pendulum." - Focault's Pendulum

[Siren]

Fine. Here's a better one.

"NOTICE:
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. "

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

[madkevin]

C'mon people, the thread is only 2 pages, and you've had years to contribute!

Dammit! OK, how about:

A screaming comes across the sky.

[Rimbo]

Fine. Here's a better one.

"NOTICE:
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance. "

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

You know, I only now realized how perfect that introduction is to that book. I used to just think it was ironic that it's now standard practice to teach the book in schools, to find motive, moral and plot within it, and that this was a statement of rebellion against the educational establishment. But now I see that's not the case; it is a statement meant to be an authority to be ignored, which fits the theme of the book perfectly.

[Sebmojo]

I don't have a copy handy (and Amazon doesn't have the ability to browse the book), but the opening paragraph of The Stainless Steel Rat is a classic.

When the office door opened suddenly I knew the game was up. It had been a money-maker - but it was all over. As the cop walked in I sat back in the chair and put on a happy grin. He had the same sombre expression and heavy foot that they all have - and the same lack of humour. I almost knew to the word what he was going to say before he uttered a syllable.

'James Bolivar diGriz I arrest you on the charge-'

I was waiting for the word charge, I thought it made a nice touch that way. As he said it I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the three-ton safe dropped through right on the top of the cop's head. He squashed very nicely, thank you. The cloud of plaster dust settled and all I could see of him was one hand, slightly crumpled. It twitched a bit and the index finger pointed at me accusingly. His voice was a little muffled by the safe and sounded a bit annoyed. In fact he repeated himself a bit.

From here (http://www.iol.ie/~carrollm/hh/ssrshort.htm).

The legend goes that Harrison wrote a whole bunch of opening lines to books, and this is one that made him want to write the book to see what happened.

[Bill]

"Because they had not repented, the angel stabbed the unrepentant couple thirteen times, with its sword." --Graham Swanson

Buh? That's terrible.

[Nengjanggo]

It seems like we're allowing multiple sentences, so I've always liked the opening of Lord of Light:

"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god."

[Talisker]

"Because they had not repented, the angel stabbed the unrepentant couple thirteen times, with its sword." --Graham SwansonBuh? That's terrible.
It's the winner of the 2008 Little Lytton (http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html) contest -- I was wondering if anyone would say something :)

We have the same repetition of an idea (this time repentence rather than creepiness), and some of the other surface elements aren't all that intrinsically funny — the precision of the number, the tacked-on mention of the sword. So why is this #1? Because in sixteen words it conveys a devastating portrait of its imaginary author. I mean, you can just see this guy, can't you? He's the one sitting three rows in front of you in lecture, the one with the mop of hair that doesn't touch the collar of his Warrior for Christ t-shirt. An overtly proud but secretly frustrated virgin (note that it's a couple getting stabbed), whose own sexual fantasies have grown more disturbing as he reached and then passed the big two-oh, he has turned his frustration outward into righteous fury at the sinners, penning a magnum opus that is part warning to the unbelievers and part revenge fantasy. And these guys exist, after all. Look at Chick tracts, look at Jarod's Journey — heck, is the Left Behind industry really much more sophisticated than this? Winner.

[Rimbo]

It's the winner of the 2008 Little Lytton (http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html) contest -- I was wondering if anyone would say something :)

And therein lies its greatness.