Famous Opening Lines

[David]

I am nothing if not obvious, but:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

[spencer_broughton]

Is that Ulysess then? I only got to about chapter 4 and then decided i had better things to do with my time.

[David]

It is Ulysses, so it is. And you may have made the right decision. Or maybe you should try it again. I've read it twice, and I don't regret it.

[cameron]

I'm not trying to engage in one-upmanship here but I think I read it 3 times when I was a young person. I used to try, without much success, to get other people to read it too. I found it truly inspiring.

Cam

PS However, Finnegans Wake is impossible.

[k-j]

I've only read Ulysses once, and I enjoyed it so much I'm scared to read it again. I still don't understand why people who are otherwise very open to all kinds of literature are so often dead against it. It's unconventional but it's not completely off the radar like Finnegan's Wake. I read somewhere that great novels teach you how to read them, and that definitely applies to Ulysses.

[spencer_broughton]

Hmmm, I did enjoy some of the language but I kept getting more and more frustrated that I couldn't work out when people were having conversation and when it was simply thoughts. I need proper speech marks for fucks sake! I'm told it gets better as it goes on and the ending is wonderful, so I'll give it another go after a bit more reading in other areas.

However, I did very much enjoy The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I love how it starts:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

[k-j]

Guardian Books section has a lengthy discussion on opening lines: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/ ... _blog.html.

[cameron]

He's probably been reading this thread. He's got Camus. Maybe I can sue him for theft of intellectual property??

I'll give him credit for Murphy though:

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

Ha, ha.

[k-j]

"A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships--laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal--are borne along to the town of St. Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of last year's golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees; the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge."

- The Mill on the Floss. Just immaculate lucid prose.

EDIT: looking back, I notice pb posted the very same text a long time before I did!

[beautifulloser]

"I first met Dean Moriarty..."

Good old Jack, with his friends and their smack.

[k-j]

"A screaming comes across the sky..."

- Gravity's Rainbow

[k-j]

Not famous, but pretty good I think:

"Life is a hideous thing..."

from Lovecraft's "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family"

[PhilipCFJohnson]

"When a day you happen to know is Wednesday starts off sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."

-Most awesome and British sounding opening EVER!

The Day of The Triffids by John Wyndham

[OwenEdwards]

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

[Holly_Golightly]

"I first met Dean Moriarty..."

Good old Jack, with his friends and their smack.

A firm favourite with me also. I like the idea of a great novel teaching you how to read it. I'd never read anything like "On the road" before but got in to the style as I read on.

[brianedwards]

All this happened, more or less.

~ Slaughterhouse Five

[Arian]

Clive James starts his autobiography with the words:

I was born in 1939. The other big event of that year....

[John G]

My favourite first lines are as follows:

“It was a pleasure to burn” Fahrenheit 451

“I am an invisible man.” Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

“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. Dickens Tale of Two Cities

“
And last but by no means least, my best of all time:

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . ."And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?" Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

[Bloggsworth]

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.

"Brighton Rock" perchance?

[Bloggsworth]

It was the best of times....