Famous Opening Lines

[cameron]

'Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.'

(weirdly detached)

The Outsider Albert Camus

[Bombadil]

"Barrabas came to us by sea."

Also the ending line of:

"The House of the Spirits," by Isabel Allende

[camus]

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw" that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

The Secret History - Donna Tartt.

2 t's.

[Ven]

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

The God of Small Things ~ by Arundhati Roy.

[pseud]

That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.

It started to rain, which was particularly normal.

A spacecraft landed, which was not.

There was nobody around to see it except for some spectacularly stupid quadrupeds who hadn't the faintest idea what to make of it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it, or what. So they did what they did to everything, which was to run away from it and try to hide under each other, which never worked.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish ~ Douglas Adams
(I found it funny, anyway)

[communist daughter]

most of the hitchhikers series open in an amusing or interesting way. i love all those books. found the long dark teatime of the soul a little dull for him though.

opening lines....

'it was a dreary night of november that i beheld the accomplishment of my toils'

ok not the opening you normally come across but that was the orginal opening line of shelleys frankenstein before percy had a fiddle with it.

[pb]

'For a long time I used to go to bed early'

The start of one of literature's great journeys.

[Arcadian]

"Here is the most vexing part of the matter" said Porthos.
"In the old days one didn't have to explain anything.
One just fought because one fought"

A Dumas: The Vicomte de Bragelonne

[pb]

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, tinging 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 the last year's golden clusters of bee-hive ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedge-rows 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.

Sorry to type all that out, you just need the full paragraph to retain the proper impact of its last two sentences.

[camus]

"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"

Not literature, but a great opening line.

[twelveoone]

'Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: Your mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Deep sympathy. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.'

(weirdly detached)

The Outsider Albert Camus

The Stranger?

[twelveoone]

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

A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess

[camus]

I think the translation was Called The Outsider, that's the title I first read it under.

But I have a copy Called the Stranger.

Potatoe Potarto.

[william]

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with ends of worms and an oozy smell, not yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

[barrie]

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce.
..............................................................................

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

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.


He sang that song. That was his song.

O, the green wothe botheth.

[Queen Victoria]

Everyone will surely know this classic opening (from Earthly Powers - Anthony Burgess)

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

But how many know this recording of his Oscar acceptance speech: http://bu.univ-angers.fr/EXTRANET/Antho ... 5Sardi.htm ? Bloody funny.

VR

[calxaed]

'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.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.'

[pseud]

good ole' Vladimir Nabokov...

[Saul]

/

[spencer_broughton]

'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.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.'

Oh yes, that would probably have been my choice.

But apart from that the beginning to Steppenwolf. I haven't got a copy with me and google is crap, someone should post it. Hint hint.

[Charles]

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

[Ryder]

THE BEET IS THE MOST INTENSE of vegetables. The raddish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the raddish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Tom Robbins. Jitterbug Perfume.

[camus]

Interesting Ryder.

It reminds me very much of a scene from Withnail and I when uncle Monty discusses a firm young carrot

"I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is, you'll agree, a certain je ne sais quoi oh so very special about a firm young carrot."

Not come across Tom Robbins, not to be confused with Harold Robbins!

[Charles]

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

Quite possibly the most famous opening line ever - which is funny because it's not particually dramatic or unusual, but it does set the tone and scene for the novel perfectly.

[k-j]

I'll toss in "The day broke grey and dull." There's a brutal banality about it which feeds perfectly into the rest of Of Human Bondage.