Favorite First Words

I must be dead for there is nothing but blue snow and the furious silence of a gunshot.

Will Christopher Baer - KMJ

p.s. - call me ishmael is cheating.

Howard Roark laughed.

[QUOTE=EyesLikeHoles]Howard Roark laughed.[/QUOTE]
what book is this from?

If you're going to read this, don't bother.

Choke

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I don't remember.

- The Outsider, Albert Camus

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

[QUOTE]what book is this from?[/QUOTE]

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

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 a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.

"ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men"

My father told me that I would live as many years as the grains of dust I could hold in one hand. Consequently I have lived to such an advanced age that now, when my body is ravaged by time, and powerless, all I have left to me is this voice, this shadow, this urge to tell.

Jeff Noon - Pollen

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor 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."

- [i]The Hobbit[/i], JRR Tolkien

"I was tired.

I got up, crawled out of the maelstrom of sheets, at 9:30 this morning. I took a shower, I drank some coffee. I sat on the floor with my back to the wall and felt my muscles creak as they carried a burning cigarette from the ashtray to my mouth, from my mouth to the ashtray. And when I first thought seriously about taking a nap, I looked at the clock. It was 10:45.

a.m."

- [i]Only Forward[/i], Michael Marshall Smith

"Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople."

- [i]The Undertaking[/i], Thomas Lynch

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."

- [i]Fight Club[/i], Chuck Palahniuk

"Bye-bye" the baby said, his voice a little bell. "Bye-bye" he waved, as we arrived for the party at the lake.

- The Children's Party by Amy Hempel

"She would always sleep with her husband and with
another man in the course of the same day, and then the
rest of the day for whatever was left of her of that day,
she would exploit by incanting, "[I]French[/I] film, [I]French[/I] film."

- Housewife by Amy Hempel. (Opening line and the entire story)

I hope these aren't too predictable, but hey they are my favorites...

- The whole intro to The Contortionist's Handbook. I would post it, but it's over a page long.

- The first time I killed someone, I was scared. Not scared to be doing it - I did it because I was scared.
Shella told me it was like that for her the first time she had sex.
I was fifteen that first time. Shella was nine.
-- Shella - Andrew Vachss

- A saleman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping... A Cherokee filled with bourbon... A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student...
And a family from Marshalltown who headonned and killed forever a man driving west out of Bethany, Moissouri...
... I rose up sopping wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than concscious, thanks to the frist three of the people I've already named - the saleman and the Indian and the student - all of whom had given me drugs.
-- Jesus' Son - Car Crash While Hitchhiking - Denis Johnson

- In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
-- The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzegerald

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you.Winnie-the-Pooh."
'Winnie-the-Pooh', A.A. Milne

[QUOTE=Agonymouse]Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday. I don't remember.

- The Outsider, Albert Camus[/QUOTE]
the stranger?

[QUOTE=vidalia]the stranger?[/QUOTE]

Yes.

i know. i was pointing out that someone was crossing him with s.e. hinton maybe

Harry locked his mother in the closet.

-Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby Jr.

[I]It was love at first sight.
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.[/I]
Jospeh Heller--Catch 22.

[QUOTE=vidalia]i know. i was pointing out that someone was crossing him with s.e. hinton maybe[/QUOTE]

Le'trenger is translated as The Outsider in th UK though I believe.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Le'trenger is translated as The Outsider in th UK though I believe.[/QUOTE]

i'm inside the MA.

[QUOTE=vidalia]i'm inside the MA.[/QUOTE]

What?

[I]An alcoholic homicide detective in my hometown of Millhaven, Illinois, William Damrosch, died to ensure, you might say, that this book would never be written. But you write what comes back to you, and then afterward it comes back to you all over again.[/I]

The Throat, Peter Straub.

nevermind.

Killing animals was the hard part. "All you've got to do," Jerome had told him, "is keep your cool. There isn't anybody else's cool you've got to keep, and there isn't anybody else who will keep yours.

[I]Magnetic Fields[/I] by Ron Loewinsohn

some people raise rare and fancy chickens as a hobby, sometimes for shows.

[I]raising poultry successfully[/I]

smarty pants

[i]Ik heb alweer niks te melden en dat zal ik doen in een pagina of zeshonderd a zeshondervijftig, we zullen zien. Ik liep over straat. Samen met mij geen enkel konijn.[/i]

Herman Brusselmans - De kus in de nacht.

Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival banker, and auctiooneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I've got Tourette's. My mouth won't quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I'm reading aloud, my Adam's apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks empty of breath and tone. (If I were a Dick Tracy villain, I'd have to be Mumbles.)

My first post ever! God I'm the King.

[QUOTE=thirstygerbil]
My first post ever! God I'm the King.[/QUOTE]

good one. lethem is cool.

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die." Fight Club.

I was hooked after that sentence.

"I believe that what separates humanity from everything else in this world - spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss and Mount McKinley - is that humanity alone has the capacity at any given moment to commit all possible sin. Even those of us who try to live a good and true life remain as far away from grace as the Hillside Strangler or any demon who ever tried to poison the village well. What happened that morning only confirms this."

Douglas Coupland - [I]Hey Nostradamus![/I]

(ok, so it was the first paragraph, but i couldn't help myself )

I was just in the bookstore, thinking I'd buy nothing, when I saw that Paul Auster has a short story in the latest issue of Granta. I bought the $15.00 magazine because of this simple opening line:

"I was looking for a quiet place to die."

Here's Two. One long, one short.

"It's hot as hell in Martirio, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news. Don't even try to guess who stood all Tuesday night in the road. Clue: snotty ole Mrs Lechuga. Hard to tell if she quivered, or if moths and porchlight through the willows ruffled her skin like funeral satin in a gale. Either way, dawn showed a puddle between her feet. It tells you normal times just ran howling from town. Probably forever. God knows I tried my best to learn the ways of this world, even had inklings we could be glorious; but after all that's happened, the inkles ain't easy anymore. I mean - what kind of fucken life is [I]this[/I]?

and

"I'm Jared, a ghost."

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh-
the very thought of it renews my fear!

"What's it going to be then, eh?"
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, George, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korovoa Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.

[I]A Clockwork Orange[/I], Anthony Burgess

sources, my loves, don't forget them!! you just might convince someone to pick up your favorite book

[QUOTE]Loved Vernon God Little. If nobody had chosen it as their favorite first words, I was about to post it myself. [/QUOTE]

Yup - it's a class book, and crammed with wonderful lines. Even in that opening section, I think it has a few of my favourite snippets of the year:

[QUOTE]It tells you normal times just ran howling from town.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]God knows I tried my best to learn the ways of this world, even had inklings we could be glorious;[/QUOTE]

and of course:

[QUOTE]what kind of fucken life is this?[/QUOTE]

I know it's pathetic - but I loved that character so much I'd like DBC Pierre to write another book featuring lil Vern and his "powerdime shifts".

This might be cheating since I haven't read the book yet, but looking at the first words has put it next in line for my reading.

"When your mama was the geek, my little dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal memory that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. 'Spread your lips, sweet Lil,' they'd cluck, 'and show us your choppers!'"

[I]Geek Love[/I], Katherine Dunn

the tell-tale heart

sorry to be to obvious vidalia, i know it's overdone, but it's still a kickass first line.

EDIT: sorry, the source is Ginsburg, [i]Howl[/i]

This Be the Verse -- Philip Larkin

(snuff - if you pmed me in the last few minutes, i didn't get it b/c my box it full. you may want to resend.)

[QUOTE=vidalia](snuff - if you pmed me in the last few minutes, i didn't get it b/c my box it full. you may want to resend.)[/QUOTE]

i know.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

[QUOTE=monfreid]This might be cheating since I haven't read the book yet, but looking at the first words has put it next in line for my reading.

"When your mama was the geek, my little dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal memory that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. 'Spread your lips, sweet Lil,' they'd cluck, 'and show us your choppers!'"

[I]Geek Love[/I], Katherine Dunn[/QUOTE]
Absolutely stunning piece of work. Your executive decision to bump it up on the reading list was one you will not regret.

Now, forgive me, my little chickadees, but I've got a rather lengthy submission. The first sentence just keeps bleeding down through the paragraph and I can't help myself.

"First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin."

-The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

One more, I promise it won't be as long.

"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 by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable." The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuttered in the empty bedrooms. And the dron and hiccups of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.

Jonathen Franzen's The Corrections.