Favorite Opening Lines....
It seems that some authors are really great at tearing your attention out of your head and holding it hostage just with the opening line of some of their books. Just curious what some of your favorites are. Here are a few of mine:
"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]
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." - [I]The Gunslinger[/I]
"I can count my overdoses on one hand." - [I]The Contortionist Handbook[/I]
"I was 50 years old and I hadn't been to bed with a woman for four years." - [I]Women[/I]
"This is a tale of meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." - [I]Breakfast of Champions[/I]
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." - [I]Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas[/I]
Do not speak- unless it improves on silence.
Iain Banks has some great opening lines. Here is his from [I]The Wasp Factory[/I], "I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped."
I may have to check out [I]The Crow Road[/I] now.
Do not speak- unless it improves on silence.
Great topic, and I'm surprised more people haven't taken the bait.
A few of my favorites:
"Hello. My name is Robert, and I haven't been dead for sixty-three days now."
- Mil Millington, [i]Love and Other Near-Death Experiences[/i]
"When Lady Ann Sercomb married George Smiley towards the end of the war she described him to her astonished Mayfair friends as breathtakingly ordinary."
- John le Carre, [i]Call for the Dead[/i]
"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save on those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, [i]The Hound of the Baskervilles[/i]
[technically opening [i]lines[/i], but it's too good to cut]
"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."
- Vladimir Nabokov, [i]Lolita[/i]
[QUOTE=TortillaFactory;918693]Great topic, and I'm surprised more people haven't taken the bait.[/QUOTE]
There's already been a couple of these threads. I'm sure a lot of us have already done this quite a few times.
But I'll give mine for the moment. I remember when I read Choke by Chuck, I was pulled in by the first few lines. I think I've read those few lines to more people than anything else. Not because they are written extremely well. Just because I think it's a great way to start a book.
"If you're going to read this, don't bother.
After a couple pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you're still in one piece.
Save yourself.
There has to be something better on television. Or since you have so much time on your hands, maybe you could take a night course. Become a doctor. You could make something out of yourself. Treat yourself to a dinner out. Color your hair.
You're not getting any younger."
I love great opening lines. You can immortalize yourself with a great one, like Call Me Ismael or It was the best of times it was the worst of times. Here are a few more favorites of mine:
"I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man."
Notes from the Underground - Dostoyevsky
"All children, except one, grow up."
Peter Pan - Barrie
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
"I thought I had mono once for an entire year. Turns out I was just really bored."
Wayne Campbell
Oh and I totally forgot
"Workers of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but your chains."
Marx
"I thought I had mono once for an entire year. Turns out I was just really bored."
Wayne Campbell
[QUOTE=TortillaFactory;918693]
[technically opening [i]lines[/i], but it's too good to cut]
"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."
- Vladimir Nabokov, [i]Lolita[/i][/QUOTE]
Nabokov has good ones, I like his Laughter in the Dark opening paragraph:
"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; he was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."
Samuel Beckett's opening line in Malone Dies also tickles my fancy:
"I shall soon be quite dead at last, in spite of it all."
.jpg "quipaddler's picture")
Mother died today, or was it yesterday, I don't know.
-Camus, L'etranger (Outsider, translated Penguin Copy)
It might be one very hyped line, I don't know..
read about it few times, so I can guess it is, and it's the only starting line I can remember of a book. Dark, doom and gloom, begining with a funeral straight to you face.
The opening line of [I]Phineas Poe[/I] by Will Christopher Baer was good.
I guess it's actually the first book within the compilation Phineas Poe--[I]Kiss Me, Judas[/I].
"Pink and gray sky, the color of muscle."
It's pretty artsy-fartsy.
I picked up a second-hand book the other day based on its opening line (and the fact that everyone keeps recommending the author to me):
[I]"It was the day my grandmother exploded."[/I]
Iain Banks, The Crow Road.