Favorite Opening Lines

[dmsynck]

What are your favorite opening lines ? Could be from either a novel or a short story. I'll start things off with two of my favorites -

"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" - "1984" by George Orwell

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" - "Neuromancer" by William Gibson

[stlukesguild]

John Keats: Endymion:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

[Crass the head]

I AM A SICK MAN.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well -- let it get worse!

- Dostoevsky, Notes from The Underground

[G L Wilson]

The opening lines to Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs are terrific.

[Fafnir]

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they
were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about
when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what
they were then doing;--that not only the production of a rational
Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and
temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his
mind;--and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of
his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions
which were then uppermost;--Had they duly weighed and considered all
this, and proceeded accordingly,--I am verily persuaded I should have
made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the
reader is likely to see me.--Believe me, good folks, this is not so
inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;--you have all, I
dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from
father to son, &c. &c.--and a great deal to that purpose:--Well, you may
take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense,
his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions
and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so
that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not
a half-penny matter,--away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by
treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road
of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are
once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive
them off it.

Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the
clock?--Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking
care to moderate his voice at the same time,--Did ever woman, since the
creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray,
what was your father saying?--Nothing.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

[conartist]

Swann's Way:

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say “I’m going to sleep.” And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

[m2vihand]

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked." (Kafka: Methamorphosis)

[WyattGwyon]

Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf; probably he had chosen his own name too. Having found Ursus fit for himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. — Victor Hugo, L'Homme qui rit

Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty water sliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun. — Cormac McCarthy, Suttree

Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was of exceedingly venerable stock: he had Adam for his ancestor. — Andrei Bely, Petersburg

—Money? . . . in a voice that rustled.
—Paper, yes.
—And we'd never seen it. Paper money.
—We never saw paper money till we came east.
—It looked so strange the first time we saw it. Lifeless. — William Gaddis, JR

[Patrick_Bateman]

Mother died today, or maybe yesterday, I'm not sure.

L'etranger - Albert Camus

[tonywalt]

It began as a mistake

Post Office by Charles Bukowski.

[L.M. The Third]

The opening line of Middlemarch has been on my mind lately, though the preface has more quotable lines.

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress."

The opening lines of Pride and Prejudice are among the most universally memorable and sometimes I go about repeating the first half of the chapter, just for pure love of it.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

I also have a great affection for the opening lines of The Pilgrim's Progress. My long acquaintance with that book may make me biased, but I consider its beginning a model of a captivating and beautiful opening.

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, 'What shall I do?'"

The first 26 lines of Paradise Lost are something I often repeat to myself when I wish to get my rebellious emotions under control. Their glory and majesty endues them with an elevating power.

And one simply can't forget the wonderful opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities:

"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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

[ChicagoReader]

Don't have it on me but the beginning paragraphs of Lolita are absolutely perfect.

[stlukesguild]

Of course there's always Dante's Comedia:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!


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!

-tr. Robert and Jean Hollander

[Patrick_Bateman]

don't have it on me but the beginning paragraphs of lolita are absolutely perfect.

+1


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[Kore]

From Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude:

"For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper and this is my love story. For thirty-five years I have been compacting wastepaper and books, smearing myself with letters until I've come to look like my encyclopedias - and a good three tons of them I've compacted over the years. I am a jug filled with water both magic and plain; I have only to lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me. My education has been so unwilling I can't quite tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books, but that's how I've stayed attuned to myself and the world around me for the past thirty-five years.Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in my like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel."