Opening Lines

[Scheherazade]

Try to guess which book the opening line(s) come from and ask another one!

(Try not to google, please!)
Here is the first one:

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

[optimisticnad]

uh...too much description of surrounding and nature/landscape so something by...thomas hardy?
im 110% sure im wrong but someone must reply.

[Basil]

Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde


There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

[Scheherazade]

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

It was inevitable: The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

[Nightshade]

Easy Love in time of cholera :D

1801. - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.

[Pensive]

Wuthering Heights (This is very easy)


She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill towards the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.

[white camellia]

The English Patient

* , light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. * : the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. * * *. :D

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Lolita - blah blah - message too short - why don't quotes count?


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.

[Nightshade]

have no idea but that sounds like it might be an interesting book mmmmmmmm :nod:

[Xamonas Chegwe]

it is. :nod:

[Dickensian]

"Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B.C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B.C. These suggestions are also incorrect. Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at exactly 9:00 A.M., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh. This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour."

[Taliesin]

Well, that one is from "Good Omens" by Pratchett and Gaiman.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I thought the idea was - you answer one and post another - So far: my opening lines have gone unanswered, Dickensian has posted another anyway and Taliesin has (have?) answered Dickensian's without posting his / her / their own!

...and we're only on post 12. :D

[Taliesin]

We didn't leave a beginning line on purpose to keep the number of proposed unsolved problems down to one.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

OK then - so here is that unanswered problem - just so nobody else gets confused. ;)


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.

And it's not in the Lit Net texts, which is a shame, it's a classic comic novel and most certainly out of copyright.

[Dickensian]

Sorry for my part--I figured I'd just add one anyway after having no idea where Xamonas Chegwe's lines came from (although they look awfully interesting). Sorry, won't happen again.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Would a clue be in order?

[Basil]

Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne. (I googled--interestingly, I had this book as an option to read in a class I'm currently in, but I chose The Monk by Matthew Lewis instead)


Issac McCaslin, 'Uncle Ike', past seventy and nearer eighty than he ever corroborated any more, a widower now and uncle to half a county and father to no one

[Scheherazade]

Go down, Moses by William Faulkner (Yes, I googled. :D)

There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself,
and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about
how bad we were - bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.

[papayahed]

ohohohohoh, I know this one without googling!!!!!


Three men and a boat Jerome K Jerome


A FLOCK OF NUNS CROSSED THE ROAD, THEIR CRISP WIMPLES FLUTtering about their heads like the wings of large sea birds. As they floated through the large stone gates of the town, chickens and geese scurried out of their path, flapping and splashing through the mud puddles.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Had to google - but only because I knew I'd read it and couldn't remember where.

The Eight - Katherine Neville.


"Yes of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay. "But you"ll have to be up with the lark," She added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled, the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night's darkness and a day's sail, within touch.

[Ryduce]

To the lighthouse-Virginia Woolf(didn't have to google ;) )



I'll do an easier one...

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

[papayahed]

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez




SATURNINUS
Noble patricians, patrons of my right,
Defend the justice of my cause with arms,
And, countrymen, my loving followers,
Plead my successive title with your swords:
I am his first-born son, that was the last
That wore the imperial diadem of Rome;
Then let my father's honours live in me,
Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.

[Basil]

Titus Andronicus - Shakespeare


A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.

[papayahed]

Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole



On an exceptionally hot evening in early July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K Bridge.

[Scheherazade]

On an exceptionally hot evening in early July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K Bridge.Crime and Punishment

Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, "That afternoon when I met so-and-so . . . was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon."

[papayahed]

Memoirs Of A Geisha - Arthur Golden



He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

[Scheherazade]

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway


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.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce.


They sprawled along the counter and on chairs. Another night. Another drag of a night at the Greek's, a beatup all night diner near the Brooklyn Armybase. Once in a while a doggie or a seaman came in for a hamburger or played the jukebox. But they usually played some goddam hillbilly record. They tried to get the Greek to take those records off, but hed tell them no. They come in and spend money. You sit all night and buy notting. Are yakiddin me Alex? Ya could retire on the money we spend in here. Scatah. You dont pay my carfare...

[Scheherazade]

Since no one has answered the above quote, I will post a new one:
The Salinas Valley is in Northern California.

[Schokokeks]

Oh, me knows, it must be:
East of Eden by John Steinbeck.


When that Aprilis, with his showers swoot,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such licour,
Of which virtue engender'd is the flower;

[Scheherazade]

The Canterbury Tales

Next:

A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: