Best First Sentence.

[hazelk]

Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee.

Opening line "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian" by Marina Lewycka

[Modest Proposal]

Here's one not so well known:

There was a boy named Eustece Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.

C.S. Lewis 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader' (I think)


Here's, in my mind, the best:

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville 'Moby-Dick'

[Silas Thorne]

I'm not sure if there is a best opening line. There are so many great ones though.

I rather like this one: 'He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. '
Raphael Sabatini, 'Scaramouche'

[Phaedra's Love]

This is a very "duh" one, but I still love it :p

"It was a pleasure to burn."
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

[JBI]

Most people like Anna Karenina or Pride and Prejudice.

[Patrick_Bateman]

"Mother died today, or maybe yesterday , I don't know."

[keilj]

best opening line in literature bar none - Steinbeck:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of *****es," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angles and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.



pretty much typifies what Steinbeck wrote about his whole life

[Night_Lamp]

I think Anthony Burgess still wins with the first line of Earthly Powers:

"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."

[Kyriakos]

I rather like the opening paragraph of the Call of Cthulhu :)

Also the beginning of Searching for the lost time, which i never managed to finish though.

[kelby_lake]

"Mother died today, or maybe yesterday , I don't know."

Is that from L'Etranger?

[Patrick_Bateman]

Is that from L'Etranger?

Oui!

;

[Gregory Samsa]

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

[hazelk]

" I am ninety. Or ninety -three. One or the other."

Opening words from Jacob Jankowski, Water For Elephants.

[Manchegan]

Here's, in my mind, the best:

Call me Ishmael.

Herman Melville 'Moby-Dick'


This line gets a lot of respect as an opener, and I don't really see why. Could you help me out there? I read the book and loved it, but I don't see why this line is so profound. Thanks in advance.

[Razeus]

This line gets a lot of respect as an opener, and I don't really see why. Could you help me out there? I read the book and loved it, but I don't see why this line is so profound. Thanks in advance.

Probably because it's a Biblical name. Also he says "Call" to be specific and to imply that Ishameal is not his real name. Perhaps he uses the name as someone he aspirese to be.

[Manchegan]

Probably because it's a Biblical name. Also he says "Call" to be specific and to imply that Ishameal is not his real name. Perhaps he uses the name as someone he aspirese to be.

That's kind of what I thought. Ishmael is the kid that almost gets sacrificed, right? I don't see how it relates to this Jonah-like story...

[hazelk]

First line from "Dark Places' by Kate Grenville.

"I was once long ago a fat boy, and in the privacy of the bath I investigated my rolls and folds with interest."

[Razeus]

That's kind of what I thought. Ishmael is the kid that almost gets sacrificed, right? I don't see how it relates to this Jonah-like story...

Not sure myself. I never got through the book. But it's a good way to pull in the reader.

[Rores28]

That's kind of what I thought. Ishmael is the kid that almost gets sacrificed, right? I don't see how it relates to this Jonah-like story...

According to the Bible, Sarah (Abraham's wife) was childless, yet desired a son. She offers her maidservant Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate. Customs of the time dictated that, although Hagar was the birth mother, any child conceived would belong to Sarah and Abraham.[4][7]

Hagar became pregnant and was proud of herself, which resulted in harsh treatment of her by Sarah. Hagar fled and ran into the wilderness, where an angel appeared to her by a spring of water.[4] The angel of the Lord told her to return, adding that God would increase her descendants through a son whose name would be Ishmael. The angel told Hagar that Ishmael would become "a wild donkey of a man" and would be in constant struggle with others.[4]

So Hagar returned to Abraham's house, and had a son whom she named Ishmael.[4] Abraham was 86 years old when Ishmael was born.[8] Abraham, obeying God's commandment, circumcised Ishmael when his son was thirteen years of age.[9] That year, Abraham's wife Sarah became pregnant with his second son, Isaac.[4] One day Sarah was angered by seeing Ishmael playing or "mocking" (the Hebrew word is ambiguous[10]),[2] and she asked Abraham to expel him and his mother, saying: "Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac."[4][11] Abraham initially refused to do as Sarah asked.[2] He finally gave in to his wife's request when God told him that it was through Isaac that Abraham's offspring would "be reckoned", and that He would "make Ishmael into a nation", too, since he was a descendant of Abraham.[9][12] Abraham provided Hagar and her child with bread and a bottle of water and sent her into the desert of Paran.[9][13] Hagar, with her son on her back, wandered in the wilderness and ran out of water. When they were reduced to great distress, Hagar left Ishmael crying under a bush, an angel appeared and showed Hagar a spring of water saying "What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation."[9][14]

They lived in the wilderness of Paran, where Hagar's son became an expert in archery. His mother married him to an Egyptian woman.[9] According to the Bible, Ishmael had 12 sons who became twelve tribal chiefs. The twelve sons of Ishmael were named Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah (See Genesis 25)[2] Ishmael's sons settled everywhere from Havilah to Shur, i.e. from Assyria to the border of Egypt.[9] Ishmael also had a daughter named Mahalath or Bashemath who married Esau.[15] Ishmael also appears with Isaac at the burial of Abraham.[9][16] Ishmael died at the age of 137.[2]


I think it is more about Ismael feeling as if he doesn't fit into society and so he goes away from society. He basically says he goes away because he feels suicidal, which I imagine is partly induced by his repressed homosexuality.

Upon hearing the Lord's blessing for Isaac, Abraham pleaded with the Lord that Ishmael also be given a blessing.[17:18-21] In the second covenant given to Ishmael, the Lord promises:

* To make his descendants one great nation[17:20][21:13][21:18]
* That his descendants would not live in hostility with all his brothers[16:11-13]
* That his descendants would live to the east of all his brothers[16:11-

They sail off the east coast of the US and live in a much more "progressive" social system than people on the land.

[Manchegan]

Wow. Thanks Rores. That was quite informative.

[Lord Macbeth]

I can't believe no one's said it yet...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, one of the most famous opening lines in the English language and literature overall.

Another great one, just so I can keep my reputation as a Shakespeare fiend...

"Now is the winter of out discontent..."

-William Shakespeare, Richard III (yes, that's technically the first LINE and not the first sentence, as it goes on "Made glorious summer by this son of York..." but it's that first line everyone remembers and treats like a first sentence, often when it's acted there's be a slight, period-length pause between the first and second lines, to emphasize the first line, so it's sort of a "Best First Sentence" in a theatrical way.)

[kelby_lake]

"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Love both of those :D

[Sine_lege]

Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

The Stranger -Albert Camus

[Zeniyama]

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

-James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

This is what immediately comes to mind when I think of great first sentences.

[The Comedian]

This line gets a lot of respect as an opener, and I don't really see why. Could you help me out there? I read the book and loved it, but I don't see why this line is so profound. Thanks in advance.

I love the "Call me Ishmael." opening line too -- I think one reason why people find it so effective is evasiveness of it. . . .it seems so disingenuous on first glance. . . like the guy's name is probably not Ishmael. Then there's the overt Biblical reference. . .and with name like Ahab that figure so prominently later in the novel, the reader (especially a re-reader) becomes cued into to the allegorical nature of the names in the telling of the tale. The name Ishmael seems at once directly plotted and haphazardly whimsical in the line. . .reliable but not so much. . .

Add to this that Ishmael is one of English/American literature's great narrative voices, which the reader will discover as he or she proceeds through Melville's great work, and well, there you go. It's a pretty keen opening line.

EDIT: Oh, and I also like Vonnegut's from Slaughter-house Five -- "Billy Pilgrim became unstuck in time."

[Midnight Pete]

Easy.

"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed."

The Gunslinger, Stephen King

[nandakishore]

"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

This one wins hands down, IMO.

[Pecksie]

I can't believe no one's said it yet...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, one of the most famous opening lines in the English language and literature overall.

Another great one, just so I can keep my reputation as a Shakespeare fiend...

"Now is the winter of out discontent..."

-William Shakespeare, Richard III (yes, that's technically the first LINE and not the first sentence, as it goes on "Made glorious summer by this son of York..." but it's that first line everyone remembers and treats like a first sentence, often when it's acted there's be a slight, period-length pause between the first and second lines, to emphasize the first line, so it's sort of a "Best First Sentence" in a theatrical way.)

Love both of those.