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


.

[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."

[Syd A]

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens,
"first you have to die. Hoji! Hoji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first
one needs to fly. Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How to ever smile again, if first
you won't cry? How to win the darling's love, mister, without a sigh?"
- Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

[armen_r10]

How many dawns, chill from the rippling rest,
The seagulls wings shall dip and pivot him.
—Crane

[Kundan]

Beginning paragraphs of Lolita are among my favorites too...

[conartist]

How many dawns, chill from the rippling rest,
The seagulls wings shall dip and pivot him.
—Crane

Love all things Crane. Also

Where the cedar leaf divides the sky
I heard the sea.
In saphire arenas of the hills
I was promised an improved infancy.

- Passage

[Panglossian]

"In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper."

--Invitation to a Beheading (Nabokov)

[armen_r10]

I was promised an improved infancy.

- Passage

Doesn't that just beg a Freudian analysis? :D
Or would we rather dub a Blakean return to innocence.

And not to make this a spam:

Regard the capture here, O Janus-faced,
As double as the hands that twist this glass.
—Recitative

[Chris 73]

The Haunting Of Hill House. Shirley Jackson. The sort of begining writers dream about.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.

“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.”

Winters Bone by Daniel Woodrell.
Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek. The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor, sweeten that meat to the bone.

And finally True Grit by Charles Portis.
People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

[Annie Anthrax]

"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom."


Beloved - Toni Morrison. Ask me tomorrow and it may be different.

[Squabbles]

Don't have it on me but the beginning paragraphs of Lolita are absolutely perfect.
Since I and a few others have agreed, I give you the first two paragraphs:

"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.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

[Dark Passenger]

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles.

From Less Than Zero the debut novel by Bret Easton Ellis. It's a simple line compared to openings in his other books, and he even admits as much in a later piece, Lunar Park. I think it sets the bleak tone of the novel with a casual ease that suits the narrator, Clay.

[V.Jayalakshmi]

My Cousin Rachel (Daphne du Maurier)


"They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not any more though..."

The above opening line made me sit up when I was reading the book.

Though the quoted is not the opening line I also liked Shakespeare's lines in "Hamlet"

Hamlet:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep

[Joyeuse]

"Howard Roark laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff."
-Ayn Rand's Fountainhead

I just love the surprise that comes from reading that line. I looked at it and had so many questions. Who's Howard Roark? Why's he naked? Is he committing suicide? I just thought it was really eye-catching.

[inbetween]

the beginning of "das parfüm" don't feel like translating it right now... but I always loved it... and the beginning of varney the vampire... (love it):
MIDNIGHT. -- THE HAIL-STORM. -- THE DREADFUL VISITOR. -- THE VAMPYRE.

The solemn tones of an old cathedral clock have announced midnight -- the air is thick and heavy -- a strange, death like stillness pervades all nature. Like the ominous calm which precedes some more than usually terrific outbreak of the elements, they seem to have paused even in their ordinary fluctuations, to gather a terrific strength for the great effort. A faint peal of thunder now comes from far off. Like a signal gun for the battle of the winds to begin, it appeared to awaken them from their lethargy, and one awful, warring hurricane swept over a whole city, producing more devastation in the four or five minutes it lasted, than would a half century of ordinary phenomena.

[MarkBastable]

Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall by Spike Milligan

September 3rd, 1939. The last minutes of peace ticking away. Father and I were watching Mother digging our air-raid shelter. "She's a great little woman," said Father. "And getting smaller all the time," I added.

--------------------------------------------

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home, wondering if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in transforming herself.

---------------------------------------------

And I agree with the earlier suggestion that the opening of Tristam Shandy is a terrific hook.

[Emil Miller]

It was Sunday, and, according to his custom on that day, McTeague took his dinner at two in the afternoon at the car conductors' coffee-joint on Polk Street. He had a thick grey soup: heavy, underdone meat, very hot, on a cold plate; two kinds of vegetables; and a sort of suet pudding, full of strong butter and sugar. On his way back to his office, one block above, he stopped at Joe Frenna's saloon and bought a pitcher of beer. It was his habit to leave the pitcher there on his way to dinner.
Once in his office,or, as he called it on his sign-board, "Dental Parlors," he took off his coat and shoes, unbuttoned his vest, and, having crammed his little stove full of coke, lay back in his operating chair at the bay window, reading the paper, drinking his beer, and smoking his huge porcelain pipe while his food digested; crop-full, stupid, and warm.

McTeague by Frank Norris.

[PoeticPassions]

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." Love in the Time of Cholera Marquez

"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening." A Clockwork Orange

I agree with LOLITA... I am sure there are more that don't come to mind right now.

[tonywalt]

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me....

Cather in the Rye
JD Salinger

[Desolation]

"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could hear them hitting." - William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

"Stately plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." - James Joyce, Ulysses

"Here we are, alone again." - Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Death on the Installment Plan

"Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos." - Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

I'd also like to second the already mentioned Swann's Way, Notes from Underground, and Lolita.

[Ome]

Stately, plump Buck Mullligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Ulysses

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
The Stranger

Last year, on the evening of March 22, I had a very strange adventure. All that day I had been walking about the town trying to find a lodging. My old one was very damp, and I had begun to have an ominous cough.
Insulted and injured

[cacian]

There are opening lines you simply cannot forget because of the impact it has one's mind/feelings.

Do you have one in mind you would like to share?

Thanks!!

[MarkBastable]

He lifted the lid of the dustbin and looked out.

Puckoon

[ennison]

This was an interesting thread. Sometimes an opening can be arresting for little more reason than to be eye-catching. But sometimes it gives a whole steer to what is to follow. The beginning of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is good. Earthly Powers has an eye-catching opening. The Tomorrow File (an obscure novel that I admire) has an eye-catching opening. Jaws gets right into it. Jayne Eyre has an opening which when re-read suggests a lot about the writer's intentions. A good opening is often like that. A Passage to India has a delicious opening. Synaesthetic critical terminology there!

[kev67]

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

[ajvenigalla]

From Homer's Iliad (Greek):

μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
5οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

Paradise Lost's opening:

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heaven and earth
Rose out of chaos. Or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th'Aionian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all temples th'upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for thou knowst, thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat'st brooding o'er the vast abyss
And madst it pregnant. What in me is dark,
Illumine; what is low, raise and support,
That to the highth of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to man.

Also, the opening sentence of The Scarlet Letter (one of my all-time favorite novels):

"A THRONG of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes."

[Irinathedreamer]

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.
I love "Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings" and basically everything by Tolkien! They are very inspiring and beautiful, and epic...

[DWit]

Love these listed so far. I'd add Anna Karenina's:
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

[DWit]

Love these listed so far. I'd add Anna Karenina's:
"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."