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
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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
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'
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'
This is a very "duh" one, but I still love it :p
"It was a pleasure to burn."
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Most people like Anna Karenina or Pride and Prejudice.
"Mother died today, or maybe yesterday , I don't know."
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
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."
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.
Is that from L'Etranger?Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick_Bateman
Oui!Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
" I am ninety. Or ninety -three. One or the other."
Opening words from Jacob Jankowski, Water For Elephants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Modest Proposal
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Manchegan