What's your favorite first line?

"Call me Ishmael" posts inspired me to read Melville's book. After reading about Moby Dick immediately recollected that I read its adapted version when was at school. Still remember what new words I learned from that book and that poor, mad captain.


Isagel, then you'll like reading "Ali and Nino" by Kurban Said. It begins in same way. It stayed in my bookshelf for a long time while I thought over to read it or not. But after the first lines read it on one breath. It consists of only 30 chapters. It's better to read it in German. English version isn't very nice.
Russian version is quite cool - in this link.
http://www.azeribook.com/proza/kurban_said/ali_nino.htm

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Originally posted by Basil
Or, if you will indulge me three lines:

Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.

Albert Camus, The Stranger

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That's the exact one I was thinking of when I opened this thread to comment basil. The whole disregard and lack of effort or caring as to time is fabulous.

My fav firsts sentence is the first verse of Genesis..

"At the beginning......"

Quote:

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Originally posted by Basil
Or, if you will indulge me three lines:

Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.

Albert Camus, The Stranger

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A true classic! The style sets the tone of the book: everything to Mersault is no more than a telegram-style, saccadic event in his life.

I was also going to say Camus. Also, the first line from 1984 about the clock striking 13. I don't have a copy here, but I'm going home tomorow. If no one else posts it, I'll put it up tomorow.

It started in mud, as many things do.

Several points of view make great first sentences.

I like the sentence to put me in the middle of the action.
Conversational first sentence is fine, also. like being offered a
chair at a table where you're immediately accepted.

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Originally Posted by ajoe

Call me Jonah. :D

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God bless Vonnegut

I am not very sure how it is in English but still: "And so they killed our Ferdinand,"
From Shvejk of course.

did you draw your avatar, Taliesin? i like it, too.
-az

No, that is made by a great artist called Paul Kidby.

One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place, a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said: "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged."

Those are the opening lines of The Lover.

Learn to read them properly. They are sacred.
-Marguerite Duras speaking of her own writing

"You're reading this for the wrong reason"
Dan Simmons, "Endymion"
I remembered this just now and I think that it is one of the best I can recall.

Oh, and if I am not mistaken, the worst one is : "It was a dark, stormy night"

Jeffrey Eugenides begins:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

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Originally Posted by Lara

There are two first lines that stand out in my mind. One comes from a book that, oddly enough, I have never read, but it is famous:

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, starts off, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

and, as simple as it is, I do like Herman Melvilles, "Call me Ishmael."

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I love the beginning of "tale of two cities" but I hate that people never put the whole thing. His entire sentence is this:

"It was the best of time, 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 ws the season of Light, it wsa the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everythying before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way --- in short, ther period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being recieved, for good or for eveil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

There is so much more too it than just the first phraise.