Mike - Where is that quote from?Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeK
Sorry to hear you have so many things in common with Underground man. :D
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Mike - Where is that quote from?Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeK
Sorry to hear you have so many things in common with Underground man. :D
From the official baseball rule book. Rule 1.01
I was trying desperately to find one that I loved, but it turns out that all the first sentences of all my favorite books are boring or already posted. Except for this one:
"Most pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden."
--The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
"En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme..." (Don Quijote de La Mancha - Cervantes).
It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.
_The Jungle Book_
By Rudyard Kipling
The wrath, goddess, sing, of Achilles, the Peleiadian offspring,
The ruinous wrath which inflicted innum'rable woes on th' Achaians,
And hurled forth toward the region of Hades so many robust souls
Of heroes, and made of their bodies convenient plunder for stray dogs
And every species of birds; but the council of Zeus was accomplished
From that same moment, when first those two stood divided in conflict --
Atreus' offspring, ruler of men, and the noble Achilles.
Best first sentence? Without a doubt in '100 years of solitude':
'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.'
Is that not the best? God the imagery! This is a character just about to die and if even now in this day and age we get all excited (well I do!) about snow but this is ice, block of ice, and hes just about to die and...fgkdjhxjdghgut (lost in thought...)
If you haven't already read this book: read it this summer! But keep a pen and paper handy ul get lost with names and whos related to who and whos sleeping with who (!) but its one hell of a read.
Actually, what about Nabokov's 'Lollita', another great read:
'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins'.
To fully appreciate this novel as the artistic piece it is read an annotated version of it, the allusions, the imagery, plot manipulations, symmetry between the starting and ending...list is endless. And of course the mystery!
I don't care for this story (or this author really) but the opening is absolutely brillient!
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he foundhimself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
I love it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taliesin
Anything that starts off "It was" makes me want to cry. Lazy way to start a story.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taliesin
I am a big fan of The Stranger and that opening is fantastic. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by Basil
I could even try to pick out a favorite, but Optimisticnad and Irish Canadian cited two great first sentences. I think that the story that I wrote that starts with the onomatoepeic word for someone vomitting is a really great beginning. I wish that I could sell the story.
I was going to say Catcher in the Rye, and Tale of Two Cities, but someone else took my answers! :-p Um...actually what about David Copperfield? I must confess to have never read it, but doesn't it start "I was born". Or something like that? If so, I like it.
But please correct me if im wrong, thanks.
Cheers mate!Quote:
Originally Posted by PeterL
So ... whats the word you used?
100 years is an all-time classic example, but the first line of Love in the Time of Cholera isn't bad, either:
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
"I can recall with utter clarity the first great shock of my life."
"The small boys arrived early for the hanging."
"It's your duty as well as mine to prevent such a marriage."
I think first lines that get you into the story are the best. I am discovering after going back to my favorite books that most of their first lines aren't too great actually!
"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Joseph K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong."
- The Trial, Franz Kafka
Very plain, sort of legalistic writing that is used throughout the book, but it sets up the strange sort of narration that characterizes the novel: the sort of uncertainty about K.'s situation mixed with positive statements about K. that seem to be contradicted or undermined elsewhere.
I love this opening line. Love Kafka too.Quote:
Originally Posted by IrishCanadian
"Ignorance, error, cupidity and sin
Possess our souls and excercise our flesh;
Habitually we cultivate remorse
As beggars entertain and curse their lice."
A good translation of the first stanza from Au Lecteur, Baudelaire
"Once upon a time" fro theiron in i was totally hooked and could not put the book down
oh Once upon a time is almost my life's signature, I could not agree more.
I love this one very much:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina
'It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.' - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.' - Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
'Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.' - The Trial by Kafka
'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.' - Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
I agree with you Woland.Quote:
Originally Posted by Woland
La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine,
Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps,
Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,
Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine.
But concerning Beaudelaire, it's better in French :D
Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera - "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - "They're out there."
If you'll permit me two sentences:
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
- H.P. Lovecraft - "The Call of Cthulhu"
BAM! Hook, line and sinker!
"The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?-Do-you-need-advice?-Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard."
Nathanael West - "Miss Lonelyhearts"
"It was 1590 - winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were proud of it."
Mark Twain - "The Mysterious Stranger"
"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?"
Milan Kundera - "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
And perhaps the greatest beginning ever:
"When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liquor of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then people long to go on pilgrimages
And plamers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
And specially, from every shire's end
In England, down to Canterbury they wend
To seek the holy blissful martyr, quick
To give his help to them when they were sick."
Geoffrey Chaucer
Quite a hefty sentence! ;)
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Neuromancer by William S. Gibson
Never read the whole story, but that's a line that will stick with me.
Well, I think my fist place favourite would be the openning of Lolita, one of the few I've learnt by heart:
"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."
I first read this in a lingüistics book; the next day I went to the library. I love his style.
My second choice would be what I thought was the beginning of Paradise Lost. It is, but only in Spanish... translator's licence, I will type it anyway:
"Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd,[...]"
'Never having known a mother, her mother died when Janey was a year old, Janey depended on her father for everything and regarded her father as boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement and father.' Kathy Acker Blood and Guts in Highschool
'My father's name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Peter. So I called myself Peter and came to be called Peter.' Kathy Acker Great Expectations
I want to be famous. I want to be so famous that movie stars hang out with me and talk about what a bummer their lives are.
(ok ok so it's two...so sue me)
And Charles Dicken's Great Expectations is a great book....
I'd have to say either
'It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."'- The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
or
'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."' The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
OK. I give up. "Who is John Galt?" I'll trade the name of that book for the name of the book with the first sentence:
"It was love at first sight."
I love this game. The classic "First Sentences" are just that: classics. In addition to "All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," which I THINK is a single sentence; I'm not sure. (Love that semicolon!), there's "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a gentleman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." It's not fair to look them up. the fun is in the oh so slight misquoting . . . we aren't the artists who wrote the gems anyway, just the ohso affected readers!
Suzie
And then there's "Call me Ishmael, my parents did." What's the book?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lara
Suzie
Probably been said somewhere already, but my favorite;
I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man.
:D Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
That's the first line from Notes? Really. Grreat.
“What’s it going to be then, eh?” - A Clockwork Orange.
Actually…
“What’s it going to be the, eh?
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim
being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.”
I've never read A Clockwork Orange, although I've read Burgess. That's just an "OK" first sentence, with all due respect. Again, can't count the second and third . . .
Suzie
VD300: what book is this from: "He looked up and saw a bucket held by a man with no plot significance what so ever, and therefore his name was forgotten and he, or maybe a she (or maybe even an it), will be called 'John'."
Sounds so familiar. Marvelous sentence. But, although I give up, I still want to know.
Suzie
I've always loved the begining of Poe's 'The Cast of Amontillado':
THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.
I love that story! My very favorite of Poe's short tales. Creepy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dusk
My favorite: "Call me Ishmael." (MOBY DICK).