As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm.
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As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm.
Call Me Ishmael.
(I know, it's crazy to have a favorite first line come from a book I can't stand, but it's simple, and it sticks with you. Perfect! :nod: )
The first/last sentence (depending on how one reads it) of a book that could very well drive me wild with thought:
Finnegans Wake by James JoyceQuote:
Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the . . . riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Basil
I remember doing that for my french A level...Maman est mort...
Anyway, first line - It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. P&P
"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975"
Khaled Hosseini, "The Kite Runner"
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams, the restaurant at the end of the universe
The opening sentence you quote is excellent. Have a look at http://openingsentences.com for some other good ones.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...
The Cask of Amontillado is brilliant.:thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by Manfred
I just read H.H. Munro's The Open Window today so...
"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."
Perhaps with Notes From The Underground, we can make an exception to 'first sentence' with the choppy, blunt, and brief nature of the book. The first several sentences:
Quote:
I am a sick man, I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver. But I don't understand the least thing about my illness, and I don't know for certain what part of me is affected. I am not having any treatment fo rit, and never have had, although I have a great respect for medicine and for doctors. I am besides extremely superstitious, if only in having such respect for medicine. I am well educated enough not to be superstitious, but superstitious I am. No, I refuse treatment out of spite. That is something you will probably not understand. Well, I understand it.
"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino can be nauseating at 3 a.m. James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired." adaptation:
"The animal screams and technicolor gore of a torture chamber -- viewed remmotely over a live internet TV hookup -- can be stimulating at 3 AM. George W. Bush was wide awake, unusally :lol: alert."
Quote:
Originally Posted by mono
Somehow those lines bring my mind to Nietzsche's first lines in Why I am So Clever, which I think show a strong sense of self confidence.
Quote:
Why do I know more than other people? Why, in general, am I so clever?
Does anybody know where this opening sentence is from.
I was told it is from How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss, but it doesnt seem to check out.
How can it either seem to check out or not check out? It's a book . . . isn't it either there or not there?Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry99
I don't have the book around, but according to a random Internet search, it appears as if the movie version begins with a narrator saying the following words.
"Once, in a snowflake, like the one on your sleeve, there happened a story you must see to believe."
Though I've no idea if that is faithful to the book or not.
Like ShoutGrace, I could not find the next in reference to the Dr. Seuss book How The Grinch Stole Christmas, but I found that it came from the narrator's opening voice in the film adaption:Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry99
Quote:
Once, in a snowflake, like the one on your sleeve, there happened a story you must see to believe.
Thanks for the replies Shout Grace and Mono
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia would remember that distant afternoon when his father first took him to discover ice.
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
'The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child'
I think the whole first paragraph has to be posted:
"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."
Thrills and chills.
But I'll also second the motions for Calvino's If on a winter's night a Traveller, Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.
Also, yes, Camus:
« Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J'ai reçu un télégramme de l'asile : “Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués.” Cela ne veut rien dire. C'était peut-être hier. »
"I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves."
From then on it only gets better.
there are so many first sentences that influence you to read a book, and then there are first sentences that influence yout to read it again. i have many favourites, many of them are deep and hold profound thought, but the one that leaps to mind without really having to think much is:
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
It is this sentence that never fails to intrigue me, and being a concise, to-the-point beginning, and brings about a beautiful realisation of the human physche. I take it as it is, it's snappy, and never fails to capture my fancy.
I have two...
The one in my signature from Pride and Prejudice.
And the opening line in A Tale of Two Cities.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
dulas
"l'amant"
I am old .
one day ,in a public place,a man walked to me .he said to me ,I Know you and always remeber you .you are a young lady in that time,and everybody told that you are so pretty. now I just come to tell you that you appears more beauty in this time , compare to your young face ,I love your old rough face better.
not factly
sorry
the translation is not exact
I LIKE "One Hundred Years of Solitude" SO MUCH
but the first word is not the best
however
the first man who begins with that is the best
I agree with the three postings of Lolita. Nabokov also has a pretty good opening to his biography, Speak Memory: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two extremities of darkness" - a lullaby beginning.
Without a doubt it would have to be Woman in White...
"This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a
Man's resolution can achieve."
"Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me."
- The Tin Drum
Bysshe,
For some reason your quote immediately reminded me of The Bell Jar. I haven’t even read The Tin Drum but I think the part about the “inmate of a mental hospital” made me instantly think of Plath. The opening of her book is actually probably one of my favourites:
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
- The Bell Jar
It’s really offbeat, and creates a sense of mental instability, intriguing confusion, and brimming darkness, despite the seemingly warm and sweet season.
Ariel, are we neighbours now? :D
We live on the same street!
I'm still trying to finish Fast Food Nation.
Yes, I know what you mean. When I read the first sentence of The Tin Drum the book that it reminded me of at first was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - probably because I'd just been reading it - but thinking about it now, it is quite similar to the beginning of The Bell Jar.Quote:
Bysshe,
For some reason your quote immediately reminded me of The Bell Jar. I haven’t even read The Tin Drum but I think the part about the “inmate of a mental hospital” made me instantly think of Plath. The opening of her book is actually probably one of my favourites:
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
- The Bell Jar
It’s really offbeat, and creates a sense of mental instability, intriguing confusion, and brimming darkness, despite the seemingly warm and sweet season.
I'm sure you already have a very long reading list, but if you're ever looking for something new to read I'd recommend The Tin Drum. I'm not that far into it, but it's very interesting so far.
Nice to see you on here, by the way. :)
I'm also a "first sentence" kind of person myself. I rarely remember the last lines of a book but i usually dwell on the first lines. There's just something about opening lines....I read them over and over again before I continue reading the whole thing...
Some of my favorite first lines are:
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." (Lolita - V. Nabokov)
"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.(Catcher in the Rye)
Bysshe,
Yes, I can see where you are coming from. I am practically burying myself up to the neck in books and papers already, but if I do get the chance to have a good look at The Tin Drum I'll sure let you know! ;) It does sound quite intriguing.
Sub,
I just wanted to officially welcome you to the neighbourhood! You're currently located at the coolest street, so feel free to drop by my place for a chat or some gorgeously fresh tea whenever you want. :)
Others that came to mind after I posted last time:
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
A very atypical, often cited beginning that certainly made me curious to read more.
''What's it going to be then, eh?''
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
This plain and simple, but addictive, opening line is used in part one, two and three of the book. I even recall enthusiastically going around and uttering it to people straight after I originally read the book, now quite some time back.
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would by the flowers herself."
- Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
She is all the more lovely with her flowers.
"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time."
- The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
For some strange reason the opening of Zafon's mammoth, mad, and mysteriously melodramatic gothic-inspired book has struck deep in my mind, though it's always nice to read about a book within a book, and this is definitely not the worst of this genre that I've encountered thus far.
"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."
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
This is probably the best opening from a Charles Dickens work.
A good beginning and one which is significant tonally or thematically or for the plot is a kind of grail for many writers. Dickens was almost always excellent at the start of his novels. Some writers shock for the sake of it and that's their high point gone. If I remember rightly 'A Passage to India' starts as follows:
'Except for the Marabar Caves - and they are twenty miles off - the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.'
I'd say he got it right there and the rest of the first paragraph continues with the same apparently indifferent travelogue tone while slipping in details that will be significant later to plot and theme. Self-consciously creative writers spend a lot of thought on their beginnings but it's only in retrospective analysis that we sometimes notice the more subtle artistry.
What about these eleven?
'In front of one of the most palatial hotels in the world, a very young man was accustomed to sit on a bench which, when the light fell a certain way, shone like gold.'
'See the child.'
'Captain Everard Gault wounded the boy in the right shoulder on the night of June the twenty-first, nineteen twenty-one.'
'I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.'
'When I heard my father calling ''Charles!'' from his study I knew that trouble was coming.'
'I had even reached the point of wondering if Geraldine Brevoort's suicide. so long dreaded, might not prove in the event a relief, but like everything else about Geraldine, when it came, it came with a nasty twist'
'There came Death hurtling along the Bouevard in waning sepia light.'
'Even Camilla had enjoyed masquerades, of the sort where the mask may be dropped at that critical moment it presumes itself as reality.'
'The young women of Fada, in Nigeria, are well known for beauty.'
'The reader must not expect to know where I live.'
'A nis ri linn nam breitheamha bha gorta ' s an tir.'
Now granted I'm cheating you a bit with the last one which is very well known in many languages these beginnings are all different and all have something remarkable about them but , like Forster above, what is remarkable about them may not be obvious to the reader until later. Although this is a highly artificial exercise would any of these opening sentences (Bar the last which I'll translate later.) encourage you to read more - say the first page or so?
I was desperately trying to remember the opening sentence of a novel called 'The Tomorrow File' but I couldn't be certain so I didn't use it. If I can remember it I'll send it.
I'm sure a lot of you will know the titles or authors of a lot of the above.
Translation of the last one there goes like this, 'Now in the era of the judges there was hunger in the land'
There always is hunger when people are ruled by men with feet of clay and expect rules and man-made guidlines to save them. That is the sub-text of the opening and the story which illustrates the satisfying of spiritual and physical hunger takes off from there. I'm sure lots of you will recognise the beginning of 'The Book of Ruth.
The first things that came to mind;
It is a truth universally acknowledged that every single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Two households. (Both alike in dignity. In fair Verona where we lay our scene. Etc)
The opening sentance by Truman Capote "In Cold Blood"
Ah Capote - Lee's 'pocket Merlin'. How does it go? 'The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat fields of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ''out there'' '
It's really the rest of that paragraph that I like.
'Yes,' said tom bluntly, on opening the front door. 'What d'you want?'
Opening line of Goodnight Mr Tom By Michelle Magorian.
I remember it cause it was so blunt and straight to the point. You where in the story before you even knew it!
Yep i think the first line from Pride and Prejudice is also memerable.
When shall we three meet again, in thunder lightning or in rain? MacBeth