I am a big fan of The Stranger and that opening is fantastic. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by Basil
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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! ;)