"If I am out of my mind, it's alright with me, thought Moses Herzog."
- from Saul Bellow's Herzog
"If I am out of my mind, it's alright with me, thought Moses Herzog."
- from Saul Bellow's Herzog
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." The opening sentence of Dickens' "David Copperfield". I think that's the perfect first sentence for any "autobiography". And I really enjoy it when I go back to the first sentence of a book after finishing it and its just so fitting that I have to smile and realize that that sentence carried the weight of the entire book.
Another great opening sentence is from Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner":
"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975."
Last edited by Dickensian; 04-19-2006 at 12:07 AM. Reason: addition
"...for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall."
-Robert Louis Stevenson
"Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader," - Oliver Twist
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
I looked through this whole thread and couldn't believe that my favorite wasn't mentioned. The best opening line in all of literature is from Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground":
"I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man, I think my liver hurts."
(When I first read that I thought I'd picked up a copy of my unauthorized biography)
I don't know how you can possibly read that first line and then put the book down; well, I didn't.
Some honorable mention goes to Camus' "The Stranger" (which was mentioned before):
"Maman died today, or yesterday maybe, I don't know."
And as far as non-fiction what can possibly be more beautiful than this opening:
"Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires."
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 era of incrudelity, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to the Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - Charles Dickens in A Tale Of Two Cities.
I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew.
Mike - Where is that quote from?Originally Posted by MikeK
Sorry to hear you have so many things in common with Underground man.
LET THERE BE LIGHT
"Love follows knowledge." – St. Catherine of Siena
My literature blog: http://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/
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).
"... I TAKE ON RESPONSIBILITY. I HIDE MYSELF FROM NO ONE. I AM ON MY PATH... I WON'T LET MY FOCUS CHANGE, TAKING OUT THE DEMONS IN MY RANGE ("The Warrior's Reminder". E.B.)"
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
FRANCISCO
For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart.
Hamlet Act I Scene I
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."
Irish poets, learn your trade!
-Yeats
I love it.
Anything that starts off "It was" makes me want to cry. Lazy way to start a story.
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