Favourite opening lines ….. mine is “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day’
Favourite opening lines ….. mine is “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day’ ??
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It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
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@Kris 1984.
My favorite opening line as well.
Ah. Many decades since I have read that.
I finished this yesterday. Incredible.
“Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. This city I am bringing you to is vast and intricate, and you have not been here before.”
Great question! Related: http://openin.gs/ an awesome, addictive site where you can just browse through endless opening lines 🙂
@Ana I visited this site and its really a treasure trove. Thanks for that link
Call me Ishmael.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Anna Karenina?
@Kris Yes! ?
@Arta I read this last month for the first time. It was really good.
Great book ?
Jane Eyre ❤️
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”.
@Sean is from??
@Kima the great gatsby
@Sean thanks
@Kima no problem ?
In the beginning of July, during an extremely hot spell, towards evening, a young man left his tiny room, which he sublet from some tenants who lived in Stolyarni Lane, stepped out onto the street, and slowly, as if indecisively, set off towards the Kokushkin Bridge.
Oh, you said favorite. Lol. The opening line is as plodding as the story, but I will succeed!
@Kris crime and punishment! One of my favourites
Phuong Anh Nguyen why? What did you get from it? I am trying to read Dostoevsky, I had tried before. It’s so bleak. I am reading a book on Dostoevsky and spark notes as I go along. Did you like Raskolnikov? Pity him? I would appreciate your input.
BTW, my daughters AP literature teacher, excellent teacher, thought The Brothers Karamazov to be his favorite book. I plan on getting there! I’ve read The Idiot ( years ago).
Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on , within view of the melancholy……….( I can’t say what as it is the title).
@Kris book??
The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. It’s a beautiful first sentence!
If you’re going to have to quote the bible, at least make it the King James.
@Czesar one of my favs too:)❤️
@Helen
Why that Bible?
Because it has such variety of language, and it sounds good. Later bibles and service forms are, to my ear, bland and uninteresting, all the difficult bits and dramatic statements have been airbrushed out. As an agnostic, it needs to be aesthetically attractive to spark an interest. Otherwise it’s just so much background noise.
Last night i dreamt i went to Manderley again….
My choice for one of this months books! Rebecca….
If anybody cares to read a simple tale told simply…
@Cerys I give up. What? It sounds good.
@Kris Lorna Doone
@Cerys ah. I must read that.
On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.
Tess, it’s on my ‘to read’ list
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times
@Manisha from?
@Kima A Tale Of Two Cities
In my opinion, one of the best known openings from a novel. I think it also has one of the best known closing lines: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
@Jennifer exactly. Its one of my favourites
@Manisha I have always felt that the best parts of Tale of Two Cities are the beginning and the end. The ending that begins “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
@Jennifer Rofl….I just typed that same thing, then looked up and saw your post.
@Cynthia Ha, great minds …
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tostoy Anna Karenina
@Kiki one of my favourites. And so true
This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier
The Jane Eyre one is one of my favourites too, and here are a couple of others, both from George MacDonald. “I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness.” (Phantastes) and “It was a day when everything around seemed almost perfect: everything does, now and then, come nearly right for a moment or two, preparatory to coming all right for good at the last.” (A Rough Shaking.”)
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
I love Pride and Prejudice!
@Liana Me too!!! It’s my favourite book, I always go back to it when I’m feeling down or anything
Me too!!! It’s like my go-to shoulder to cry on book ?
They took me in my nightgown. -Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys.
“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times….” from Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
“It was a dark and stormy night.” from A Wrinkle in Time // a cliche phrase made memorable and timeless…
“At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at Patriarch’s Ponds.”
The Master and Margarita
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
@Ethan what book is it from
“Call me Ishmael” and “it was toward the middle of the summer that I met Donald Shimoda.”
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore (…)”
“Aujourd’hui Maman est morte,” which has been mistranslated for years as “today Mother died.” Interesting discussion about this in the New Yorker: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be/amp
L’Étranger par Albert Camus ! ❤❤
I don’t know that I really have a “favorite” opening line. However, I am reading The Good Soldier by Ford Made Ford for the April challenge and its opening line has made me think throughout the story…..”This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Although the book is a tragedy, I keep telling myself that I can think of many real-life stories that are much more sad than this. I believe that is what a good opening line can do for a reader–set the tone for the remainder of the book and pose more questions as the story moves on.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Sorry, I see I have been forestalled in both my offerings!
still good to hear again for us Jane Austen fans ?
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley.
@Jess are you reading ‘Rebecca’ with us this month?
@Sandra, No, but I could. I’ve read it a few times, most recently with my own book group. Do I have to register somewhere to contribute?
Jess Williams no just read it and join in the discussion (I will post a discussion either at the end of the month or sooner, some members are interested in starting the discussion as we are reading, there is another related post to Rebecca a few days ago, posted by me.
It was a pleasure to burn
Have just recently finished ‘Fahrenheit 451’ good opening line….
@Sandra good read too right?
@Tom I was mixed about this one, but glad that I now know what it’s about.
People disappear all the time…..Outlander
Marley was dead, to begin with.
One of my favorite books- and the favorite book of my adolescence – yet not my favorite opening line – though savoring it now .
“In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.”
Wow. That is a mouthful right there!
Suzzy Thomas That’s precisely why I like it. It not only sets the scene and introduces the main character and lets us know what he does (badly), but also sets the tone for the whole book. It’s a very arch, wry satire of 18th century picaresque novels called The Sot-Weed Factor. It’s one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.
@Kevin , Good Lord, I haven’t seen this book referenced since the 60s! Or was it the 70s? Still got a copy somewhere.
“A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green”.
That’s got to be a Steinbeck!
Yes, it is!
“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 teeith.Lo .Lee.Ta”.
“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning”…
“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.” [BTW, we don’t learn what happens with the firing squad situation for over 120 pages!]
@Peter is this one hundred years of solitude
@Manisha ~ yes, it is
Read this one last month. Interesting but it’s not going to be a favourite.
“Who is John Galt?”
Atlas Shrugged… I have never read this one.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” This passage is still relevant today.
One of my favourites……………. I love the ending.
@Sandra on my re-read retiree’s list; best book report as a teen❤️.
Ahhh Jane Eyre❤️. Fond memories of my Creative Writing teacher reading opening lines of classic literature and challenging our minds.
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
Sandra Robinson Ding! Ding! Ding! 🙂
“A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.” ?
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“No!” Can anyone guess this one? Hint: It’s by a Nobel laureate. 😉
@Clay I can’t guess. But I need to know what Book this is.
another hint needed.
Oh, all right: Kaddish for an Unborn Child by Imre Kertesz. It’s a short read…but packs a wallop! 😮
@Clay thank you. I read some reviews. And I might read it.
@Manisha It’s unforgettable.
“At half-past six on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with difficulty”
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
some of these opening lines are terrific and interesting! No idea on this one, can you give us a hint..
C.S. Lewis
@Trisha Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Thought of another favorite line: “‘And so they’ve killed our Ferdinand,’ said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs — ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged.”