What is your all-time favorite opening line to a book?
For July 24: What is your all-time favorite opening line to a book?
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“Last night, I dreamt of Manderlay again” ?
For years I was sleeping early.
” It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
“The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.”
Once upon a time….
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…
A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen.
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
Ooh! I was going to say that!??
“If you’re going to read this don’t bother.”
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
My mother called me Silver. I was born part precious metal part pirate.
Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson
It was a pleasure to burn
–Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
From the name of the wind, “It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.” Also I’ve always found the opening line of the lovely bones striking; “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness….” A Tale of Two Cities
They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.
–Paradise by Toni Morrison
The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills. There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless course by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin—as a bird changes direction by dipping one wing and lifting the other. The eyes were sightless in the black, and the other senses transmitted nothing extraordinary to the small, primitive brain.
“Jaws” by Peter Benchley
In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.
What book was this?
Sputnik sweetheart. 230 pages so a same-day read. That opening paragraph not only made me buy the book yeeeeees ago but also was my first Haruki Murakami. By now I have read all his bibliography and became one of my top authors ever so it was ‘life changing’ for me.
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
I LOVE “I Capture the Castle”.
The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
I don’t know about of all time but I just finished Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood and the first line is “I Planned my death well, unlike my life.”
It will always be
“It was the best times. It was the worst of times…..”
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.
“On my tenth birthday, six months before she sleepwalked into the river, Mom burned the rabbit cake.” —first line of Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett
“If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.” The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
Oh, I love that book!
Oh my goodness. Have to read this.
“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”
“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, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Catcher in the Rye?
yes!
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal thank you very much.
“All this happened, more or less.”
Call me Ishmael.
“Someone was staring at her… which is an unnerving feeling when you are dead.” A Certain Slant of Light
Now I’ve got to read this.?
This is a good book
His children are falling from the sky. He watches from horse-back, acres of England stretching behind him; they drop, gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze
Bring up the bodies , Hilary mantel.
“I’m pretty much fucked”.
What book is this from?
@Letitia The Martian
“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.” ~ Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale
“We lose something we love and it seems natural to try to reconstruct it –mulling over memories, sorting through missteps, bleeding our expired hopes and habits onto paper, hoping some part of what we’ve loved will still be salvageable.” Heidi Priebe – This is Me letting You go.
“We had been wandering for so long I forgot what it was like to live within walls or sleep through the night.” – The Dovekeepers, Alice @Hoffmann
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Pride and Prejudice
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
“The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed hills.”
What book?
A little princess, by Frances H. Burnett
I LOVE THIS BOOK ?
Hmm. I don’t have a favorite. Lately I have been thinking of the book “Mandy” by Julie Andrews (then Edwards), which I thoroughly enjoyed as a girl. I still have the book. So I’ll share the opening line: “On the outskirts of a pretty country village called St. Martin’s Green, there stands a large, white house called St. Martin’s Orphanage.”
“Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.” Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
“Who is John Galt?” Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Had to read it 40+ years ago in college.
I have lots! ‘I was born twice: First as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day, in January 1960; and then again ,as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petosky, Michigan in August of 1974.’
Middlesex is an amazing book!
@Daniel Yes!
“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful.
The man in Black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed .
“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit” lol