GreatApe wrote:I still think that Lolita is the closest thing there is to the "Perfect" novel.

Actually that's Little, Big by John Crowley, as I believe I may have mentioned around here before now. But your mistake is understandable if you haven't read it.

Since we're here, let's have the opener (after two prologues) of Crowley's next novel, originally called Aegypt but now published as The Solitudes:

If ever some power with three wishes to grant were to appear before Pierce Moffett, he or she or it (djinn, fairy godmother, ring curiously inscribed) would find him not entirely unprepared, but not entirely ready either.

I was a child murderer.

Yes, but what's your favourite opening sentence?

You see, I considered saying that but decided against it.

That will be that "good taste" stuff I keep hearing about.

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife." ("The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman)

Not sure if this has been done yet;

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen...."

I love that opening line! ('1984' George Orwell)

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford

orpheus wrote:"It was a dark and stormy night;

Snoopy's unfinished book

ramseyoptom wrote:

orpheus wrote:"It was a dark and stormy night;

Snoopy's unfinished book

Yeah. But I just love that it's from a real book.

But then, what book is ever truly finished?

/profundity.

"Like the opening sentence of a bad book, the prostitute reclined in the lit window".

"Once upon a time there was a lovely little sausage called Baldrick and it lived happily ever after"

Semi-autobiographical work, S. Baldrick

"The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault."

though the back cover synopsis has it better:
"For Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, there have been worse assignments than going undercover on the set of an adult film. Dodging flaming monkey poo, for instance. Or going toe-to-leaf with a walking plant monster."

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. there are some fantastic lines from that series, though the best are usually midway through

''Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them. ''

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as moral as his own..................



If I have to type more for you to recognise it I pity you!

Rome Existed wrote:No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as moral as his own..................



If I have to type more for you to recognise it I pity you!

I can never read those words without hearing them in Orson Welles's voice - laconic and ominous, and somehow still resonant even through a scratchy 1938 recording.

*chills*