Best opening sentences

logical bob · #1 by **logical bob** » Feb 19, 2012 10:43 pm

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" usually heads the list. I like Iain Banks in The Crow Road: "It was the day my grandmother exploded."

What say you?

Sityl · #2 by **Sityl** » Feb 19, 2012 10:48 pm

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"Call me Ishmael."

Fallible · #3 by **Fallible** » Feb 19, 2012 10:57 pm

''The Bottoms succeeded to Hell Row.''

Bribase · #4 by **Bribase** » Feb 19, 2012 10:59 pm

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

The Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka

hackenslash · #5 by **hackenslash** » Feb 19, 2012 11:18 pm

As I got off the plane, he was waiting for me, holding up a scrap of cardboard with my name scribbled on it.

Globe · #6 by **Globe** » Feb 19, 2012 11:20 pm

"This is my life. This is my time."

j.mills · #7 by **j.mills** » Feb 19, 2012 11:21 pm

Heh, the equivalent thread on the old RD forum ran to 24 pages...

Seabass · #8 by **Seabass** » Feb 19, 2012 11:44 pm

"I am a sick man... I am a wicked man... an unattractive man. I think my liver hurts."

OlivierK · #9 by **OlivierK** » Feb 19, 2012 11:53 pm

Starting Illywhacker, Peter Carey wrote:My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die.

I am a terrible liar and I have always been a liar. I say that early to set things straight. Caveat emptor. My age is the one fact you can rely on, and not because I say so, but because it has been publicly authenticated. Independent experts have poked me and prodded me and scraped around my foul-smelling mouth. They have measured my ankles and looked at my legs. It is a relief not to worry about my legs any more. When they photographed me I did not care that my dick looked as scabby and scaly as a horse's, even though there was a time when I was a vain man and would not have permitted the type of photographs they chose to take. Apart from this (and it is all there, neatly printed on a chart not three feet from where I lie) I have also been written up in the papers. Don't imagine this is a novelty to me - being written up has been one of my weaknesses and I don't mention it now so that I may impress you, but rather to make the point that I am not lying about my age.

More than a sentence I know, but such a wonderful opening to such a great novel. Time for a re-read, I think.

Shrunk · **#10** by **Shrunk** » Feb 20, 2012 12:41 am

hackenslash wrote:
As I got off the plane, he was waiting for me, holding up a scrap of cardboard with my name scribbled on it.

Don't recognize that one. Where's it from?

j.mills · **#11** by **j.mills** » Feb 20, 2012 12:57 am

Oh, and we've already had a bash at this ever-popular topic here on RatSkep! :grin:

Merge?

Grimstad · **#12** by **Grimstad** » Feb 20, 2012 1:08 am

I'm sorry but this is my favorite opening line

"So I got my tongue up this chicks ass...and she's looking at me like...do I know you?"

Mac_Guffin · **#13** by **Mac_Guffin** » Feb 20, 2012 1:11 am

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

"All children, except one, grow up."

Animavore · **#14** by **Animavore** » Feb 20, 2012 1:16 am

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

orpheus · **#15** by **orpheus** » Feb 20, 2012 2:14 am

Retrieved these from the old RDF thread. I'd have come up with the same ones, anyway.

First, here are two by Beckett. Ah, good old Sam -

Samuel Beckett wrote:
"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

- Murphy

"From where she lies she sees Venus rise."

-Ill Seen Ill Said

Credit where credit is due: that second one was contributed by GreatApe. What a haunting, disquieting, exquisitely beautiful work that is. One of my prize possessions is a bilingual variorum edition of Ill Seen Ill Said and its French version Mal Vu Mal Dit, showing all Beckett's crossings-out, additions, and other editorial decisions.

Here's another one. Not the first line of a novel, but the first of an early chapter. I include it just because it's so good:

Russell Hoban wrote:
In the morning I came awake as I always do, like a man trapped in a car going over a cliff."

-The Medusa Frequency

--

Finally, two from the master, Mr. JJ:

James Joyce wrote:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth, Castle and Environs.

-Finnegans Wake (Whether or not that's the first line is debatable, since the book is circular; it has no beginning and no end. The start of that sentence is to be found on the last page. Still, that's the first thing one sees on page one.)

hackenslash · **#16** by **hackenslash** » Feb 20, 2012 6:58 am

Shrunk wrote:
hackenslash wrote:
As I got off the plane, he was waiting for me, holding up a scrap of cardboard with my name scribbled on it.

Don't recognize that one. Where's it from?

That's why I didn't include it. The Demon-Haunted World.

Pulsar · **#17** by **Pulsar** » Feb 20, 2012 7:18 am

From Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything :

"Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.
To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence."

Lizard_King · **#18** by **Lizard_King** » Feb 20, 2012 8:49 am

The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.

Stephen King, The Gunslinger, first book of the Dark Tower series.

I have always been intrigued by the sheer simplicity of this beginning. The man starts a series of books that eventually becomes excruciatingly long (each book comes close to a 1000 pages, iirc) and detailed, that leaves you exhausted (and somewhat disappointed) upon finishing the last one, and he still manages to get you hooked right with the first sentence. It tells you just what you need to know at that point, opens up a whole bunch of questions, and captures the stoic and determined nature of the main character in a perfect way. I wish I could come up with a beginning like that...

Shrunk · **#19** by **Shrunk** » Feb 20, 2012 12:28 pm

Lizard_King wrote:
The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.

Stephen King, The Gunslinger, first book of the Dark Tower series.

I have always been intrigued by the sheer simplicity of this beginning. The man starts a series of books that eventually becomes excruciatingly long (each book comes close to a 1000 pages, iirc) and detailed, that leaves you exhausted (and somewhat disappointed) upon finishing the last one, and he still manages to get you hooked right with the first sentence. It tells you just what you need to know at that point, opens up a whole bunch of questions, and captures the stoic and determined nature of the main character in a perfect way. I wish I could come up with a beginning like that...

Although, to me it brings the puzzling image of someone with a gun pursuing Johnny Cash.

Lizard_King · **#20** by **Lizard_King** » Feb 20, 2012 2:21 pm

Shrunk wrote:

Although, to me it brings the puzzling image of someone with a gun pursuing Johnny Cash.

That might also make for a good story... :think: