UKC

What are the most striking / memorable / best opening lines of books?

I ask as I came across this recently which is certainly memorable:

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

From Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.

Give us some more.

In reply to DaveHK:

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - from Anna Karenina.

So good it became a principle in statistics.

In reply to DaveHK:

“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.”

One Hundred Years of Solitude.

In reply to DaveHK:
Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.

Fear and loathing in las Vegas

In reply to DaveHK:

“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 mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”
- H. G. Wells, 'The War of the Worlds'.

In reply to Only a hill:

Good one.

In reply to DaveHK:

'It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.'

The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster

In reply to DaveHK:

It was a dark and stormy night.........

Snoopy, many times.

In reply to DaveHK:

"The following, day no one died."

Death at Intervals, Jose Saramago

In reply to DaveHK:

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

In reply to DaveHK:

Call me Ishmael - Moby Dick. Though I do have a fondness for the Burgess one from Earthly Powers (which, btw, is also a brilliant route)

In reply to DaveHK:

....where's papa going with that ax...
Charlotte's Web by E B White
....best opening line in childrens literature???

In reply to DaveHK:

This is how death must feel. Not the pain, although I imagine most deaths must be painful, but the fear. Fear of what? I hardly dare say.

Feet in the Clouds, Richard Askwith

In reply to DaveHK: It was the day my grandmother exploded.

The Crow Road, Ian Banks.

T.

In reply to DaveHK:

Obvious, but because it's great...

THE Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad.

In reply to DaveHK:

In the beginning...

In reply to DaveHK:

Another good one.

“I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me.”

The Wasp Factory - Ian Banks

In reply to DaveHK:

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.

In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:



Yes, this is great.

Also the Paul Auster one.

Also this extended number, from Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon:
"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,-- the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy December, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults."

In reply to Wicamoi:

Did you read it in French or are you just showing off?

In reply to DaveHK:

Also:

"All this happened, more or less."

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5.

In reply to DaveHK:

And two favorites from the incomparable Flann O'Brien:
"Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression."
from At-Swim-Two-Birds, and
"Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with a spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar."
from The Third Policeman.

In reply to DaveHK:

'Now what I want is, Facts.'
Dickens, Hard Times

Astonishing for its blunt modernity; all the more astonishing for its being written in 1854.

In reply to DaveHK:



"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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way"

Tale of Two Cities.

cheers

Gaz

In reply to Gazlynn:

While we're on Dickens (and it's so tempting to quote the stupendous opening of Bleak House), I think the start of A Christmas Carol is extraordinary too. It's the second paragraph that really shows Dickens' extraordinarily clever and quirky imagination.

In reply to Gazlynn:

Oh, forgot to paste in, sorry:

<
Marley was dead: to begin with.  There is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.  Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.  Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
>

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Agree awesome

I've only recently discovered his writings and although I've never been an avid reader of books in my youth, I always thought of Dickens as way too mainstream for a proper rebel like me

cheers


Gaz

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversations?'

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.
In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

In reply to Gazlynn:



C H A P. I.

I WISH either my father or my mother,
or indeed both of them, as they
were in duty both equally bound to it,
had minded what they were about when
they begot me; had they duly consider'd
how much depended upon what they
were then doing; -- that not only the
production of a rational Being was con-
cern'd in it, but that possibly the happy
formation and temperature of his body,
perhaps his genius and the very cast of
his mind ; -- and, for aught they knew
to the contrary, even the fortunes of his
whole house might take their turn from
the humours and dispositions which were
then uppermost : ---- Had they duly
weighed and considered all this, and
proceeded accordingly, ---- I am verily
persuaded I should have made a quite
different figure in the world, from that,
in which the reader is likely to see me. --
Believe me, good folks, this is not so
inconsiderable a thing as many of you
may think it ; -- you have all, I dare say,
heard of the animal spirits, as how they are
transfused from father to son, &c. &c.--
and a great deal to that purpose : -- Well,
you may take my word, that nine parts
in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense,
his successes and miscarriages in this
world depend upon their motions and ac-
tivity, and the different tracks and trains
you put them into ; so that when they
are once set a-going, whether right or
wrong, 'tis not a halfpenny matter, -- away
they go cluttering like hey-go-mad; and
by treading the same steps over and over
again, they presently make a road of it,
as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk,
which, when they are once used to, the
Devil himself sometimes shall not be able
to drive them off it.

Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have
you not forgot to wind up the clock ? ----
Good G -- ! cried my father, making an
exclamation, but taking care to moderate
his voice at the same time, ---- Did ever
woman, since the creation of the world, in-
terrupt a man with such a silly question?
Pray, what was your father saying ? ----
Nothing.

In reply to DaveHK:
Two books there--both of them particular favourites of mine. One is the first book other than Janet & John etc. that I ever read, that I read for myself and wanted to keep going. The other is the only book from before the twentieth century that has made me cry with laughter. One first encountered when I was five and a half; the other when I was eighteen. I still love both of them to bits, and both of them, for their time and place, have absolutely remarkable openings.

In reply to DaveHK:

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...”

The Outsiders by S.E Hinton.

“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, Jane Austen

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."......

In reply to DaveHK:

I read it first in French, but preferred it in later English.

Showing off? That's what you asked for, isn't it?

Here's another I also read in its original language, but I had to copy this one out:

"Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us spread out on blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living."

In reply to Ramblin dave:

Nice to see Pynchon getting a name check. Though I think my all-time favourite of his is probably from the classic Gravity's Rainbow - dramatic, attention-grabbing, intriguing and musical, and all in just six words:

A screaming comes across the sky.

In reply to liz j:


Say what you like about Tolkein that rocks as an opening line. What's a Hobbit? Why is it living in a hole in the ground? I want to know more.

In reply to DaveHK:

'In the light of the moon a Little egg lay on a Leaf'

In reply to DaveHK:

not necessary the best book, but one that always sticks with me is 'There was Death in the Beginning, and there will be Death at the end.' - The Horse Whisperer.

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

The best opening of a play--because it breaks so many rules, while being, at the same time, completely grabbing--is this:

BERNARDO
Who's there?
FRANCISCO
Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.
BERNARDO
Long live the king!
FRANCISCO
Bernardo?
BERNARDO
He.
FRANCISCO
You come most carefully upon your hour.
BERNARDO
'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

In reply to DaveHK:

One of my favourite first lines from a children's book is from The Saga of Noggin the Nog:

"In the lands of the north, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, the men of the north sit by their log fires and thay tell a tale."

In reply to DaveHK:

Not a literary great by the standards of this thread, but he (or whoever wrote/writes his books) is the king of first lines - they do rather tail off after that...

'There was a God-awful cock-up in Bologna.'

Dick Francis, The Danger

In reply to DaveHK:

far out in the uncharted backwaters at the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun

hitch hikers guide to the galaxy

In reply to DaveHK:

This from memory (aged 16, a long time ago) so excuse me if I haven't rendered the French accurately. Interesting to see who else recognises this book, which shaped my whole world view, and whose underlying philosophy made a major contribution to the end of the Christian era in modern Europe.

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier. Je ne sais pas.

Albert Camus L'Etranger

In reply to Wicamoi:

Damn. You got there first!!

In reply to DaveHK:

"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."

Holden Caulfield starts as he means to carry on in Salinger's 'Catcher in the Rye'.

In reply to DaveHK:

How about this from the man who changed the novel for ever:

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

In reply to Andy Clarke:

Agreed. I think that whole first chapter of The Portrait of an Artist... is an all-time classic.

In reply to Gazlynn:

Yeah, that was the quote I would have chosen. Sets up the whole story.

In reply to John Stainforth:


As close to poetry as prose gets

In reply to DaveHK:

"A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."

In reply to BusyLizzie:



Yes!

I'd forgotten that until you reminded me, thanks.

In reply to DaveHK:

a few faves. two that are just instantly strange and jarring:

" 'The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.'" The Knife of never letting go, patrick Ness

"it was a bright cold day in april, and the clocks were striking thirteen" 1984 (you know who by)

and one thats just just plain poetic and evocative..."There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it." Cry the beloved country, alan paton

In reply to Oceanrower:

Snoopy was quoting Edward Bulwer Lytton.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

Banks was consciously aiming at the great opening line award - later in the book he even throws in "It was a dark and stormy night - no, really."

I like the opening of Excession:

A little more more than one hundred days into the fortieth year of her confinement, Dajeil Gelian was visited in her lonely tower overlooking the sea by an avatar of the great ship that was her home.

In reply to DaveHK:

'I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped.'

The wasp factory

cheers

Gaz

In reply to Only a hill:

Nice one!

In reply to DaveHK:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Neuromancer - William Gibson.

In reply to rogerwebb:

Agreed, it's wonderful. I keep trying to pin down why its so effective, but I can't put my finger on it...

More favourites:

"The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
- Love in the Time of Cholera

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller."
- erm, self-explanatory, no?

In reply to DaveHK:

And a couple from J G Ballard, then I'll stop spamming:
"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."
- High Rise

"Soon it would be too hot. Looking out from the hotel balcony shortly after eight o'clock, Kerans watched the sun rise behind the dense groves of giant gymnosperms crowding over the roofs of the abandoned department stores four hundred yards away on the east side of the lagoon."
- The Drowned World

In reply to DaveHK:

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
The Go Between, L.P. Hartley

In reply to DaveHK:

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink"

I capture the castle, by Dodie Smith. Gets the selfconscious oddness of teenage writing spot on.

In reply to DaveHK:

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

In reply to DaveHK:

'On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kylt a wild boar he parbly ben the last wyld pig on the Bundel Downs anyhow there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.'

Russell Hoban, 'Riddley Walker'. Some sort of a masterpiece, I'd say.

In reply to SNC:

"They changed trains at Crewe"

Unfortunately I haven't read it and don't know the title but it is still great if you have travelled much by train!

In reply to DaveHK:

Well, the noise you can hear is because Hardy has just completed his first sentence and it’s a real cracker, just listen to this: "A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment" and that after only three hours of writing. What a "hardyesque" cracker.

In reply to Postmanpat: Not a particular favourite of mine but for strong opening lines I think it's difficult to surpass Nabakov's creepy classic -

"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."

In reply to DaveHK:


And can we pour concrete down its hole to stop it bothering us?

In reply to Tim Chappell:


1984 of course. On a similar theme, identify :

"The cell door slammed behind Rubashov"

or

"It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944"

In reply to DaveHK:
Splendid! This thread has given me a few suggestions for future reads. But obviously you can't judge a book by its first line.

In reply to DaveHK:

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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities


Unfortunately it was downhill after that and I never finished it, so Iain Banks and the crow road wins !

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

In reply to Simon4:

Item, que nul soit si hardi de crier havok sur peine davoir la test coupe.

Item, that no one be so bold to shout havok on pain davoir the test cut.

The Black Book of the Admiralty.

In reply to mrdigitaljedi:



This doesn't strike me as being the most accurate translation in the world. The usual ending to most admiralty injunctions, back in the good old days was "on pain of death"

In reply to DaveHK:

The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.

In reply to DaveHK:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Endymion, Keats

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.
The left hand of darkness, Leguin

A horse, he came to understand, was missing.
The last light of the sun, Kay

Imagine, then, a flat landscape, dark for the moment, but even so conveying to a girl running in the still deeper shadow cast by the wall of the Bibighar gardens an idea of immensity, of distance, such as years before Miss Crane had been conscious of standing where a lane ended and cultivation began: a different landscape but also in the alluvial plain between the mountains of the north and the plateau of the south.
The jewel in the crown, Scott

Stock cue SOUND: "Presenting SCANALYZER, Engrelay Satelserv's unique thrice-per-day study of the big big scene, the INdepth INdependent INmediate INterface between you and your world!"
Stand on Zanzibar, Brunner

In reply to DaveHK:

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

Those opening lines chill me to the core.

In reply to HansStuttgart:


An astonishing book with a simple premise. I think it was one of the books that formed my brain in my late teens/early twenties. It's a good job I'd already discovered Lord of the Rings and climbing.

"If you allow for every codder and shiggy and appleofmyeye a space of one foot by two, you could stand us all on the 640 square mile surface of the island of Zanzibar." With the US population at 400 million and growing, and the global population hovering around 8 billion, - - A world in desperate need of some clear thought and common sense, and most of all, some direct action. Otherwise they'll all end up like crazy Bennie Noakes, perpetually tripping on Triptine, staring at the boob tube and frequently heard to say "Christ, what an imagination I've got!" He thinks the world is a dream. Nothing could be like this. But it is."

....credit Charlene Brusso, https://www.sfsite.com/04b/sz79.htm

In reply to DaveHK:

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

In reply to Dave Kerr:

I've always liked this from Will Self, in my opinion one of our most underrated contemporary novelists:

HoooGraa! We chimpanzees are now living through an era in which our perceptions of the natural world are changing more rapidly than ever before.

Great Apes

In reply to pneame:

Its the translation of the of the 1385's admiralty laws from old french and most of it doesnt make sense in today's launguage...

In reply to DaveHK:

The only opening line from a book that I can actually remember (or at least the sense of it) is from Rebecca. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

In reply to Pursued by a bear:




You beat me to it!

In reply to Only a hill:

Tis good, but, as Jeff Wayne proved, improvable.

In reply to DaveHK:

Just came across this from the magnificent Tim Key:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0128pyh

In reply to DaveHK:

"Jesus Christ what a f*cking wreck I am, my face looks a hundred years old, people would scream if I went out on the streets, my hair's all falling out, there's a woman from the Milk Marketing Board trying to kill me"

Martin Millar - milk sulphate and Alby starvation.

This "freedom" put a proud people in chains
And turned free men into slaves
"Independence" made us weak
And slaughtered us
In the name of kindness
This is democracy by the whip
And the fear of chains
With a whirlwind at its core

My Life with the Taliban by Mullah Abdul Salem Zaeef.

In reply to DaveHK:

It's not the opening lines I know, but I have always liked the last lines of On the Origin of Species.

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

In reply to DaveHK:

Once upon a time. A very long time ago now, about last Friday...

In reply to jack_h:

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?” Then it was quiet again. My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process. “What the hell are you yelling about?” he muttered, staring up at the sun with his eyes closed and covered with wraparound Spanish sunglasses. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s your turn to drive.” I hit the brakes and aimed the Great Red Shark toward the shoulder of the highway. No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson