PDA

View Full Version : Great opening lines



philsmove
16th-July-2006, 10:16 AM
From a book i have just started


Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside

littlewiggle
16th-July-2006, 10:34 AM
Sounds interesting - what't the book called adn who is it by?

Whitebeard
16th-July-2006, 10:32 PM
h

Are you trying to tell me I have a future ???

Nick M
17th-July-2006, 08:58 AM
Sounds like "A short history of tractors in Ukranian" by Marina Lewycka - a much better book than it's title would suggest!

straycat
17th-July-2006, 09:05 AM
Sorry - this one's a bit long (opening few lines) - but I think the whole thing's needed. From one of my firm favourites.


Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.

Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain.

philsmove
17th-July-2006, 09:26 AM
From one of my firm favourites.


I,m a great Banks fan but I have never read Espedair Street

I have added it to my list

Interestlingly In Raw Spirit he reveles he has never seen the Corryvrecken which is a shame ‘cos it makes the Falls of Lora look like a mill pond

Beowulf
17th-July-2006, 09:46 AM
The city was hot and sticky, as hot and sticky as my dear old moms treacle pudding, but unlike my moms treacle pudding the city was full of nuts.

The door to my office opened and this broad walked in, which was odd as my my office door was quite narrow. She had legs that reached all the way to the ground and a walk like eels chewing gum in a bowl of jello.

She had a box of chocolates under one arm and a stuffed sea bird her other, I suspected she may have something to do with with disappearance of the Malteser Penguin mentioned in the press.

She had bad news written all over her, she'd obviously leaned against the newspaper printing press on the way in.

:wink:

Piglet
17th-July-2006, 10:00 AM
Like your one Beo - where's that from?


Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, foam cup, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change for ever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated a billion times a day: a guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all.

But that was enough.

Beowulf
17th-July-2006, 01:02 PM
Like your one Beo - where's that from?


oh I don't know.. just off the top of my head ;) My own little Homage to Film Noir Detective fiction

straycat
17th-July-2006, 02:05 PM
oh I don't know.. just off the top of my head ;) My own little Homage to Film Noir Detective fiction
:confused: :confused: :confused:
You're going to have to write the rest of the novel now. I want to read it...

Stuart M
17th-July-2006, 02:45 PM
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space; no one could have dreamed we were being scrutinised, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us.
...followed by three chords a la Beethoven's Fifth.

The original opening lines of the book are:
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. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

Beowulf
17th-July-2006, 02:59 PM
My copy of WOTW on tape got chewed up in my machine so I cut the damaged bit out and respliced the tape. from that day forth it used to sound like Mr Burton was saying


no one could have dreamed we were being scrutiscoped

Since then I've always fancied a Scrutiscope<SUP>(tm)</SUP> :rofl:

Stuart M
17th-July-2006, 03:03 PM
My copy of WOTW on tape got chewed up in my machine
Ah, so were you yet another victim of the Red Weed? Somehow I don't think audio cassette tape was meant to handle that particular section - it claimed my Dad's copy.

philsmove
17th-July-2006, 03:18 PM
The all time classic


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

Beowulf
17th-July-2006, 03:57 PM
The all time classic

set 22 years ago and another Richard Burton link perhaps??

Double plus good ! :wink:

Stuart M
17th-July-2006, 04:26 PM
set 22 years ago and another Richard Burton link perhaps??

Double plus good ! :wink:
Anyone who, like me, was hypnotised by Burton's voice in WOTW (or 1984) should invest in the original recording of this work by his national playwright:

To begin at the beginning:
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters''-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Though I gather the more recent (1988) version with Anthony Hopkins and an all-star Welsh cast was pretty good too (off to order it now - hadn't realised Hopkins had done it until I was surfing for the above quote!)

Beowulf
18th-July-2006, 02:32 PM
Dylan Thomas .. (or is it Thomas Dylan ;) ) Under Milk Wood

How about "Call me Ishmael" or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" everybody should know those ones :)

philsmove
18th-July-2006, 09:03 PM
no i have not read this



Helen woke up in the middle of the night wearing someone else's breasts. Not her own insignificant, almost nonexistent bumps, but huge pendulous, full ones

but may be I should

straycat
18th-July-2006, 09:19 PM
From another all-time favourite:



Nothing ever begins.

philsmove
18th-July-2006, 09:37 PM
It was the day my grandmother exploded
IMHO one of his best

Beowulf
19th-July-2006, 11:47 AM
"All children, except one, grow up"

"Getting through the night is becoming harder and harder. Last evening, I had the uneasy feeling that some men were trying to break into my room to shampoo me."

"There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it."

and one of my favorite books..
"It was a pleasure to burn"

in which .. I would HAVE to become the one above.. in an odd mobius-like twist in the tale ;)

straycat
19th-July-2006, 12:07 PM
"All children, except one, grow up"


That could only be Peter Pan. Although it's funnier if you read it as a command...



"Getting through the night is becoming harder and harder. Last evening, I had the uneasy feeling that some men were trying to break into my room to shampoo me."


No idea. Sounds intriguing. What is it?



"There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it."


I think this would be Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which I consistently misread as 'Dawn Trader' all the way through my childhood for some bizarre reason)



and one of my favorite books..
"It was a pleasure to burn"


Ahhhh - the incomparable Mr Bradbury. My favourite of his is Death is a Lonely Business - beautiful, beautiful book....

philsmove
19th-July-2006, 12:26 PM
"Getting through the night is becoming harder and harder. Last evening, I had the uneasy feeling that some men were trying to break into my room to shampoo me."
;)

Woody Allen, Without Feathers

philsmove
19th-July-2006, 12:27 PM
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport”.
Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk, and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."

Beowulf
19th-July-2006, 12:41 PM
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport”.
Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk, and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."


Long dark Tea time of the soul.. Douglas Adams

whitetiger1518
20th-July-2006, 12:24 PM
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. "


one of my favourite escapes from reality :)

Whitetiger

CJ
20th-July-2006, 12:32 PM
Ah, so were you yet another victim of the Red Weed? Somehow I don't think audio cassette tape was meant to handle that particular section - it claimed my Dad's copy.

Apologies for going off topic but....

WOTW: audio DVD in 5.1 sound: OH YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:worthy: :respect: :worthy: :respect:
The sound of the Martian lid twisting off the capsule, alone, is worth buying a 5.1 system for!!:clap:

azande
20th-July-2006, 12:54 PM
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Stuart M
20th-July-2006, 01:04 PM
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
One of my fave films, though I've never read the book fully - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

How about these?

Many years later,as he faced the firing squad,Colonel Aureliano Buend*a was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

The primroses were over.

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K.,for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

Yes,it could begin this way, right here, just like that, in a rather slow and ponderous way, in this neutral place that belongs to all and to none, where people pass by almost without seeing each other, where the life of the building regularly and distantly resounds.

straycat
20th-July-2006, 01:31 PM
This isn't the opening line from a book (well - it might be, but I don't remember it as such) - but it is the opening line from one episode of a radio show.



In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move.

straycat
20th-July-2006, 01:33 PM
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. "

Just finished reading that one (again)
And watching it (the definitive version - sorry, Kiera, but Ms. Ehle was a hard act to follow...)

Gadget
20th-July-2006, 06:35 PM
"Willie McCoy had been a jerk before he died. His being dead didn't change that. He sat across from me, wearing a loud plaid sport jacket."

jacksondonut
20th-July-2006, 08:20 PM
This isn't the opening line from a book (well - it might be, but I don't remember it as such) - but it is the opening line from one episode of a radio show.

Makes me think of Monty Python, or maybe Hitchhikers Guide.. does ring a bell though... :confused: :yeah:

Sparkles
20th-July-2006, 08:26 PM
"Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes."

Sparkles
20th-July-2006, 08:30 PM
And, from one of my favourite books of all time:

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realised it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."

philsmove
20th-July-2006, 10:59 PM
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort."

Stuart M
21st-July-2006, 09:10 AM
In honour of today's date:

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

ToeTrampler
21st-July-2006, 09:27 AM
Many years later,as he faced the firing squad,Colonel Aureliano Buend*a was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Ah, from "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by GGM methinks :)
(Sorry couldn't spell Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

straycat
21st-July-2006, 09:29 AM
Makes me think of Monty Python, or maybe Hitchhikers Guide.. does ring a bell though... :confused: :yeah:

Imagine it being said by Peter Jones (The Book)

Beowulf
23rd-July-2006, 07:24 PM
Imagine it being said by Peter Jones (The Book)

I tend to believe that the entire universe was sneezed out of the nose of the Great Green Arkleseizure. I live in perpetual fear of the time I call "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief".

Louisa
26th-July-2006, 04:25 PM
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K.,for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

Will post some lines when I have more time

Beowulf
26th-July-2006, 05:47 PM
The Trial by Franz Kafka

Will post some lines when I have more time

you'll know this one then


One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in 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.

had to read this one in school.. :( hated it.. (sorry it's true.. It may be classified as great prose but I hated it.. was always more of a Shakespeare guy myself )