Great Opening Lines

"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."

Well, I've read The Bell Jar, but I don't know how many of these guys have.

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."

More modest:

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

"'Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.

"Who the hell are you?!"

from Helen Lawson's unauthorized biography

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

In the beginning

"Hi, I'm Eric. You like you could use a drink!"

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

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

"They must be the most expensive breasts in the world, thought Lilli as she soaped them."

“I was lying in bed, wearing nothing, with my stacked fists gripping my you-know-what…”

"I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess."

White...a blank page or canvas.

"Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941."

He--for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

I only know a few of these...Could someone identify which novels they're from?

No

Erica James celebrated her 15th birthday by screwing the entire junior varsity basketball team

See Dick.

Run Spot

Hans Castorp, a modern everyman who spends seven years in an Alpine sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, finally leaves to become a soldier in World War I.

Midnight The Deep South

Ecstasy, It's finally spring down here on the Chattahoochee--the azaleas are in bloom, and everyone is dying of cancer.

A young man leans with one shoulder against the wall, and his slender body remains motionless against the huge open slab of night sky and night water behind him.

R13 Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

R3 Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis

R8 1984, George Orwell

R19 Orlando, Virginia Wolf

R12 David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

R19 is the opening line of V. Woolf's Orlando; R25 is the opening line of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain; R26 is the opening line of Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance; and R27 is the opening line of Edmund White's Nocturnes for the King of Naples.

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

it all started that day I was so hungover that I fell asleep on the toilet.

R25 I fucked up. The opening line of The Magic Mountain is "It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life."1.

OP, that really is the best opening line in a novel ever, huh?

“They shoot the white girl first, but the rest they can take their time.”

R1 - you beat me to it.

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

[Quote] I once had a farm in Africa…

[Quote] Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.

"Mother died today."

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write."

"Call me Ishmael."

"Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

It was the third of June

I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man.

For a long time, I went to bed early.

Doctor Harry A. Walters, an incompetent abortionist from Toledo, has settled in Mecca - la clinique extraordinaire - The Big Apple.

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

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

The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born — we weren’t even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg.

"Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring/Of woes unnumbered, heavenly Goddess, sing!"

Catamite is such an intellectual way of saying twink, let's make it happen.

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

Hey, you guysss!!!!!

"As the sun shone through the ragged red curtains it cast a shimmering light over Phil's erect penis"

"The priest rarely masturbated during confession"

I'm Xaviera Hollander, the happy hooker!

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

"The sun spit morning into Julian's face."

Since Atlanta, she has looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical.

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow,

WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE NOT CITING YOUR CHOICES. Genuinely why.

49, Hotel New Hampshire 50, Iliad 57, Ulysses 59, Go Set a Watchman

61, Portnoy's Complaint.

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

^ 64, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

R66 To the Lighthouse!!!!

R59 not her best opening line

r61 [italic]My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew[/italic].

"Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, and I was three."

(Not a single word of this is true, but it got people's attention).

I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.

R70 The Internet TM says that her parents were 13 and 15 when she was born but they did not marry so that line is half true.

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."

[quote] OP, that really is the best opening line in a novel ever, huh?

He didn't really go that far--you're putting words in his mouth.

He just said it is a great opening line.

73 Emma

74 Gatsby

R61, you're supposed to be a) smart enough to figure it out, or b) industrious enough to look it up online.

If you can't do either...

Exactly. We are supposed to do that ourselves. That’s what makes a thread like this worthwhile. Spoonfeeding titles is dull.

"That morning's ice, no more than a brittle film, had cracked and was now floating in segments."

R61 I'm the one who is looking them up and posting, assuming everyone knows is pretentious af.

You're a cunt! Best wishes.

r8: 1984, by George Orwell

r11: Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier

r19: Orlando, by Virginia Woolf

r34: Paradise, by Toni Morrison

r44: Notes from Underground, by Fyodor dostoevsky

r45: Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust

r47: The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

r57: Ulysses, by James Joyce

It’s called learnin’ for yurself. It’s good for ya.

R78 You're a pretentious cunt too.

People go apeshit if a link isn't included on celebrity posts but this stuff is too highbrow for that?

Fuck off.

“ I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.”

r50 The Alexander Pope translation of [italic]The Iliad[/italic] (he tinkered with and varied his translations in various editions).

“It was a dark and stormy night”

The first line of “Paul Clifford” by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton published in 1830 and of “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle in 1962

“Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento”

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

R88? Read the thread.

R84 A Prayer for Owen Meany

I did R89. Unfortunately, ignored posters don't appear.

Something something about Vicki Lawrence and Air Supply

My name is Victoria Winters....

Who cares that much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors?

Good evening, Clarice.

"You ought to have better opinions of me—I feared you were against me from the first!" exclaimed Eustacia

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God…

A business traveler should bring only what fits in a carry-on bag.

R97 has R84 blocked, I guess.

Does it fail to occur to you, r99, that you are infinitely more annoying than anyone posting something that has previously been posted? Well? Does it?

Picture: Sicily, 1922. It was the worst of times... it was the worst of times...

What is OP’s from?

I recognize it

The Bell Jar, r102.

^ thanks

They did a good job on her, considering the messy way her life had ended. (I think that that was the opening line).

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure

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

“There was no exchange of body fluids on the first date, and that suited both of us just fine.”

If music be the food of love, play on.

Two households, both alike in dignity

"Who's there?"

The opening of Peyton's place

Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay.

OP- this is so cool. My favorite closing line is The Bell Jar-- Very strange

r109 [italic]Twelfth Night[/italic]

r110 [italic]Romeo and Juliet[/italic]

r111 [italic]Hamlet[/italic]

An "amiable anteater"?

"Staring at the television open-mouthed, I let my peanut butter and jelly sandwich drop onto the plate on my lap as chills ran up and down my body"

For several years, Mrs H. T. Miller had lived alone in a pleasant apartment (two rooms with kitchenette) in a remodelled brownstone near the East River. She was a widow: Mr H. T. Miller had left a reasonable amount of insurance. Her interests were narrow, she had no friends to speak of, and she rarely journeyed farther than the corner grocery.

“ I wanted a mission and for my sins they gave me one”

“ in 2037 manhattan island is a maximum security prison surrounded by….”

I changed the date to keep up with modern day future realty.