Favorite Opening Lines
Here’s a fun, if meaningless, exercise for a Friday evening if you happen to be sitting at home reading blogs. What is your favorite opening line from a novel? Is it the famous “Call me Ishmael”? How about “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”? Maybe “All this happened, more or less”?
I think my favorite from a novel is “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.” It’s from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. Sucks you right in, doesn’t it? Of course, I don’t read a lot of novels anymore.
What’s your favorite opening?
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 1934 hrs
I was a dark and stormy night…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2103 hrs
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2116 hrs
It began as a mistake.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2129 hrs
If I was a selfish man, I’d cite the opening line of THE ABORTIONIST; but, truthfully, the ending is better than the beginning.
Posted by elliot on November 06, 2009 at 2145 hrs
In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2234 hrs
There once was a man from Nantucket…
Oh, wait. That’s not from a book. How about this:
A told B, and B told C, “I’ll meet you at the top of the coconut tree!”
Some of my favorite moments with my kids (especially #1) involve that book.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2328 hrs
It was raining cool cats and kosher hot dogs in the city that afternoon…
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2339 hrs
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.
Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing in Las VegasPosted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2348 hrs
At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor . . . twelve-foot ceilings . . . two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help . . . Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 06, 2009 at 2354 hrs
“Space, the final frontier…”
Oh, I know, it is not from a book. How about:
“Man,” said Terl, “is an endangered species.”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 07, 2009 at 0914 hrs
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
Posted by scott on November 07, 2009 at 1025 hrs
Apropos for these times, “It was a pleasure to burn.” [Fahrenheit 451]
Posted by Surburban Republican on November 07, 2009 at 1053 hrs
“I always get the shakes before a drop.”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 07, 2009 at 1135 hrs
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 07, 2009 at 1153 hrs
I am in a medical laboratory at the Central Intelligence Agency, waiting to pee in a cup.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 07, 2009 at 1344 hrs
“Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York”
Not a book but one of the best lines ever.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 07, 2009 at 1353 hrs
“Who is John Galt?”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 07, 2009 at 2226 hrs
Ugh. I won’t even try to convince you of anything, but I will try to enlighten you as to what many others think of such work.
http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/
Posted by scott on November 07, 2009 at 2247 hrs
Scott, they are novels. People are entitled to their own opinions on them. Do you have to prove you’re an ass on every post?
Posted by Owen on November 07, 2009 at 2344 hrs
Right. And if some nutty liberal showed up here and quoted Noam Chomsky nobody would say a word about it. And if they did, Owen would be first to call them an ass.
Dude, you don’t get to be the partisan firebrand blogger just when you want to and then appeal to everyone’s sense of live and let live when you feel like it. If you’re going to be a rebel stop crying about it when people hit back. Sheesh.
Posted by scott on November 08, 2009 at 0000 hrs
I’ll take that as a “yes.”
Posted by Owen on November 08, 2009 at 0824 hrs
Welcome to tonight’s Board Meeting.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 08, 2009 at 0947 hrs
“The book you are about to read deals with what I believe to be the most serious crime ever committed in American history - - the president of the nation, George W. Bush, knowingly and deliberately taking this country to war in Iraq under false presences, a war that condemned over 100,000 human beings, including 4,000 American soldiers, to horrific, violent deaths.”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 08, 2009 at 1033 hrs
Why, that must be a novel
Posted by Owen on November 08, 2009 at 1039 hrs
Dude, you don’t get to be the partisan firebrand blogger just when you want to and then appeal to everyone’s sense of live and let live when you feel like it.
Last time I checked, it is still Owen’s blog, and yes, he does get to do whatever the hell he wants here.
Is that concept so hard to comprehend?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 08, 2009 at 1139 hrs
Scott
The article you link is written by a leftist from Europe, why would anyone even consider a morsel of his slanted opinion. Compared to this liberal nut case MSNBC is fair and balanced.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on November 08, 2009 at 1241 hrs
Why would anyone take seriously the rantings of a second-rate intellectual who held that the only morality is the pursuit of one’s own happiness? Answer: No one does—-except a few on the fringe right.
Posted by scott on November 08, 2009 at 1253 hrs
Total Entries: 19998
Total Comments: 134035
Most Recent Entry: 05/24/2012 05:43 pm
Most Recent Comment on: 05/24/2012 08:52 pm
Total Members: 9751
Total Logged in members: 0
Total guests: 107
Total anonymous users: 1
Most Recent Visitor on: 05/24/2012 09:10 pm
The most visitors ever was 538 on 12/01/2007 02:11 pm
Protected and licensed under a Creative Commons License (some rights reserved).