Favourite opening sentence of a book

[Dubversion]

But regrettably one that came in second.

perhaps we should dispense with the current posting system on Urban, where there's an unseemly free-for-all while all manner of posters who don't know what they're talking about chip in with their woefully uninformed opinions.

Instead, all questions of taste and and quality should be directed at you, and you alone, and we can merely drink it all in and be glad that you're here to lead us out of the darkness.

 

[el_starkos]

"Her name was Bullwinkle. We called her that because she had a face like a moose. But Tommy, even though he could get any girl he wanted on the Sunset Strip, would not break up with her. He loved her and wanted to marry her, he kept telling us, because she could spray her c#m across the room."

The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band

 

[phildwyer]

Butcher Boy?

Well spotted Sir.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

perhaps we should dispense with the current posting system on Urban, where there's an unseemly free-for-all while all manner of posters who don't know what they're talking about chip in with their woefully uninformed opinions.

Instead, all questions of taste and and quality should be directed at you, and you alone, and we can merely drink it all in and be glad that you're here to lead us out of the darkness.

That would be a marvellous opening passage for a book.

 

[Dubversion]

i dunno, it's a little unwieldy and lacks any real grace.

But one cannot question its commitment

 

[Groucho]

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous cockroach.

Kafka's Metamorphosis usually gets a mention on these threads.

 

[foo]

"The bar was a mock-up, a forgery, a fake; an ad-man's crazy dream of a Spanish patio, with crusty white walls (as if the publican had economically done them up in leftover sandwiches) on which hung unplayable musical instruments and many bull-fight posters, all blood and bulging bulls' testicles and the arrogant yellow satin buttocks of lithe young men."



a long un but a good un.

 

[Andy the Don]

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

Crow Road - Iain Banks. (I think)

 

[Groucho]

When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.

Should have read the thread

 

[LDR]

"Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law."

or

"I am Sam"

I can't make up my mind which is better.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Crow Road - Iain Banks. (I think)

Indeed

 

[Lock&Light]

I am noting down the matters which are in this document because the next life is approaching me swiftly - far from us be the evil thing and may the bad spirit not regard me as a brother! - and also because our likes will never be there again.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Can't remember but I know mine are from a couple of earlier Pratchett books...

 

[k_s]

"I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."

A free pint to the first person who can tell me which book that is from without googling it.

 

[Orang Utan]

"I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased."

A free pint to the first person who can tell me which book that is from without googling it.

Notes From Underground - Dostoievsky.
Piece of piss!

 

[jodal]

Puts on pretentious hat:
"Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is
established with a view to some good"

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Can't remember but I know mine are from a couple of earlier Pratchett books...

Rings a bell, but I can't place it...

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Puts on pretentious hat:
"Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is
established with a view to some good"

Rousseau? Tolstoy?

 

[jodal]

Nope and nope

 

[foo]

Puts on pretentious hat:
"Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is
established with a view to some good"

Aristotle i think (or possibly Plato)

i'd bet money on it being one of those fellas.

 

[jodal]

Aristotle knows how to start a book imho. Impossible not be drawn in.

 

[foo]

so it was him then?

thought so! (chuffed) my philosophy degree wasn't a total waste then

i'm guessing Politics..?

 

[Badger Kitten]

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream

 

[Neva]

"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."

Not my favourite but it's up there.

 

[Diamond]

Not necessarily my favourite novel, but a brilliant opening line all the same:

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.'

 

[foo]

Not necessarily my favourite novel, but a brilliant opening line all the same:

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.'

ooh, i've read that one, and fairly recently. erm...is it Atonement?

anyway, no one's got mine. clue: it's a female author.

Dub, yer box is full.

 

[Badger Kitten]

''For my 90th birthday I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of mad love with an adolescent virgin. ''

 

[Orang Utan]

Not necessarily my favourite novel, but a brilliant opening line all the same:

'The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.'

That's The Go Between

 

[sojourner]

'We were in the edge of the desert, just outside Barstow, when the drugs began to take hold.'

2 posts in and kysers already done mine

Except it's ^^ slightly wrong

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

 

[Orang Utan]

''For my 90th birthday I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of mad love with an adolescent virgin. ''

Is that Garcia Marquez's latest?