great opening lines

[little_legs]

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my 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. ('The Third Policemen' by Flann O'Brien)

*Apologies, I know it's a well known book.

 

[JimW]

Who that cares 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 St 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?

Middlemarch

 

[Sirena]

“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. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.”

John Steinbeck 'Cannery Row'

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

The Day of the Triffids

 

[Sirena]

“When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water.

And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.”


John Steinbeck prelude to 'Cannery Row'

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I also really love the opening monologue to "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" (Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu) but it might be a bit long for this thread

When did I stop believing in Santa Claus? In truth, this sort of silly question holds no real significance for me. However, if you were to ask me when I stopped believing that the old man wearing the red costume was Santa, then I can confidently say: I have never believed in Santa, ever. I knew that the Santa who appeared at my preschool Christmas party was a fraud, and now that I think about it, every one of my classmates shared the same look of disbelief watching our teacher pretend to be Santa. Although I had never seen mommy kissing Santa Claus, I was already wise enough to be suspicious about the existence of an old man who worked only on Christmas Eve.

However, it took me quite a bit longer to realize that the aliens, time-travelers, ghosts, monsters and espers in those effects-filled 'good guys versus evil organization' cartoons didn't actually exist either. No, wait, I probably did realize, I just didn't want to admit it. Deep inside my heart I still wanted those aliens, time-travelers, ghosts, monsters, espers and evil organizations to suddenly appear. Compared to this boring, normal life of mine, the world of those flashy shows was much more exciting; I wanted to live in that world too!

I wanted to be the one who saved the girl kidnapped by aliens and imprisoned in a bowl-like fortress. I wanted to be the one who used my courage, intelligence and trusty laser gun to fight against villains from the future trying to change history for their own gain. I wanted to be someone who could banish demons and monsters with a single spell, battle against mutants or psychics from evil organizations, and engage in telepathic fights!

But wait, calm down. If I really were ever attacked by aliens or whatever, how could I ever possibly fight against them? I don't even have any special powers!

Well then, how about this: one day, a mysterious new student transfers to my class. Except he's really an alien or from the future, and he has telepathic abilities. When he gets into a fight with the bad guys, all I need to do is find a way to get involved in his war. He'll handle all the fighting and I can just be his flunky sidekick. Oh my god, this is great, I am so clever!

Or maybe, if that doesn't work, how about this: one day, a mysterious power inside me awakens, something like a telekinetic or psychic ability. I discover that a lot of other people in this world also have similar powers, and then some sort of paranormal society recruits me. I'll become part of this organization and protect the world against evil mutants.

Unfortunately, reality is surprisingly cruel... No one got transferred to my class. I've never seen a UFO. When I went to places that were rumored to be haunted, nothing showed up. Two hours of intense staring didn't make my pencil move a single millimeter, and glaring at my classmate's head didn't reveal his thoughts to me either. I couldn't help but get depressed at how normal the laws of physics were. I began to stop watching for UFOs and paying attention to paranormal TV shows because I finally convinced myself it was impossible. I even reached a point where I only had a sense of nostalgia for those things.

After junior high, I completely grew out of that fantasy world and became utterly grounded in reality. Nothing happened in 1999, even though I kept hoping, just a bit, that something would; mankind hadn't returned to the moon or gone beyond it. I suppose, from the way things are looking, that I'll be long dead before you can book a round trip from Earth to Alpha Centauri.

With those sorts of pedestrian thoughts in my mind, I became a normal, carefree senior high student. That is, until the day I met Suzumiya Haruhi.

 

[Siouxsie]

"It had been raining all night, and all of the morning; raining hard all over Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. It was a cold February rain, filling the ditches, swelling the rivers and stripping the few dead leaves that still clung to the trees"

The Runaways by Victor Canning.

My third favourite book as a child.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Also Pterry always usually managed a good hook.

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."


Crime and Punishment...Dostoevsky

 

[Yossarian]

"Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese Bund."

-JG Ballard, Empire of the Sun

 

[billy_bob]

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.

Brighton Rock

 

[billy_bob]

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and boney, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth

The Maltese Falcon

 

[billy_bob]

All this happened, more or less

Slaughterhouse 5

 

[Sweet FA]

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.

 

[ringo]

"It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying."

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 

[dessiato]

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.

The Old Man and The Sea...Hemingway

That is one of the best books ever written.

 

[skyscraper101]

"Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down. And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there. I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air..."

 

[bubblesmcgrath]

That is one of the best books ever written.

Yes...possibly not what the thread is about...seeing as it's a classic.
I loved reading it when I was 12. And read it again a few months ago.
Loved Spencer Tracy in the old film version of it too...

 

[Dr. Furface]

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

 

[dessiato]

Yes...possibly not what the thread is about...seeing as it's a classic.
I loved reading it when I was 12. And read it again a few months ago.
Loved Spencer Tracy in the old film version of it too...

I must have read it thirty times. It's my go to when I want something to entertain me. The film is good, and in my opinion, a fair interpretation of the book.

 

[dessiato]

“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.” Douglas Adams

 

[Santino]

“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.” Douglas Adams

Is that the opening line?

 

[dessiato]

Is that the opening line?

No. But I couldn't find the opening line to quote and thought this gave a good flavour of the book.

 

[badseed]

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 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

HST - Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

 

[Oula]

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

The Day of the Triffids

My favourite

 

[Sirena]

"I was set down from the carrier’s cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.

The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt through the air like monkeys."

Laurie Lee: 'Cider With Rosie'

 

[Idris2002]

I never knew Vienna in its carefree prewar days, with its Strauss music and easy charm. Istanbul suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic days of the black market. . .

 

[Sirena]

"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. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. "

Best novel evah! 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 

[Orang Utan]

Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.
- Gunter Grass: The Tin Drum

 

[Orang Utan]

When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent.
- Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy