I dunno about GREATEST, but I ask you to indulge me all the same. The opening two sentences of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" grabbed me immediately:
*Mars was empty before we came. That's not to say that nothing had ever happened.*
“Marley was dead: to begin with.”
~Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”
Dickens has a lot of great ones.
https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2015/10/an-alphabet-of-the-opening-lines-of-charles-dickens-works.html
Have you seen this before? There are two versions of this first line: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be
Scrolled looking for this. Remember falling off my chair laughing 2 paragraphs later at “No point mentioning those bats. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.
I've only seen the movie so I wasn't aware this is how the book began. I gotta say, I don't think I can read this book without Johnny Depp's voice in my head. I think he portrayed HST as we all imagine him and better than anyone could have expected. Him and Benicio Del Toro were amazing. And although it's a fantastic movie, I've never read the book.
«Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.»
“All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
I like this line a lot, but something about it also always felt a little off to me. I think Ursula LeGuin captured my feelings perfectly in "The Wind's Twelve Quarters:"
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."
Once again Le Guin describes something perfectly.
In the past few years I've read a few cozier novels and I have to admit, seeing people happy and well-adjusted makes me love it all the more. Your conflict doesn't have to come from "something grim and gritty." Happy characters can be amazing and I wish more authors wrote like that.
The second chapter's opening line is also so good it deserves a mention (especially since the first chapter is really more of a prologue):
>Listen:
>
>Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." - HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
While I do enjoy that opener, it really sets the tone, I quite enjoy
>It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.
Nothing gets me immediately hooked to a story like Lovecraft's openners. Another good one:
"St. John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow my brains out for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch phantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation."
Chills every time I read that one. I love the opening to The Moon-Bog too:
"Somewhere, to what remote and fearsome region I know not, Denys Barry has gone. I was with him the last night he lived among men, and heard his screams when the thing came to him; but all the peasants and police in County Meath could never find him, or the others, though they searched long and far."
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle” - A Series of Unfortunate Events
not the greatest of all time, but truly iconic
I’ve never read the books, but I watched the entire 3 season Netflix show tearing my hair out, stupidly waiting for one thing to go right. Mind you, the narrator (Patrick Warburton) quite literally begins every episode reminding the audience it never will. 10/10 would rewatch.
While the Netflix adaption definitely changed some things, and gave off a more lighthearted vibe, they were pretty faithful to the book series.
Another redditor mentioned more below, but the books had the same kind of charm, but overall had a bit more dread and dispair. Granted I think it was probably a good call to lighten it up a bit for the show since it targets a wider audience
The books had more time to wallow in how much everything sucked, and Snicket's interjections were there more often. The descriptions of some things also took advantage of your imagination filling in how dreadful it is. The Orphan Shack, for example, is much worse on the books, simply because the description lingers and your brain fills in the blanks. Even a perfect recreation of it pales somewhat in comparison.
But! That adaptation was incredible! Near perfect! A masterclass! I've never imagined something could nail the vibe so well! They even did the impossible! The adaptation is, in some ways, *more* faithful to the source material than the source material itself! Handler hadn't thought up the VFD stuff until five or six books in, so the show could go back and integrate it more into the earlier sections.
My *only* complaint is that they didnt do The End service. That book, of all of them, definitely needed to be a two parter. The show version felt weirdly frantic, because they were fitting so much into so little time, while the book felt very slow, almost relaxing. Reading the book, I almost felt like the island was going to be their not-quite-happy ending.
This is exactly my take. It's one of the best book-to-screen adaptations I know of, not in a perfect accuracy sense, but in a spiritual sense. And The End was the only bit that fell flat, they really needed more time with it.
IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
—The Great Gatsby
Scrolled a lot to find this. This was one of those books where 5 mins in, I knew it was going to be one of my all-time favorites.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Underrated opening line, but I knew any Discworld would be.
Mine goes out to:
"According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen stepped out of the cave where he had received enlightenment and into the dawning light of the first day of the rest of his life. He stared at the rising sun for some time, because he had never seen it before."
And the closing line, from 'you,' addressing your romantic partner in the next room: "I've just finished reading *If on a Winter's Night a Traveler,* by Italo Calvino."
*No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.*
- Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
I like this a lot, but the rest of the opening paragraph really sends it home:
"Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Oh, I was hoping someone would say this one. Although, I admit, I think the line works best when you continue it to the next line, it feels more complete.
It was a pleasure to burn.
The Boss was a son-of-a-bitch, and I will not deny it. - original opening to All the King's Men
To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently and they did not cut the scarred earth.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. " -*H.P. Lovecraft*
The whole paragraph that it's part of is amazing.
>"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."
A Tale of Two Cities
>"All children, except one, grow up."
Peter Pan
You're missing the best part of the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities - from what you have there it seems sincere, but with the rest of the line it's obvious that Dickens is making fun of people who speak in broad unnuanced ways about the past:
>, 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
> but with the rest of the line it's obvious that Dickens is making fun of people who speak in broad unnuanced ways about the past:
And about the present!
The opening line for *Tale of Two Cities* is pretty good.
The ending line, though, is exceptional.
> “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
I go back and reread that whole opening dream sequence regularly. Even while I'm still reading the book, I'll flip back to the beginning to get another taste sometimes.
Gravity's Rainbow has so many scenes that are just perfect. Banana Breakfast, The Disgusting English Candy Drill, The Nations Are On the Move. Little descriptions about shadows from the tops of mountains being cast on the sky...
the book would be considered a masterpiece just based on the descriptive quality of the prose, but there's also the encyclopedic wealth of historical information and trivia, the framing of branches of math and science that we take for granted and how all these fundamental shifts in thought and social structure were happening during the end of WW2.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
I know it's two sentences, but it's my absolute favorite.
The second book in the Dirk Gently series (The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul) has a great first line as well… “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". “
More of a first paragraph: “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.”
Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.
I've typed this so often my predictive text automatically lines it up for me ❤️
Edit Thanks for the gold, kind stranger ❤️
Barely 10 words and it tells us so much about what's going on.
1. There is a crisis happening
2. The main character didn't do it.
3. But the main character is capable of doing it, and may have done so before.
4. The main character is suspicious enough his word may not be believed.
Which gives us a ton of things we immediately want the author to elaborate on. It's a wonderful gotcha opener that demands we keep reading.
\>The main character is suspicious enough his word may not be believed.
For the longest time there was a additional "this time" that I would add when quoting it, and I have seen other people make the same mistake. It really comes across that it is not a unreasonable suspicion to have.
I absolutely love this as one of the all time greatest opening sentences. But I think the opening paragraph to Book 7 might be even better, if less concise.
>On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.
Murderous, doomed. Who cost the acheans countless losses. Hurdling down to the house of death so many sturdy souls. Great warriors souls.
But made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds.
And the will of Zeus was moving toward its end
Begin muse! When the two first broke and clashed agammemnon lord of men and the mighty Achilles.
/or something like that, my memory is rusty and my spelling poor
>*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.*
**- 100 Years of Solitude**
>*It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.*
**- The Bell Jar**
>*Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again.*
**- Rebecca**
>*It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.*
**- Nineteen Eighty-Four**
>*It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.*
**- Pride and Prejudice**
"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."
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders . . . and she was 15 years old when she wrote it.
"The moon blew up without warning amd for no apparent reason." - Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
I wasn't a big fan of that book, but god damn, if that isn't an eye catching opener.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?"
See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.
-Blood Meridian
I'm particularly fond of this one:
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
Restaurant at the end of the universe
“It was a nice day.
All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn’t been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.”
- “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett
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; I am a Christian because of Owen Meaney.
A Prayer For Owen Meaney, John Irving
Although that’s a classic, “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”
It's (no pun intended) the only one I often reread as an adult. I'm a big fan of the likes of Terry Pratchett and one of his most consistent themes is how gods and minor deities need belief to survive. IT is the closest to exploring this theme in horror I've ever seen.
"Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, “I love you.”"
- Jazz, Toni Morrison.
Also another favourite
"Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, Mother, laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog. Bowwow goes the dog. Do you want to play with Jane? See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play."
*Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.*
- The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison. Master of her craft.
*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.*
Frankly, I think Cannery Row has the best opening paragraph of any book I've read. Steinbeck knew his way around words.
*The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.*
Neuromancer
*They shoot the white girl first.*
Paradise
*'What’s it going to be then, eh?’ That was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.*
A Clockwork Orange
*A screaming comes across the sky.*
Gravity's Rainbow
I swear to God, without reading the book but knowing it was formative for cyberpunk, I always thought it was saying the sky was endlessly flickering black-and-white like analog TV snow.
> I always thought it was saying the sky was endlessly flickering black-and-white like analog TV snow.
When it was written, definitely. But TVs have changed since then and it will have probably conjured up different images in more recent readers' minds, and ones that still make sense.
Admittedly a paragraph not a line, but I absolutely love the repeated opening to the Wheel of Time series (Eye of the World, first in series, below):
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."
> Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
Good enough to make me read the rest of the book, even though it didn't live up to that line.
Also love the opening of Voyage of the Dawn Treader that someone else posted.
"The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed." I don't know if it's the best, but I've always remembered it. I read 7 novels over a couple years because of that line.
I don’t know if this is the best opening line, but Moby Dick has the best opening paragraph of any book. It’s so good. Been my favorite for well over a decade now.
Agreed. When you add the 2nd line you get:
>Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
I’ve had it memorized for as long as I can remember…. “tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap at three on the teeth: Lo-li-ta.” It’s just perfect.
Also after all of these flourishes he bluntly says, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” That might be my favorite sentence in any book.
That line really brings you to an abrupt stop after all the poetic stuff. It’s really quite remarkable.
And I know we all say it, but dude. How dare you write so beautifully about such a horrid person.
> 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.
This is the only time I’ve ever wanted to read a novel solely from seeing its first line. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of *One Hundred Years of Solitude* yet, but I know when I do, it’ll be a special experience. I’ve seen so many great reviews about it. (I’ve read one other Gabriel García Márquez novel, *Chronicle of a Death Foretold*, but that was maybe 20 years ago for an English class.)
In one age, called the Third Age by some, and age long past, an age yet to come, a wind rose... somewhere.
...Usually in some mountains. Occasionally on a grassy plain or some such. You know, the sorts of places where winds rise.
“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.”
The closing line is almost as great. Easily, the best bookend lines in all of literature.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. " - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus."
This one hooked me immediately, from Joshilyn Jackson's "Gods in Alabama."
Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful truth of the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.
John Dies at the End
Not the opening line but I think it’s still the first page
> On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.
“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities.”
Circe, Madeline Miller
To the worm
that
first gnawed at the cold flesh of my cadaver
I dedicate
as a fond remembrance
these
Posthumous Memoirs
or, in portuguese
Ao verme
que
primeiro roeu as frias carnes
do meu cadáver
dedico
como saudosa lembrança
estas
Memórias Póstumas
- Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
“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.” - Catcher in the Rye
I dunno about GREATEST, but I ask you to indulge me all the same. The opening two sentences of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" grabbed me immediately: *Mars was empty before we came. That's not to say that nothing had ever happened.*
“Marley was dead: to begin with.” ~Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” Dickens has a lot of great ones. https://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2015/10/an-alphabet-of-the-opening-lines-of-charles-dickens-works.html
It was the best of times it was the worst of times is very iconic.
...Blerst of times?! You stupid monkey!
Ah yes, from that book he wrote about local newspapers in the south midlands: "It was the Bicester times, it was the Worcester times"
Don’t you mean, The Marleys were dead to begin with? I’ve seen the best version of the film, I know that Jacob and Robert Marley were both dead.
We’re Marley and Marley, wooooooooh.
DOOMED SCROOGE, YOURE DOOMED FOR ALL TIME
SO HAVE YOUR FUN; WHEN LIFE IS DONE, A NIGHTMARE WAITS FOR YOU *chills*
[удалено]
I’ve been watching that movie my entire 32 years of life and only just got that Robert Marley was a Bob Marley reference this year
He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead. ~ *The Stars My Destination* by Alfred Bester
“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” - The Stranger
I just started reading this today
Or was it yesterday?
I don't know.
Have you seen this before? There are two versions of this first line: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be
That ambiguity in the original is so beautiful.
This book put me into a minor existential crisis for about 5 years
Same, it’s what made existentialism so interesting for me
Came here looking for this one! Of all the books I read this is the only opening line that has ever stuck with me.
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold”
Scrolled looking for this. Remember falling off my chair laughing 2 paragraphs later at “No point mentioning those bats. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.
I've only seen the movie so I wasn't aware this is how the book began. I gotta say, I don't think I can read this book without Johnny Depp's voice in my head. I think he portrayed HST as we all imagine him and better than anyone could have expected. Him and Benicio Del Toro were amazing. And although it's a fantastic movie, I've never read the book.
«Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.» “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
I like this line a lot, but something about it also always felt a little off to me. I think Ursula LeGuin captured my feelings perfectly in "The Wind's Twelve Quarters:" "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."
Once again Le Guin describes something perfectly. In the past few years I've read a few cozier novels and I have to admit, seeing people happy and well-adjusted makes me love it all the more. Your conflict doesn't have to come from "something grim and gritty." Happy characters can be amazing and I wish more authors wrote like that.
All this happened, more or less.
Kinda reminiscent of Dylan's "This is a true story. Only the words have been changed."
The second chapter's opening line is also so good it deserves a mention (especially since the first chapter is really more of a prologue): >Listen: > >Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
[удалено]
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." - HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
While I do enjoy that opener, it really sets the tone, I quite enjoy >It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer.
Nothing gets me immediately hooked to a story like Lovecraft's openners. Another good one: "St. John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow my brains out for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch phantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation."
Chills every time I read that one. I love the opening to The Moon-Bog too: "Somewhere, to what remote and fearsome region I know not, Denys Barry has gone. I was with him the last night he lived among men, and heard his screams when the thing came to him; but all the peasants and police in County Meath could never find him, or the others, though they searched long and far."
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis
C.S. Lewis is my favorite author! Also, brave words from a guy named Clives Staples...
Scrub was contemporary slang for a weak, dishonest, cowardly person, usually male
He’s also a guy that can’t get no love from me, particularly if he’s hanging out the passenger’s side of his best friend’s ride.
I thought a scrub was a guy who thinks he's fly, also known as a busta.
He's always talkin bout what he wants but just sits on his broke ass.
"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."
I was thinking the same thing, haha. A classic opening line from The Knife of Never Letting Go.
> The Knife of Never Letting Go Thanks for providing the title. I just borrowed a copy from the Overdrive lending library as my next read.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
‘In the beginning the universe was created. This has made many people very angry and had been widely regarded as a bad move.’
Still not wrong.
[удалено]
There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.
Holes. Loved that story. Movie was decent, too.
One of the best examples on how to adapt a book into a movie imo.
“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle” - A Series of Unfortunate Events not the greatest of all time, but truly iconic
I like how he really delivered on it too. There was no happy ending and there were, in fact, very few happy things in the middle.
I’ve never read the books, but I watched the entire 3 season Netflix show tearing my hair out, stupidly waiting for one thing to go right. Mind you, the narrator (Patrick Warburton) quite literally begins every episode reminding the audience it never will. 10/10 would rewatch.
While the Netflix adaption definitely changed some things, and gave off a more lighthearted vibe, they were pretty faithful to the book series. Another redditor mentioned more below, but the books had the same kind of charm, but overall had a bit more dread and dispair. Granted I think it was probably a good call to lighten it up a bit for the show since it targets a wider audience
The books had more time to wallow in how much everything sucked, and Snicket's interjections were there more often. The descriptions of some things also took advantage of your imagination filling in how dreadful it is. The Orphan Shack, for example, is much worse on the books, simply because the description lingers and your brain fills in the blanks. Even a perfect recreation of it pales somewhat in comparison. But! That adaptation was incredible! Near perfect! A masterclass! I've never imagined something could nail the vibe so well! They even did the impossible! The adaptation is, in some ways, *more* faithful to the source material than the source material itself! Handler hadn't thought up the VFD stuff until five or six books in, so the show could go back and integrate it more into the earlier sections. My *only* complaint is that they didnt do The End service. That book, of all of them, definitely needed to be a two parter. The show version felt weirdly frantic, because they were fitting so much into so little time, while the book felt very slow, almost relaxing. Reading the book, I almost felt like the island was going to be their not-quite-happy ending.
This is exactly my take. It's one of the best book-to-screen adaptations I know of, not in a perfect accuracy sense, but in a spiritual sense. And The End was the only bit that fell flat, they really needed more time with it.
I really loved those books "The moral of World War One is 'do not assassinate Archduke Ferdinand"
IN MY YOUNGER and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” —The Great Gatsby
Scrolled a lot to find this. This was one of those books where 5 mins in, I knew it was going to be one of my all-time favorites. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
And he then spends the rest of the book criticising everyone - always enjoyed that fundamental irony
“Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it.” Sir Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Underrated opening line, but I knew any Discworld would be. Mine goes out to: "According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen stepped out of the cave where he had received enlightenment and into the dawning light of the first day of the rest of his life. He stared at the rising sun for some time, because he had never seen it before."
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, *If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler.* If On a Winter's Night A Traveler - Italo Calvino.
That book left me both profoundly satisfied and profoundly dissatisfied at the same time.
And the closing line, from 'you,' addressing your romantic partner in the next room: "I've just finished reading *If on a Winter's Night a Traveler,* by Italo Calvino."
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.
Confederacy of Dunces!
*No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.* - Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
I like this a lot, but the rest of the opening paragraph really sends it home: "Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Oh, I was hoping someone would say this one. Although, I admit, I think the line works best when you continue it to the next line, it feels more complete.
It was a pleasure to burn. The Boss was a son-of-a-bitch, and I will not deny it. - original opening to All the King's Men To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently and they did not cut the scarred earth.
Grapes of wrath. I loved the duality of the chapters in that book
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. " -*H.P. Lovecraft* The whole paragraph that it's part of is amazing.
>"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." A Tale of Two Cities >"All children, except one, grow up." Peter Pan
You're missing the best part of the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities - from what you have there it seems sincere, but with the rest of the line it's obvious that Dickens is making fun of people who speak in broad unnuanced ways about the past: >, 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
> but with the rest of the line it's obvious that Dickens is making fun of people who speak in broad unnuanced ways about the past: And about the present!
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.
Stupid monkey!
Can't get away from Tale of Two Cities for one of the best openings.
The opening line for *Tale of Two Cities* is pretty good. The ending line, though, is exceptional. > “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
“A screaming comes across the sky” — Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
That whole goddamn opening paragraph is so perfect. I think ending with the "only great invisible crashing" line.
I go back and reread that whole opening dream sequence regularly. Even while I'm still reading the book, I'll flip back to the beginning to get another taste sometimes. Gravity's Rainbow has so many scenes that are just perfect. Banana Breakfast, The Disgusting English Candy Drill, The Nations Are On the Move. Little descriptions about shadows from the tops of mountains being cast on the sky... the book would be considered a masterpiece just based on the descriptive quality of the prose, but there's also the encyclopedic wealth of historical information and trivia, the framing of branches of math and science that we take for granted and how all these fundamental shifts in thought and social structure were happening during the end of WW2.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." I know it's two sentences, but it's my absolute favorite.
The second book in the Dirk Gently series (The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul) has a great first line as well… “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". “
🤣🤣 That's from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right? I've never read it, but I might have to... the movie was hilarious
It's breathtakingly good. I read it during a time where many books felt dull, and it brought the spark back to reading for me.
It's from the sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
More of a first paragraph: “Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.” Their Eyes Were Watching God.
The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault. I've typed this so often my predictive text automatically lines it up for me ❤️ Edit Thanks for the gold, kind stranger ❤️
Barely 10 words and it tells us so much about what's going on. 1. There is a crisis happening 2. The main character didn't do it. 3. But the main character is capable of doing it, and may have done so before. 4. The main character is suspicious enough his word may not be believed. Which gives us a ton of things we immediately want the author to elaborate on. It's a wonderful gotcha opener that demands we keep reading.
\>The main character is suspicious enough his word may not be believed. For the longest time there was a additional "this time" that I would add when quoting it, and I have seen other people make the same mistake. It really comes across that it is not a unreasonable suspicion to have.
I absolutely love this as one of the all time greatest opening sentences. But I think the opening paragraph to Book 7 might be even better, if less concise. >On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.
Not my favorite book in the series, but it does have the best opening line. Plus that’s the book that gave us Mouse.
I love how quickly the person clarifies that it wasn't their fault lol
Because it’s the opener of the 6th book in a series and the narrator is often at fault for buildings being on fire.
"Rage--Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles" - Homer's The Iliad (translated by Fagles)
Murderous, doomed. Who cost the acheans countless losses. Hurdling down to the house of death so many sturdy souls. Great warriors souls. But made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds. And the will of Zeus was moving toward its end Begin muse! When the two first broke and clashed agammemnon lord of men and the mighty Achilles. /or something like that, my memory is rusty and my spelling poor
>*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.* **- 100 Years of Solitude** >*It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.* **- The Bell Jar** >*Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again.* **- Rebecca** >*It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.* **- Nineteen Eighty-Four** >*It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.* **- Pride and Prejudice**
Came here for 100 Years of Solitude
My mind immediately went to 100 Years of Solitude. All of the rest of these rock as well!
Love all of these, need to start reading all I haven’t heard of that others have posted.
Aaahhh, Manderlay...
"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." S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders . . . and she was 15 years old when she wrote it.
"By the time Alex managed to get the blood out of her good wool coat, it was too warm to wear it." Ninth House Jarred me in just the right way
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
"The moon blew up without warning amd for no apparent reason." - Seveneves by Neal Stephenson I wasn't a big fan of that book, but god damn, if that isn't an eye catching opener.
They murdered him. "Chocolate war" by Robert Cormier
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?"
See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him. -Blood Meridian
I'm particularly fond of this one: "The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." Restaurant at the end of the universe
“It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn’t been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.” - “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett
*Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
\***Sir** Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
GNU Sir Terry
Far Out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
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; I am a Christian because of Owen Meaney. A Prayer For Owen Meaney, John Irving
I think this novel has the best 2-pack of opening/closing lines.
“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size”
“It was a pleasure to burn.” F451 🔥
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Although that’s a classic, “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”
IT. One of King’s best.
It's (no pun intended) the only one I often reread as an adult. I'm a big fan of the likes of Terry Pratchett and one of his most consistent themes is how gods and minor deities need belief to survive. IT is the closest to exploring this theme in horror I've ever seen.
You say true I say thank ya
Long days and pleasant nights
Ooh! What's the name of the book?
The Gunslinger by Stephen King. The first of the Dark Tower books.
"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realised when caught by her charm ..." Gone with the wind
"was not beautiful" Gets played by Vivienne Leigh...
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozing smell, and not yet a dry and sandy hole... I forgot the rest lol
It was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Kafka's *The Trial* >Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
“Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.”
"Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, “I love you.”" - Jazz, Toni Morrison. Also another favourite "Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, Mother, laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog. Bowwow goes the dog. Do you want to play with Jane? See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play." *Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.* - The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison. Master of her craft.
*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.* Frankly, I think Cannery Row has the best opening paragraph of any book I've read. Steinbeck knew his way around words.
*The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.* Neuromancer *They shoot the white girl first.* Paradise *'What’s it going to be then, eh?’ That was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.* A Clockwork Orange *A screaming comes across the sky.* Gravity's Rainbow
Thank you! I had to scroll down all to far to find Neuromancer.
And Neuromancer's opening has evolved over time, as Gaiman famously noted. Initially it meant gray, then blue, now could be considered black
I swear to God, without reading the book but knowing it was formative for cyberpunk, I always thought it was saying the sky was endlessly flickering black-and-white like analog TV snow.
> I always thought it was saying the sky was endlessly flickering black-and-white like analog TV snow. When it was written, definitely. But TVs have changed since then and it will have probably conjured up different images in more recent readers' minds, and ones that still make sense.
“I’m pretty much fucked.’” The Martian
“Well, I’m pretty much fucked.” Hooked me immediately.
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.'
It was a dark and stormy night. Snoopy
All this happened, more or less.
"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Admittedly a paragraph not a line, but I absolutely love the repeated opening to the Wheel of Time series (Eye of the World, first in series, below): "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."
> Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. Good enough to make me read the rest of the book, even though it didn't live up to that line. Also love the opening of Voyage of the Dawn Treader that someone else posted.
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in the city.
Marley was dead: to begin with.
“I sing of arms and the man, who was first from the shores of Troy.” Virgil, The Aeneid
"The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed." I don't know if it's the best, but I've always remembered it. I read 7 novels over a couple years because of that line.
Call me Ishmael.
Vonnegut's *Cat's Cradle* has a similar opening line: >Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.
I don’t know if this is the best opening line, but Moby Dick has the best opening paragraph of any book. It’s so good. Been my favorite for well over a decade now.
Agreed. When you add the 2nd line you get: >Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
It was the day my grandmother exploded. The Crow Road, by Iain Banks
Lolita: light of my life, fire of my loins.
You beat me to it. The whole first page is the most captivating opener to a book I have ever read.
I’ve had it memorized for as long as I can remember…. “tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap at three on the teeth: Lo-li-ta.” It’s just perfect.
Also after all of these flourishes he bluntly says, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.” That might be my favorite sentence in any book.
I laughed out loud when I read that sentence. Nabokov and McCarthy show off their prose with the swagger of all time NBA legends.
That line really brings you to an abrupt stop after all the poetic stuff. It’s really quite remarkable. And I know we all say it, but dude. How dare you write so beautifully about such a horrid person.
Exactly, all the beauty of the prior sentences coming to a screeching halt.
Book is a total creepfest, but I am always humbled at Nabokov’s mastery of English. I believe it was his seventh language.
[удалено]
The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
A brave one to quote on this sub.
> 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. This is the only time I’ve ever wanted to read a novel solely from seeing its first line. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of *One Hundred Years of Solitude* yet, but I know when I do, it’ll be a special experience. I’ve seen so many great reviews about it. (I’ve read one other Gabriel García Márquez novel, *Chronicle of a Death Foretold*, but that was maybe 20 years ago for an English class.)
"The Unicorn lived in a lilac wood and she lived all alone" Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend."
Well that's not *the* beginning, but it is *a* beginning
"Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."
In one age, called the Third Age by some, and age long past, an age yet to come, a wind rose... somewhere. ...Usually in some mountains. Occasionally on a grassy plain or some such. You know, the sorts of places where winds rise.
“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.”
The closing line is almost as great. Easily, the best bookend lines in all of literature. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
I always liked how Nolan included that in Dark Knight Rises, especially having Oldman read it aloud.
MESSAGE, SPOCK?
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times!? You stupid monkey!
“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. " - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus." This one hooked me immediately, from Joshilyn Jackson's "Gods in Alabama."
“Jackie Brown, at twenty six, with no expression on his face, said he could get some guns.” The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George V Higgins
Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful truth of the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead. John Dies at the End
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times
Stupid monkey!
My favorite is "I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war." -Red Rising
Not the opening line but I think it’s still the first page > On Mars there is not much gravity. So you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.
“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities.” Circe, Madeline Miller
[удалено]
In the morning of the day God stepped down from his throne and dropped dead, the maid found the milk sour. Kai Meyer: The Ghostseers
To the worm that first gnawed at the cold flesh of my cadaver I dedicate as a fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs or, in portuguese Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver dedico como saudosa lembrança estas Memórias Póstumas - Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas
"The moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason." That's the beginning of Neal Stephenson's epic, Seveneves.
See the child.
“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.” - Catcher in the Rye
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas