Opening Lines in Books

CollegeGuyWMU said:

"It was night again. The Waystone inn lay in silence , and it was a silence of three parts"


From one of my favorite, hopefully soon to be completed, fantasy trilogies.

Click to expand...

Superman2008 said:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Click to expand...

Devlishone4fun said:

Once upon a time there was girl that followed a rabbit into a hole...

Click to expand...

Superman2008 said:

Ok... IF anyone gets this I will be VERY impressed.

Once upon a time, in a land that was called Britain, these things happened.

Click to expand...

Tiamo15 said:

Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

"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."

This book was sitting by Diary of a Young Girl, so it became my next book quote.

Click to expand...

IhateClowns said:

The Outisders

The sun did not shine
It was too wet to play
So we sat in the house
All that cold wet, wet day.

Click to expand...

UrbanBohemian said:

I do read a good deal but not fictional books like novels. Weird, right? I read so much but I just don't like novels. I've read like four Jim Morrison biographies (including, of course, No One Here Gets Out Alive) and I do have a few copies of his poetry book (Shocker, right?) but novels, I just can't for some reason. I do read a lot of articles, including some long and in-depth ones about two of my passions, politics and psychology, and comics. I'm serious, comics are serious literature. They can be, at any rate. There are some graphic novels that are very good and even some comic series that are surprisingly deep. The Sandman is one I recommend to people who are fans of serious literature.

...

I regret nothing.

Click to expand...

quietlylooking said:

O.k., here's an easy one: As he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.

Click to expand...

sks43 said:

The Cat in the Hat?

I was just wanting to guess.

Click to expand...

1. “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.”
2. "As he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."

quietlylooking said:

O.k., here's an easy one: As he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.

Click to expand...

UrbanBohemian said:

You know, you guys make it a lot easier when you're talking about books that became movies... Tiamo.

*Cough* Matt Damon *Cough*

Click to expand...

UrbanBohemian said:

I do read a good deal but not fictional books like novels. Weird, right? I read so much but I just don't like novels. I've read like four Jim Morrison biographies (including, of course, No One Here Gets Out Alive) and I do have a few copies of his poetry book (Shocker, right?) but novels, I just can't for some reason. I do read a lot of articles, including some long and in-depth ones about two of my passions, politics and psychology, and comics. I'm serious, comics are serious literature. They can be, at any rate. There are some graphic novels that are very good and even some comic series that are surprisingly deep. The Sandman is one I recommend to people who are fans of serious literature.

But I mainly posted to tell a funny story. So my dad is a big Tolkien fan. I'm in the minority but I think he's incredibly overrated. But when I was a kid I was still trying to figure out what I did and did not like so I gave the books a go. So I finished high school in '02 and that was before the LOTR movies were made. We had a requirement in our English classes that we had to read over a thousand pages a semester. It was a private school so we had a lot of reading to do. I also had to read the Bible cover-to-cover. That was a pain in my ass, I'll tell ya. So I found some editions of the Lord of The Rings books with as many pages as possible, larger print, smaller pages, all that. Because it was not a word count thing, it was a page count thing. So in the ninth grade I used the books for my reading requirement. We had to get quizzed by the teachers on the books and if we didn't pass the quick thing we didn't get credit. Well being the sneaky bastard I was back then I had already read the books and had an audio version done by the BBC which had Ian Holm as Frodo, ironically. I just listened to those to bone up once in a while but I essentially read zero pages and passed it off.

Well, after my freshman year the teacher I had was fired for coming out as a lesbian. Catholic school, so they could do that. She sued but of course got nowhere. So anyway since she was gone I thought I might be able to do it again. So I used the LOTR books as my requirement again. No one ever checked because apparently those records or whatever she kept were either tossed or put into storage. So I got away with it again.

Junior year I was a bit more brazen, since I fucking ran that school at that point, and just did it again even though that teacher was still there. It worked. Senior year, you guessed it. Same deal.

So the Lord Of The Rings saved me from reading anything for those classes beyond the already pretty rigorous requirements of the classes themselves. Which was good because we had to read all of Chaucer, most of Shakespeare's plays, Walt Whitman, all kinds of stuff. Plus that damned Bible requirement. And senior year we had to read the whole of the Catechism as well. Maybe that's why I quit reading long-form books but anyway, I beat their system. It was so easy to scam them. I had enough work to do already and since I was dealing with a lot of pain and health problems even then I felt like I earned a little break.

I regret nothing.

Click to expand...

Tiamo15 said:

Lol, I figured it might be easier if I hit upon a book that became an awesome movie!

Click to expand...

Tiamo15 said:

I'm not familiar with tnman's... Anybody else?

Here's one that may be one of the most famous opening lines.

"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."

Click to expand...