Best First Literary Lines

[lesbiaphrodite]

I have so many favorite first literary lines that I thought I'd start a thread. Here are some of the favorites I've collected over the years, mostly from great novels (great to me anyway). What are your favorites? Why?

Mine:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.- George Orwell, 1984

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm. - Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind

 

[cloudy]

One of my favorites:

"In the one hundred and eleven years since the creation of the Spokane Indian Reservation in 1881, not one person, Indian or otherwise, had ever arrived there by accident. ~ Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues

 

[BonsaiBeauty]

This is one of my all-time faves:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongye taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta"

Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita

 

[Brute_Force]

"'I should've been a nun,' he says, as his feet leave the ledge." Dale McGowan/Calling Bernadette's Bluff

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Some good ones have been posted so far that I’ll have to add to my collection. Here are ten of my favorite opening lines.

Rumple Foreskin

==

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

--

Call me Ishmael.

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

--

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

--

They shoot the white girl first.

Paradise, Toni Morrison

--

My mother was a virgin, trust me...

Emotionally Weird, Kate Atkinson

--

‘On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds.’

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)

--

The small boys came early to the hanging.

The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett

--

There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.

Voyage of the Dawn Trader, C S Lewis

--

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish.

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

--

"Take my camel, dear," said Aunt Dot as she climbed down from the animal on her return from High Mass.

The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay

==

And now, at no additional cost, here are two of my favorites by Literotica writers.


I was not made as others.

WILL, by BlackShanglan

--

She stood at the microphone, waiting for her cue, worrying a cigarette and gripping the mike stand like a spear.

JAZZY GIRL, by Dixon Carter Lee

 

[cloudy]

The small boys came early to the hanging.

The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett

I love this book.

 

[rgraham666]

The best first line that pops into my mind when this subject is brought up is from Neuromancer.

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.

 

[Vermilion]

Last night I dreamed of Manderlay


and


It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife.


name those authors

and please excuse any mistakes, I;m tired and quoting from memory.
x
V

 

[cloudy]

Last night I dreamed of Manderlay


and


It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife.


name those authors

and please excuse any mistakes, I;m tired and quoting from memory.
x
V

Rebecca and Pride and Prejudice (I think)

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I just love the way folks read other posts on a thread, especially the FIRST one, before sharing their own thoughts.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[RogueLurker]

"They're all dead now."

Ann Marie McDonald, Fall On Your Knees

A wonderful but dark novel - the first line sets the tone for it all.

 

[starrkers]

"It was love at first sight.
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

 

[Vermilion]

I just love the way folks read other posts on a thread, especially the FIRST one, before sharing their own thoughts.

Rumple Foreskin

Well excuse me, I didn't realise this post referred to me because, despite having read all the posts, including the first, I managed to miss seeing the line which I also quoted. Please forgive me for not only being human, but also being tired and go take your sarcasm out on someone else.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Well excuse me, I didn't realise this post referred to me because, despite having read all the posts, including the first, I managed to miss seeing the line which I also quoted. Please forgive me for not only being human, but also being tired and go take your sarcasm out on someone else.

Easy, V. It wasn't just you and besides, I was yanking y'all's chain. Sorry it came off sounding sarcastic instead of silly. My bad.

And, FWIW, that opening by Austen is number one on my list of favorites.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Vermilion]

Easy, V. It wasn't just you and besides, I was yanking y'all's chain. Sorry it came off sounding sarcastic instead of silly. My bad.

And, FWIW, that opening by Austen is number one on my list of favorites.

Rumple Foreskin

mine too.

sorry I got so grumpy. I'm knackered and there are too many parents in my life atm - I'm very tetchy today.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

mine too.

sorry I got so grumpy. I'm knackered and there are too many parents in my life atm - I'm very tetchy today.

No problem. Real life does have a way of screwing up how we handle message board BS.

Hang in there. Someday's are way too much like this opening paragraph, he says, cleverly getting back on topic.

They threw me off the hay-truck about noon. I had swung on the night before, down at the border, and as soon as I got up there under the canvas, I went to sleep. I needed plenty of that after three weeks in Tijuana, and I was still getting that when they pulled off to the side to let the engine cool. Then they saw a foot sticking out and kicked me off.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

Rumple Foreskin

 

[reignophelia]

"On the evening after the rainiest summer day, I returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with."

-"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte

I love "Wuthering Heights". I was actually doing research on sadism vs. masochism (a recurrent theme) when writing a paper regarding this novel. I was an impressionable college student at the time, and I needless to say, er, um stumbled across other things...

 

[museofdragon]

Another great Follet opening line:

The last camel collapsed at noon.

 

[RainierWriter]

Kafka?

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

Come on, it does not get any better than that!

 

[perfect_deb]

this is why i want to start an opening contest

some the greatest stories have the best openings to grab your attention and have you turning that first page...........

and its not easy - it takes skill and imagination to start a great story, to grip the reader and drag them into your world

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Not the first words in the book, but the first of one of the most best-loved partnerships in fiction:

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I'm not a believer, but love this one nevertheless:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

 

[MagicaPractica]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

--

‘On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds.’

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)

--

There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.

Voyage of the Dawn Trader, C S Lewis

These are some of my faves as well.

I have always loved the incongruity of this line, "Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille has the best matzo ball soup in the galaxy." ~ Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille by Steven Brust.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

"The dark man moved swiftly across the desert and the gunslinger followed."

 

[TE999]

'A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, Community, Identity, Stability '.

'Brave New World' Aldous Huxley