Erik Buchanan

"Call me Ishmael." Moby Dick, Herman Melville

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

"Singing, in the distance." Small Magics, Erik Buchanan

Yeah, the last one is the one I wrote. But I really like it. That's why I started the book with it.

Buddy Glass

"None of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."
- Richard Yates, The Easter Parade

"I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."
- Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
- James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake

The Backward OX

‘Six! Double top!!’

And that's all I'm saying.

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How Beautiful it is to Do Nothing, and then Rest Afterwards . . . . . Spanish proverb

Matt3483

It sure is.

Here are two of my favourites:

"Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him, and it is this first death which we will now witness."

Bliss, Peter Carey

"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 Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

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Reading is to me like water is to a fish: I can't live without it.

Katastrof

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
~ Stephen King, The Gunslinger.

I know its been repeated many times in this thread but I have to mention it again.

"All this happened, more or less."
~ Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
(The ending's even better I think)

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Read:

When The Man Comes Around

"Carpe Diem, quam minimum credula postero"
(Seize the day put no trust in tomorrow.) ~ Horace

Just Me

"What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask."
Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

"The whistle isn't jaunty, not Doris Day. It's low and slow and the actor Bob Cummings would remember its hot zing for some time."
The Song is You by Megan Abbott

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

"The first thing is that the audience appear to be confronted by their own reflection in a huge mirror. Impossible. However, back there in the gloom - not at the footlights - a bank of plush seats and pale smudges of faces."
The Real Inspector Hound by Tom Stoppard

"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 by Sylvia Plath

"I can count my overdoses on one hand"
The Contortionist's Handbook by Craig Clevenger

"Yes - Kilgore Trout is back again. He could not make it on the outside. That is no disgrace. A lot of goof people can't make it on the outside."
Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut

"All of this happened, more or less."
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

"He sat before the mirror of the second-floor bedroom sketching his lean cheeks with their high bone ridges, the flat broad forehead, and ears too far back on the head, the dark hair curling forward in thatches, the amber-colored eyes wide-set but heavy-lidded.
"'I'm not well designed,' thought the thirteen-year-old with serious concentration. 'My head is out of rule, with the forehead overweighing my mouth and chin. Someone should have used a plumb line.'"
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone

Ken

My favorite by far:

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice."
--John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

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"Doubt is an uncomfortable condition. But certainty is absurd." --Voltaire

ClancyBoy

About 140 novels.

That said, Jeremiah really knew how to start a book off with a bang.

Lamentations

1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

1:2 She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

1:3 Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.

1:4 The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

1:5 Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.

1:6 And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

And it goes on and on like that.
No one does emo like Jeremiah.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

Malone

Author: Bradbury, Ray
Title: Fahrenheit 451
It was a pleasure to burn.

Author: Palahniuk, Chuck
Title: Choke
If you're going to read this, don't bother.

Author: Salinger, J.D.
Title: The Catcher in the Rye
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.

Author: Camus, Albert
Title: The Stranger
Mother died today.

Author: Dickens, Charles
Title: Tale of Two Cities
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, 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.

Author: Tolkien, J.R.R.
Title: The Hobbit
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Author: Ellison, Ralph
Title: Invisible Man
I am an invisible man.

Author: Kafka, Franz
Title: Metamorphosis
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a giant insect.

Author: Vidal, Gore
Title: Myra Breckinridge
I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess.

Author: King, Stephen
Title: Carrie
Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.

Author: O'Connor, Flannery
Title: The Violent Bear It Away
Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Savior at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

Author: Wolfe, Thomas
Title: You Can't Go Home Again
It was the hour of twilight on a soft spring day toward the end of April in the year of Our Lord 1929, and George Webber leaned his elbows on the sill of his back window and looked out at what he could see of New York.

Author: Rand, Ayn
Title: Atlas Shrugged
Who is John Galt?

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There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

Savia

Although I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this, may I say thanks to all the contributants to this thread thus far- it's really great to get such a variety and strength of opening lines to read and a pleasure to go through them.

Here's an opening passage from The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak:

First the colours.
Then the humans.
That's usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.

~Here Is A Small Fact~
You are going to die.


The book is narrated by Death, and goes on very well from there.

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"A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him" -Man Ray

slayerofangels

"If there's a single piece of truth among all the pious humbug and retrospective arse-covering that passes for my autobiography, it's the last four words of that paragraph."
Sandy Mitchell, Fight or Flight

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For Sale: One soul. Mint condition, never been used.

"In another life i'd be drenched in sweat with you but it's this life darlin', and in this life we make do." ~The Guillemots

ArlenOrobono

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Industrial

I have to say A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens is by far the best opening sentence to date. I am a big fan of structure, and this first sentence sets up a structure and extended metaphor for the entire novel.

It is one of the most famous lines for a reason .

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Malone

What's that from, Arlen? Sounds interesting, somewhat familiar.

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There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

ArlenOrobono

It's from Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.