# Favorite first lines



## Steerpike (Nov 9, 2017)

Of these, I like the Austen and Tolstoy best:

10 of Our Favorite First Lines in Literature

What are some of your favorite first lines?


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 9, 2017)

I've never read Neuromancer, but I love the first line. It makes me want to read it...which I guess is the idea.


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## Steerpike (Nov 9, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I've never read Neuromancer, but I love the first line. It makes me want to read it...which I guess is the idea.



It’s good.


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## FifthView (Nov 9, 2017)

Yeah, the line from Neuromancer is great. I also like the line from 1984, a little more.  Also, the Jekyll and Hyde and Pride and Prejudice first lines. And Anna Karenina. Probably those last three in that order.


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## CupofJoe (Nov 10, 2017)

My trio...
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. LP Hartley The Go-Between
I've read the first two but I really love the last one.
But I  think the beginning of 1984 is just about the best fourteen words ever...


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## Heliotrope (Nov 10, 2017)

_The thing was: _
- Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut.

Vonnegut has such a great narrative voice. I just love it. Just another night at the pub drinking beers with Kurt.

_There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. _
- Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis

_When Andy was only two weeks old she tumbled from the sky, unannounced, onto the bark mulch pile Mrs. Perkins was digging to protect her marigolds. _

- Treasure of Sorrows, by.... Me. Lol. ( I like it  Don't judge me).


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## FifthView (Nov 10, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> _When Andy was only two weeks old she tumbled from the sky, annanouced, onto the bark mulch pile Mrs. Perkins was digging to protect her marigolds. _
> 
> - Treasure of Sorrows, by.... Me. Lol. ( I like it  Don't judge me).



I hope it's spelled correctly in the book!  [I'll stop judging now. It's a great first line. Oops I judged again.]


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## Heliotrope (Nov 10, 2017)

Whatever are you talking about ?  It is spelled perfectly.......


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Nov 13, 2017)

It was a dark and stormy night. [A Wrinkle in Time.]


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## Heliotrope (Nov 13, 2017)

^^^^ my favourite book.

I love that it was just included on the bookcase in Interstellar.


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## Ankari (Nov 13, 2017)

This is technically cheating, but I love this opening to every Wheel of Time book:

_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 origination can change from book to book)_. 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.

-_Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Every time I read it I get goosebumps.


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## Chessie2 (Nov 14, 2017)

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.--Margaret Mitchell from my favorite book of all time: Gone With The Wind

"Three hundred and forty–eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago to–day, the Parisians awoke to the sound of all the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and the town ringing a full peal."--Victor Hugo from my 2nd favorite book ever, The Hunchback of Notre Dame

"Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy."--C.S. Lewis from my favorite fantasy book of all time, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.


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## Rkcapps (Nov 14, 2017)

There are just so many! All of the above are brilliant, but I'd have to go with "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" even though I'm a Pride and Prejudice nut!!! Like the Wheel of Time, these first lines in Dickens and Austen really give a feel for the story to come.


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## TheCrystallineEntity (Nov 14, 2017)

"There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden." [A Wind in the Door]


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## skip.knox (Nov 14, 2017)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I've never read Neuromancer, but I love the first line. It makes me want to read it...which I guess is the idea.



I jumped back to this thread, struck by that line, but in quite a different way. I found the line a little sad, even heartbreaking. Because, next generation, the reader is 1) not going to know what a dead channel is, and 2) would picture flat black, if they picture anything.

The line is doomed because it is tied to a tiny sliver of human experience.

Tolstoy's line, otoh, is eternal.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 14, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> I jumped back to this thread, struck by that line, but in quite a different way. I found the line a little sad, even heartbreaking. Because, next generation, the reader is 1) not going to know what a dead channel is, and 2) would picture flat black, if they picture anything.
> 
> The line is doomed because it is tied to a tiny sliver of human experience.
> 
> Tolstoy's line, otoh, is eternal.



omg. I didn't even realize that. 

I'm a member of probably the last generation that will even know what the line is talking about.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 14, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> _The thing was: _
> - Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut.
> 
> Vonnegut has such a great narrative voice. I just love it. Just another night at the pub drinking beers with Kurt.
> ...



Oh, I love the Voyage of the Dawn Treader line.


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## Rkcapps (Nov 15, 2017)

To stick with fantasy, there's Janice Harry's The shifter:

“Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken.”


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 15, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> To stick with fantasy, there's Janice Harry's The shifter:
> 
> “Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken.”



I actually know this book! I tried to read it like 3 times, but each time I couldn't get into it...


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## Rkcapps (Nov 15, 2017)

I hear you DofA! The line above is a great starting line but I've put the book aside at Chapter 2 for now. Like you I couldn't get into it. I do hope to try it again one day but I've just discovered Terry Pratchett so I'll be immersed in discworld for a while! I must say, isn't it funny, the first line of The Colour of Magic didn't grab me but the story did, whereas the first line of The Shifter is clever but the story doesn't grab me. Wonder why?

Janice gives such worthy advice on her website, I owe it to her to try and read The Shifter. I did really like the concept behind her magic...


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 15, 2017)

Rkcapps said:


> I hear you DofA! The line above is a great starting line but I've put the book aside at Chapter 2 for now. Like you I couldn't get into it. I do hope to try it again one day but I've just discovered Terry Pratchett so I'll be immersed in discworld for a while! I must say, isn't it funny, the first line of The Colour of Magic didn't grab me but the story did, whereas the first line of The Shifter is clever but the story doesn't grab me. Wonder why?
> 
> Janice gives such worthy advice on her website, I owe it to her to try and read The Shifter. I did really like the concept behind her magic...



Oh, yes. The concept of healing magic and shifting pain really interests me. I'm not sure why the book can't hook me though.


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## Steerpike (Nov 24, 2017)

Reading Greg Egan’s “Distress.” Don’t know that it makes my favorites, but the first line is a three-sentence bit of dialogue:

“All right. He’s dead. Go ahead and talk to him.”


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## Dark Squiggle (Nov 24, 2017)

"She had debated, in the frivolity of the beginning, whether to build a hole in the ground or a tower; a hole, because she was fond of hobbits, or a tower - well a tower for many reasons, but chiefly because she liked spiral stairways.
          As time went on, and she thought over the pros and cons of each, the idea of a tower became increasingly exciting...."
_Bone People_, by Keri Hulme. The first half of the book stays just as good as these lines.


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## Garren Jacobsen (Nov 26, 2017)

Marley was dead to begin with.


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## Steerpike (Nov 26, 2017)

Brian Scott Allen said:


> Marley was dead to begin with.



Classic


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## Michael K. Eidson (Nov 28, 2017)

It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me.
 -- Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber

Smoke collected on the belly of the storm. It rose up in slim fingers above the tree line, coiled into a fist when it cleared the ridge. Hung there and spread against the underbelly of the clouds like oil across water.
-- K. Eason, Enemy

Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries.
-- Fritz Leiber, Swords and Deviltry


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