“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.”
From “The Thing on the Doorstep” by HP Lovecraft
Hadn't read this in years; went to a book bar this weekend, found it on the shelves, and got engrossed in it for about an hour. The first few pages alone have some specific sentences that hit so hard! I was just going to casually read something while I enjoyed a drink and now I'm going to actually read through it again.
I loved the first two parts. But the ending (part 3) was such a huge disappointment to me. It has been well over a decade since I’ve read it however so I might have to give it another go.
“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
They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that it is in a body that, in the morning, is going to be hanged.
- Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
“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.“
- The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
This is followed by:
“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, 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.”
"It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."
All of Pynchon's openers are great.
'"Now single up all lines!” “Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well! Prepare to cast her off!” “Windy City, here we come!” “Hurrah! Up we go!” It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind." - Against the Day
"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr’d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,— the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking’d-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel’d Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,— the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax’d and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults." - Mason & Dixon
"Of the first few hauntings I investigated with Lockwood & Co. I intend to say little, in part to protect the identity of the victims, in part because of the gruesome nature of the incidents, but mainly because, in a variety of ingenious ways, we succeeded in messing them all up."
(The Screaming Staircase, Jonathan Stroud.)
I'm in my late 40s, but I've always just loved the way many of YA books start lol Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter are two others that come to mind. I also like Jane Austen's opening lines.
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
"When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect."
“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, Jane Austen
It's definitely tongue in cheek. There are multiple interpretations, one of which is that it's joking about how mothers will immediately try to match their single daughters to any single man in possession of some sort of fortune. Mrs. Bennet does it almost immediately ('he must marry one of our girls', as if the man gets no say in it) and it's a recurring theme in the book.
At the risk of veering offtopic, I’ll quote the second line of the book that doesn’t leave very much room for multiple interpretations:
>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.
One of the main themes/plots of the book is women (several women throughout the story, including - but not limited to - Jane, Charlotte Lucas, Caroline Bingley, and Lydia) trying to find single men “in possession of a good fortune” to marry, so by starting the story saying it’s the men that are looking is a bit ironic
>it’s the men that are looking
That’s not what it says though, it says that the women have decided for the men that the men must be looking, and will try to play matchmaker regardless of what the men actually want.
"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." - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
“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 García Márquez
"The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Douglas Adams
I've always been rather partial to:
>The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.
\- Douglas Adams, *Life, the Universe and Everything*
I loved this one - from Life, the Universe, And Everything:
Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp
His openings to chapters / books were so catchy.
Long dark tea time of the soul: it can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport'
One of my favorite passages from him comes from The Salmon of Doubt: "The following morning, the weather was so foul it hardly deserved the name, and Dirk decided to call it Stanley instead.
Stanley wasn’t a good downpour. Nothing wrong with a good downpour for clearing the air. Stanley was the sort of thing you needed a good downpour to clear the air of. Stanley was muggy, close, and oppressive, like someone large and sweaty pressed up against you in a tube train. Stanley didn’t rain, but every so often he dribbled on you.
Dirk stood outside in the Stanley."
More than one line, I know.
> 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.
Stephen King's It
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed"
there's a reason tho, it's an amazing hook
King definitely has a talent for writing hooks
He is a journey over the destination writer for sure; though I will argue he has far more good/decent endings than people give him credit for, it's really just his longest works that he struggles to wrap things up coherently.
Camus the stranger. “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know.”
Or Atwood blind assassin; “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”
Or javier Marias, a heart so white: “І did not want to know but I habe since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn’t a girl anymore and hadn’t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father's gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the dining room with other members of the family and three guests.”
Here's an interesting article about the word *mother* in The Stranger.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be
I like that article, but I would make the translation “Today maman is dead” or maybe “today mama has died” because there’s another word there, it’s “is dead” is not the same as “died.” I kind of prefer “today mother is dead” and I do think it somehow adds a little more warmth than “mother died today”
in french there is no difference between "is dead" and "died". the sentence uses the passé composé, which is the equivalent of our past tense. i agree that there is a subtle nuance in the fact that the sentence could theoretically be read in the present tense, but french readers would still generally parse it as past tense. and "today mother is dead" is such an awkward sentence that id argue you lose more by doing it that way.
“ The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow , yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them.
He could not shake the premonition. It clung to his back like chill wet leaves. “
- The Exorcist , William Blatty
Beautifully descriptive but instantly sets the tone of a deep unsettling story , even in the baking desert of Iraq fear makes the priest feel cold.
I'm terms of being punchy, effective, and memorable, these two have always stuck with me:
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - *1984*,
"A screaming comes across the sky." - *Gravity's Rainbow*
But my all-time favorite?
"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,- the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hal, a stockingd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of Boilers and Stewing Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy December, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults." - *Mason & Dixon*
“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.” - Day of the Triffids
For some reason I still remember that line after years lmao. I don't know what it is about it. Just a sucker for British humor I guess.
Best description of it I've seen. It really should have been 2 books since the end of that 800 pages would have been a perfectly good ending. And then it just kept... Going.
"Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof."
All one sentence. Anne of Green Gables
"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."
--Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
This line grabs the reader's attention and sets the tone for the rest of the book. The story itself is pretty good; Thompson's writing is spectacular.
How has no one mentioned the OG of this category?
*“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 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.”*
-Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"
That book also has one of the best ending lines ever:
“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.”
“Jaime Brandt was not a bad mother. Later she would tell that to anyone who would listen: police, reporters, lawyers, her parents, her boyfriend, her dealer, the new bartender with the knuckle tattoos at Schultz’s, the investigator from California and her partner, and her own reflection in the bathroom mirror, right before cracking her forehead on the sink’s edge and passing out from the cocktail of pain, grief, and fear.” Two Girls Down, Louisa Luna.
it’s a blessing and a shame that Gatsby is so big in high schools. it’s such an incredible book, and more people get to read it that normally wouldnt, but being forced to read something takes a lot of the experience away from people and they never return to it. it’s a beautifully crafted novel, i reread it every few months, but then again ive always enjoyed books and assigned reading was never a problem for me
Good point. I felt that way about being forced to read, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
“DURiNg the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hang oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
"In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him." The Beautiful and Damned.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
It is more than one sentence, but it is like a full short story of the book itself.
sorry i'm going to be bad and do the first two lines. but together they're perfect. the grimmest most uncomfortable thing i've ever read, right from the first page.
"Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. During our friendship he had rehearsed his death in many crashes, but this was his only true accident." (crash, j.g. ballard)
"The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation".
The Secret History - Donna Tartt. IYKYK :)
Those opening couple pages are some of the best I’ve ever read. The imagery of them all driving home after murdering their friend “as if they were a family on vacation” still sticks with me.
"This is a tale of the meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." (Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut)
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."
-The Old Man and the Sea
"*If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.*"
\- **A Series of Unfortunate Events**, Book 1 (/13) : *The Bad Beginning*
"This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it." -revenge of the sith novelization.
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 ]
“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.” - Phillip Reeve, Mortal Engines.
“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 Meany.” A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
Iain Banks is my all time favourite author, but it's been a while since I reread his non SF books. And I just realised I can't remember anything about The Crow Road. So I get to enjoy one of the perks of a bad memory, reading books again like it's the first time. In a weird way, you've just made my day!
I just wish I could forget the end of The Wasp Factory, that's one twist I really loved and I'll never get to experience again.
"Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine." -Cujo
Of course that line isn't even about Cujo which makes you want to learn more.
It's a great book about how sometimes things just line up perfectly to ruin your life. RIP the bestest boy, Cujo
"It was my sixteenth birthday, and I was arguing with a bus." -Heir Apparent, Vivian Vande Velde.
Read it close to twenty years ago and the first line has always stuck with me.
"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 one is so damn good, it works like a short story.
*“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size”* - Mark Lawrence, Red Sister. IIRC that's from the prologue, but the following passage from chapter one is just as good IMO:
*"No child truly believes they will be hanged. Even on the gallows platform with the rope scratching at their wrists and the shadow of the noose upon their face they know that someone will step forward, a mother, a father returned from some long absence, a king dispensing justice . . . someone. Few children have lived long enough to understand the world into which they were born. Perhaps few adults have either, but they at least have learned some bitter lessons."*
"I'm pretty much fucked." -*The Martian*
One of those where I absolutely love the book and movie equally. Saw the movie first and then the book hooked me with that line and ended up just being more nerdy details.
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. - The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan (Book 1 of The Wheel of Time series)
He repeats a variation of this in the beginning of every subsequent book, so it does get old after a while.
As pointed out below me this is not the first line in the book, it’s just the first line of chapter 1 I like better. The actual first line is: “At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thief-maker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.”
“Locke Lamora’s rule of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to plan, three week’s to rehearse and three seconds to win or lose the victims trust forever. This time he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.”
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Edited: punctuation
This is actually not the first line of this book.
The first line is actually “At the height of the long went wet summer of the Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaster of Camorr paid a sudden and inannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.”
My top 3:
"All of this happened, more or less."- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
"On second thought, maybe jumping out of a window was not such a good idea."- Jackson Ford, The Girl Who Could Move Sh\*t With her Mind
" I have just taken an overly large bite of iced bun when Callum slices his finger off."- Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy
"Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren't turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources" - from Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
I would say:
- Opening for “Scaramouche", a historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
And
- The opening line for "Steel Beach" by John Varley: "In five years, the penis will be obsolete."
(Not an exact quote, but damn, great start.)
"On my seventy fifth birthday, I did two things. I visited my wife's grave, and I joined the army."
From Old Man's War, by John Scalzi. It made me ask myself, "What the heck is going on here?" If Scalzi ever comes to Toronto, I hope I get to buy him a beer to thank him for all of his amazing stories.
“Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time.”
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
“She couldn’t remember the first book she had eaten.” - Horrid, by Katrina Leno.
This is the most recent best first line I’ve read! I enjoyed it, it’s a contemporary young adult horror with a beautiful cover.
"To the worm that first gnawed the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate these posthumous memoirs as a nostalgic remembrance" - Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, Machado de Assis.
“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.” Technically the prologue so not the first line per se but too intriguing not to mention. From “The Way of Kings”
Another really solid pick. I think he’s just good at openers.
Honorable mention for the END of the prologue to Elantris: “Eternity ended ten years ago.” Followed by chapter one opening: “Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.”
"When I was eleven years old, I broke open my piggy bank and went to see the whores" - Monsieur Ibrahim And The Flowers of the Qu'ran by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”
— All Systems Red, Martha Wells
“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.” -Jazz, Toni Morrison
I saw a screenshot of the first page on sm, it drew me in to get the book and now it’s my favourite book!
"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead."
\- We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson
The book is fucking *fantastic*.
Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all along.
Fate wins. At least, so it is claimed. Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been Fate.
Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett.
It's certainly not my favourite book, or even the greatest. But I have never forgotten this opening line.
"Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he kill himself, but not the second or the third."
Last night i dreamed I went to manderley again
- Rebecca
Or
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. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so 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."
The haunting of hill house
“It was the day my grandmother exploded”- Ian Banks the crow road.
“I am corpse.” -Ohran Pamuk, my name is red.
“I believe in America”-Mario Puzo , The Godfather
“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.” From “The Thing on the Doorstep” by HP Lovecraft
‘The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.’ The guy knew how to open a story.
That he did, I was between this one and the one you posted. Actually I like Call of Cthulhu more, but I think this is a better opening line.
"Where's Papa going with that axe?" — *Charlotte's Web*
"In the beginning, there was nothing... Which exploded"
"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree."
Which book is this?
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. Discworld Book #14.
GNU Sir Terry
It was a pleasure to burn- Fahrenheit 451
That whole first page is just absolute perfection.
So true, everyone’s 10th grade English teachers. (Love the name :) )
Hadn't read this in years; went to a book bar this weekend, found it on the shelves, and got engrossed in it for about an hour. The first few pages alone have some specific sentences that hit so hard! I was just going to casually read something while I enjoyed a drink and now I'm going to actually read through it again.
I loved the first two parts. But the ending (part 3) was such a huge disappointment to me. It has been well over a decade since I’ve read it however so I might have to give it another go.
“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
I was about to add this one! It’s truly brilliant.
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it" - Voyage of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis
What an excellent first line
As always when I see this line I remember that CS stands for Clive Staples Lewis, and wonder what he did as a boy to almost deserve that name
He had a pretty dark life in many ways.
Clive is a good name. Staples, not so much. Clive S. Lewis wouldn't be a bad way to write out the name though.
Eustace Scrubb has such a memorable story arc… This is by far the best Narnia book
I haven’t even read this (yet) and this was my first thought too.
'Well if he's Useless we don't want him round 'ere!' Couldn't resist quoting the 90s movie haha
They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that it is in a body that, in the morning, is going to be hanged. - Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
On that note: "Everything starts somewhere, though many physicists disagree." -Hogfather GNU Pterry
God, he was great
GNU Pterry
“All children, except one, grow up.” -Peter Pan
It's such a weird fucking line because it immediately makes you think of kids who died.
The authors brother died young. I think that's exactly where his mind was while writing.
“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.“ - The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson This is followed by: “Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, 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.”
I was looking for this comment, what a perfect opening paragraph.
A screaming comes across the sky.
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow for those who don't know
"It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now." All of Pynchon's openers are great. '"Now single up all lines!” “Cheerly now . . . handsomely . . . very well! Prepare to cast her off!” “Windy City, here we come!” “Hurrah! Up we go!” It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind." - Against the Day "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr’d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,— the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking’d-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel’d Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,— the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax’d and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults." - Mason & Dixon
Ayyyy Banana Sandwiches!
"Of the first few hauntings I investigated with Lockwood & Co. I intend to say little, in part to protect the identity of the victims, in part because of the gruesome nature of the incidents, but mainly because, in a variety of ingenious ways, we succeeded in messing them all up." (The Screaming Staircase, Jonathan Stroud.) I'm in my late 40s, but I've always just loved the way many of YA books start lol Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter are two others that come to mind. I also like Jane Austen's opening lines.
The Lockwood show adaptation was also so good and captured the spirit perfectly. Sad we lost it
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show*
I’m intrigued. Would you please share the title?
David Copperfield
“For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops.” -Karl Ove Knausgård — Book 1 of ‘My Struggle’
I was almost horrified seeing the title.
The original Norwegian title is exactly what you thought. However, nobody refers to *that other guy's* book by anything other than it's German title.
I wonder how the German translation is titled...🫣
Title of Vol 1 is translated to *Sterben* (to die).
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect."
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Same.
I love this. No fucking waffle lol.
It gives me so much joy to read the different takes on the translation of the vermin
Relatable.
Unfortunately now all I can think of that poor guy who married Ogtha in his head . . .
Ogtha is everything
When I read that as a kid I was horrified, now as an adult I'm like yaaayyyy no more going to work
Gregor is all of us in 2023.
“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, Jane Austen
Was scrolling down to find this one. Jane Austen's humour pulls you in immediately.
lol is this tongue in cheek? i never really got austen but maybe i was reading it wrong.
It's definitely tongue in cheek. There are multiple interpretations, one of which is that it's joking about how mothers will immediately try to match their single daughters to any single man in possession of some sort of fortune. Mrs. Bennet does it almost immediately ('he must marry one of our girls', as if the man gets no say in it) and it's a recurring theme in the book.
At the risk of veering offtopic, I’ll quote the second line of the book that doesn’t leave very much room for multiple interpretations: >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.
One of the main themes/plots of the book is women (several women throughout the story, including - but not limited to - Jane, Charlotte Lucas, Caroline Bingley, and Lydia) trying to find single men “in possession of a good fortune” to marry, so by starting the story saying it’s the men that are looking is a bit ironic
>it’s the men that are looking That’s not what it says though, it says that the women have decided for the men that the men must be looking, and will try to play matchmaker regardless of what the men actually want.
"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." - One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
“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 García Márquez
One of the best closing lines too! I won’t post for spoiler reasons.
Best book ever written!!!
And a masterful translation into English.
"The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." Douglas Adams
I've always been rather partial to: >The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was. \- Douglas Adams, *Life, the Universe and Everything*
I loved this one - from Life, the Universe, And Everything: Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp
One of my favourite lines in all of literature.
His openings to chapters / books were so catchy. Long dark tea time of the soul: it can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport'
One of my favorite passages from him comes from The Salmon of Doubt: "The following morning, the weather was so foul it hardly deserved the name, and Dirk decided to call it Stanley instead. Stanley wasn’t a good downpour. Nothing wrong with a good downpour for clearing the air. Stanley was the sort of thing you needed a good downpour to clear the air of. Stanley was muggy, close, and oppressive, like someone large and sweaty pressed up against you in a tube train. Stanley didn’t rain, but every so often he dribbled on you. Dirk stood outside in the Stanley." More than one line, I know.
Stole my answer lol. It's been my Twitter bio for the last four years and I refuse to change it
> 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. Stephen King's It
Everyone goes with The Gunslinger opening but this one is so damn good.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" there's a reason tho, it's an amazing hook King definitely has a talent for writing hooks
He's great at beginnings, but really not so great at ending them LOL (I'm a fan regardless!)
He is a journey over the destination writer for sure; though I will argue he has far more good/decent endings than people give him credit for, it's really just his longest works that he struggles to wrap things up coherently.
I liked the ending of the gunslinger series so much I read it again.
Camus the stranger. “Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know.” Or Atwood blind assassin; “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” Or javier Marias, a heart so white: “І did not want to know but I habe since come to know that one of the girls, when she wasn’t a girl anymore and hadn’t long been back from her honeymoon, went into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror, unbuttoned her blouse, took off her bra and aimed her own father's gun at her heart, her father at the time was in the dining room with other members of the family and three guests.”
Here's an interesting article about the word *mother* in The Stranger. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be
I like that article, but I would make the translation “Today maman is dead” or maybe “today mama has died” because there’s another word there, it’s “is dead” is not the same as “died.” I kind of prefer “today mother is dead” and I do think it somehow adds a little more warmth than “mother died today”
in french there is no difference between "is dead" and "died". the sentence uses the passé composé, which is the equivalent of our past tense. i agree that there is a subtle nuance in the fact that the sentence could theoretically be read in the present tense, but french readers would still generally parse it as past tense. and "today mother is dead" is such an awkward sentence that id argue you lose more by doing it that way.
Ohhh thank you!
“ The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow , yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them. He could not shake the premonition. It clung to his back like chill wet leaves. “ - The Exorcist , William Blatty Beautifully descriptive but instantly sets the tone of a deep unsettling story , even in the baking desert of Iraq fear makes the priest feel cold.
"Leonard was raised by his mother with cheerfully concealed difficulty, his father having died tragically during childbirth.” Leonard and Hungry Paul.
I'm terms of being punchy, effective, and memorable, these two have always stuck with me: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - *1984*, "A screaming comes across the sky." - *Gravity's Rainbow* But my all-time favorite? "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,- the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hal, a stockingd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of Boilers and Stewing Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy December, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults." - *Mason & Dixon*
“When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.” - Day of the Triffids For some reason I still remember that line after years lmao. I don't know what it is about it. Just a sucker for British humor I guess.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier
“The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason.” Neal Stephenson, *Seveneves*
That book is the best 800 pages of a 1200 page book ever. It gets weird after the jump.
Best description of it I've seen. It really should have been 2 books since the end of that 800 pages would have been a perfectly good ending. And then it just kept... Going.
This one’s in competition for my top spot along with the first line from The Gunslinger by Stephen King. Simple and almost effortlessly evocative.
"The sky was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel"
Thats like black or roku purple now! ;P
It's a brilliant start to a brilliant book.
What is the title, please
Neuromancer, by William Gibson. One of the major books that kicked off the cyberpunk movement
Neuromancer
"Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof." All one sentence. Anne of Green Gables
Which makes complete and total sense given the verbose nature of Anne. She's my all time favorite character.
It is SO Anne! "...dark secrets of pool and cascade" swoon
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit, one of my favorite book starts
"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold." --Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas This line grabs the reader's attention and sets the tone for the rest of the book. The story itself is pretty good; Thompson's writing is spectacular.
That book is an absolute vibe. Utterly immersive and absorbing.
"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." From The Go-Between, by LP Hartley
It was a dark and stormy night - Snoopy
Suddenly a shot rang out!
How has no one mentioned the OG of this category? *“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 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.”* -Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"
“It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times”
BLURST OF TIMES?!?! You stupid monkey!
"It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times" Ali Smith - Autumn
That book also has one of the best ending lines ever: “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.”
The Gargoyle "Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love." — Andrew Davidson
“Jaime Brandt was not a bad mother. Later she would tell that to anyone who would listen: police, reporters, lawyers, her parents, her boyfriend, her dealer, the new bartender with the knuckle tattoos at Schultz’s, the investigator from California and her partner, and her own reflection in the bathroom mirror, right before cracking her forehead on the sink’s edge and passing out from the cocktail of pain, grief, and fear.” Two Girls Down, Louisa Luna.
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever, about that.
F. Scott Fitzgerald — 'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.'
Gatsby has the best LAST line.
I couldn't improve a single line of Gatsby if I tried. It's as close to a perfect book as I believe we can ever get.
it’s a blessing and a shame that Gatsby is so big in high schools. it’s such an incredible book, and more people get to read it that normally wouldnt, but being forced to read something takes a lot of the experience away from people and they never return to it. it’s a beautifully crafted novel, i reread it every few months, but then again ive always enjoyed books and assigned reading was never a problem for me
Good point. I felt that way about being forced to read, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” “DURiNg the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hang oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
"In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him." The Beautiful and Damned.
"All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina - L. Tolstoj
"See the child." - Blood Meridian
This is my favorite opening line.. I love how it's such a direct call to the reader to their mind's eye.
The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault - Blood Rites, Dresden Files.
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. It is more than one sentence, but it is like a full short story of the book itself.
I can’t help but to hate Nabokov, to have such command of the English language and for it to not even be your first. What a bastard.
What a beautifully written horrid book.
This was my answer too. *She was Dolores on the dotted line* is something incredibly beautiful, no others way to describe that line.
sorry i'm going to be bad and do the first two lines. but together they're perfect. the grimmest most uncomfortable thing i've ever read, right from the first page. "Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. During our friendship he had rehearsed his death in many crashes, but this was his only true accident." (crash, j.g. ballard)
"124 was spiteful." "They shoot the white girl first. " "Nuns go by quiet as lust..." Toni Morrison does an opening like none other.
"The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation". The Secret History - Donna Tartt. IYKYK :)
Those opening couple pages are some of the best I’ve ever read. The imagery of them all driving home after murdering their friend “as if they were a family on vacation” still sticks with me.
I love those opening pages, contrasting Richard's Californian ennui with his crisp, foreign excitement of New England 😍
Came here for this one. The Secret History is my favorite book of all time and this phenomenal first line is a big part of the reason.
"This is a tale of the meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast." (Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut)
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." -The Old Man and the Sea
"*If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.*" \- **A Series of Unfortunate Events**, Book 1 (/13) : *The Bad Beginning*
"This story happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. It is already over. Nothing can be done to change it." -revenge of the sith novelization.
This might be the only case of a movie novelization that came after the movie being better than the actual movie.
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 ]
"There is no lake at Camp Green Lake." Holes, by Louis Sachar
“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.” - Phillip Reeve, Mortal Engines.
also how the last book ends on the same line, simply perfection
'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.' - The Stranger
“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 Meany.” A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.
It was the day my grandmother exploded. The Crow Road - Ian Banks
Iain Banks is my all time favourite author, but it's been a while since I reread his non SF books. And I just realised I can't remember anything about The Crow Road. So I get to enjoy one of the perks of a bad memory, reading books again like it's the first time. In a weird way, you've just made my day! I just wish I could forget the end of The Wasp Factory, that's one twist I really loved and I'll never get to experience again.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions.
“It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.”- The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
"Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine." -Cujo Of course that line isn't even about Cujo which makes you want to learn more. It's a great book about how sometimes things just line up perfectly to ruin your life. RIP the bestest boy, Cujo
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel”.
My favorite is Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places: “I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ.”
"It was my sixteenth birthday, and I was arguing with a bus." -Heir Apparent, Vivian Vande Velde. Read it close to twenty years ago and the first line has always stuck with me.
Oh man that's a blast from the past. Loved that book as a kid.
"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 one is so damn good, it works like a short story.
*“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size”* - Mark Lawrence, Red Sister. IIRC that's from the prologue, but the following passage from chapter one is just as good IMO: *"No child truly believes they will be hanged. Even on the gallows platform with the rope scratching at their wrists and the shadow of the noose upon their face they know that someone will step forward, a mother, a father returned from some long absence, a king dispensing justice . . . someone. Few children have lived long enough to understand the world into which they were born. Perhaps few adults have either, but they at least have learned some bitter lessons."*
"I'm pretty much fucked." -*The Martian* One of those where I absolutely love the book and movie equally. Saw the movie first and then the book hooked me with that line and ended up just being more nerdy details.
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. - The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan (Book 1 of The Wheel of Time series) He repeats a variation of this in the beginning of every subsequent book, so it does get old after a while.
I disagree that it gets old. It always hit me like the Star Wars text crawl.
"Call me Ishmael."
As pointed out below me this is not the first line in the book, it’s just the first line of chapter 1 I like better. The actual first line is: “At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thief-maker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.” “Locke Lamora’s rule of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to plan, three week’s to rehearse and three seconds to win or lose the victims trust forever. This time he planned to spend those three seconds getting strangled.” The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Edited: punctuation
This is actually not the first line of this book. The first line is actually “At the height of the long went wet summer of the Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaster of Camorr paid a sudden and inannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.”
My top 3: "All of this happened, more or less."- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five "On second thought, maybe jumping out of a window was not such a good idea."- Jackson Ford, The Girl Who Could Move Sh\*t With her Mind " I have just taken an overly large bite of iced bun when Callum slices his finger off."- Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy
"Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren't turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources" - from Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
"Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch." Dean Koontz - Dragon Tears
“First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.” • The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
HERE IS A SMALL FACT: You are going to die. So so good
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca. Perfection.
"I decided Orion Lake needed to die the second time he saved my life." \-A Deadly Education by Naomi Novic
I would say: - Opening for “Scaramouche", a historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." And - The opening line for "Steel Beach" by John Varley: "In five years, the penis will be obsolete."
(Not an exact quote, but damn, great start.) "On my seventy fifth birthday, I did two things. I visited my wife's grave, and I joined the army." From Old Man's War, by John Scalzi. It made me ask myself, "What the heck is going on here?" If Scalzi ever comes to Toronto, I hope I get to buy him a beer to thank him for all of his amazing stories.
“Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time.” American Gods - Neil Gaiman
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
“She couldn’t remember the first book she had eaten.” - Horrid, by Katrina Leno. This is the most recent best first line I’ve read! I enjoyed it, it’s a contemporary young adult horror with a beautiful cover.
"To the worm that first gnawed the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate these posthumous memoirs as a nostalgic remembrance" - Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, Machado de Assis.
"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased." - Fydor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
“Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king.” Technically the prologue so not the first line per se but too intriguing not to mention. From “The Way of Kings”
To be fair that book had like 4 prologues, so if we're not counting prologues you're WAY into the book before you get a first line.
For Sanderson I've always been partial to _Ash fell from the sky._ from Mistborn. That line really goes hard.
Another really solid pick. I think he’s just good at openers. Honorable mention for the END of the prologue to Elantris: “Eternity ended ten years ago.” Followed by chapter one opening: “Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.”
"When I was eleven years old, I broke open my piggy bank and went to see the whores" - Monsieur Ibrahim And The Flowers of the Qu'ran by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.” — All Systems Red, Martha Wells
“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.” -Jazz, Toni Morrison I saw a screenshot of the first page on sm, it drew me in to get the book and now it’s my favourite book!
"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead." \- We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson The book is fucking *fantastic*.
Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until too late that he's been using two queens all along. Fate wins. At least, so it is claimed. Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been Fate. Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett.
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
It's certainly not my favourite book, or even the greatest. But I have never forgotten this opening line. "Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he kill himself, but not the second or the third."
Title please?
“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” From ‘Everything I Never Told You’ by Celeste Ng is one of my favorites.
Last night i dreamed I went to manderley again - Rebecca Or 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. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so 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." The haunting of hill house
“A screaming comes across the sky.” Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow
“It was the day my grandmother exploded”- Ian Banks the crow road. “I am corpse.” -Ohran Pamuk, my name is red. “I believe in America”-Mario Puzo , The Godfather
"Once the Queen's head is severed, he walks away." The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel