Favourite Opening Line (s)

[Inderjit S]

What is your favourite opening line to a book? Here are some of mine:

Call me Ishmael Herman Mellville; Moby ****

Anger be now your song, immortal one, Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous, that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss Homer; The Iliad

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No! I don't want to watch TV!"' 'Italo Calvino; If on a winters night a traveller

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remmember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Gabriel Garcia Marquez; One Hundred Years of Solitude

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in a possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen; Pride and Prejudice

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.[I] Charles Dickens; A Tale of Two Cities

[I]It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen George Orwell; 1984

When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton' I wonder who?

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly The Adventures of Huck Finn; Mark Twain

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way Anna Karenina; Leo Tolstoy

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 ****, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth Catcher In The Rye; J.D Salinger

We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of beef and haricot beans 'All Quiet on The Western Front'; Remarque

I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. No , I am not a pleasant man at all. I believe there is something wrong with my liver. However I don't know a damn thing about my liver; neither do I know whether there is anything really wrong with me 'Notes From The Underground' Fyodor Dostoevsky

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after a night of fitful dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect 'The Metamorphoses' Franz Kafka

Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday 'The Outsider; Albert Camus'

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road On The Road; Jack Kerouac

It was love at first sight. Catch-22; Joseph Heller

I was born in the city of Bombay...once upon a time Midnights Children; Salman Rushdie

The hammer banged reveille outside camp HQ. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by two ice fingers think on the windows and soon died away. It was too cold to go on hammering 'One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich; Alexander Solzhenistyn

And so they killed our Ferdinand," 'The Good Soldier Svejk; Jaroslav Hasek

[Beleg]

ONCE UPON A TIME when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith.

Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one.

Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Other then this you pretty much covered most of my favorite; namely Heller's, Moby D-ick's, Tale of Two Cities' complete line.

[Arthur_Vandelay]

"Supposing truth to be a woman . . ." Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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

"ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so." Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." Franz Kafka, The Trial

[Lhunithiliel]

I have started to love everything that starts with " Lo!, resp "Hwaet!" :)

But it is equal to the thrill the opening lines of the "Odyssey", the "Illiad" or anything alike give! :)

[joxy]

Inderjit S: Thanks once again for sharing your literary erudition with us. It was worth it just for the first one, Moby Richard. :D :D

[Inderjit S]

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." Franz Kafka, The Trial

How could I have forgot about the first line of The Trial :mad:

Oh, and here is another one;

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as 'Claudius the Idiot' or, 'That Claudius' or 'Claudius the stammerer' or Clau-Clau-Claudius' or best as 'Poor Uncle Claudius' am now about to write this strange history of my life 'I Claudius; Robert Graves.

Inderjit S: Thanks once again for sharing your literary erudition with us. It was worth it just for the first one, Moby Richard

Always a pleasure. :)

[joxy]

OK then; as a reward, I'll fill in an obvious omission: "Last night I dreamed I was at Manderley again" (roughly speaking), and throw in a bonus of a last phrase: "Reader, I married him". The attributions will no doubt occur to you within a millisecond of seeing them.
I must admit, though, that I am grateful that you chose to compare our literary memory banks with yours, rather than those of football, and of groups of people engaged in making "music" of a certain kind which is popular with some people aged 18!

[Ronaldinho]

"In a village in La Mancha the name of which I cannot quite recall..."

-Don Quixote.

[joxy]

Nice one Ronaldhino!
Have you it in the Spanish for us?

[Ol'gaffer]

The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself. -Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere.

All children grow up, except one. -J.M Barrie, Peter Pan

there are many more, but I'm going to have to consult my books to get the correct lines.

[joxy]

It has been mentioned, but only en passant, so we had better include specifically: "Of arms and the man I sing".

Ol'g: You have "many more"; how about one or two from the Finnish, in the original as well as in translation?

[Ol'gaffer]

Ol'g: You have "many more"; how about one or two from the Finnish, in the original as well as in translation?

Most certainly, how could have I forgotten:

Mieleni minun tekevi,
aivoni ajattelevi
lähteäni laulamahan,
saa'ani sanelemahan,
sukuvirttä suoltamahan,
lajivirttä laulamahan.
Sanat suussani sulavat,
puhe'et putoelevat,
kielelleni kerkiävät,
hampahilleni hajoovat.

Kalevala, Elias Lönrott.

Translation:

MASTERED by desire impulsive,
By a mighty inward urging,
I am ready now for singing,
Ready to begin the chanting
Of our nation's ancient folk-song
Handed down from by-gone ages.
In my mouth the words are melting,
From my lips the tones are gliding,
From my tongue they wish to hasten;
When my willing teeth are parted,
When my ready mouth is opened,
Songs of ancient wit and wisdom
Hasten from me not unwilling.

Next one is not a Finnish writer, but it's one of my favorite books still. She's a Swedish writer, Astrid Lindgren.

Nyt minä rupean kertomaan veljestäni. Veljeni on Joonatan Leijonanmieli, hänestä minä kerron.

Translation: Now I'm going to tell you about my brother. My Broter is Jonathan Lionheart, of him I'm going to tell you about.

Astrid Lindgren, Brothers Lionheart. (Veljeni Leijonanmieli)

The book is close to my heart because my mother read it to me when I was a child, and my third name, Joonatan, comes from the main charecter of this book.

[joxy]

Thanks Ol'g, I'm glad I asked, and I'm very glad you didn't restrict yourself to the topic of first lines, only.
We all know of the Kalevala, but I'm pretty sure very few know what it is about. That has everything, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, all the tricks of the literary trade thrown into one delightful verse. The translation is pretty good too, but there's no wonder that Tolkien liked the original so much. Another good thing about the extract is that it makes the language, which had previously been unfathomable outside its homeland, verge on the accessible. The Swedish author also knows how to handle it well, in her elegant actual first line.