Comments on: Best Opening Lines: Literature Edition

By: Sara

Sara — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:01:15 +0000

“Charlie lived in a place where the illegal was legal, where the immoral was moral, and where some people’s fantasies were other people’s realities. So, he lived every day in anticipation of the fantastic. And why not? It was the night before his birthday, the start of another marvelous year in a place where anything could happen.”

An Island Away by Daniel Putkowski

By: lora

lora — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 01:55:20 +0000

Sorry if someone already mentioned it, but I think Camus' The Stranger MUST be on the list... "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours. That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday."

By: Matt Thurston

Matt Thurston — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:06:25 +0000

I a fan of the muscular writing of Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy. I’m at work and Amazon won’t let me see any excerpts from McCarthy, but here are a couple of good ones from Roth:

“She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year in school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.”

Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth

“Either forswear f—ing or the affair is over… this was the ultimatum, the maddeningly improbable, wholly unforseen ultimatum, that the mistress of fifty-two delivered in tears to her lover of sixty-four on the anniversary of an attachment that had persisted with an amazing licentiousness — and that, no less amazingly, had stayed their secret — for thirteen years.

Sabbath’s Theatre, by Philip Roth

“My desert-island, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order: 1. Allison Ashworth; 2. Penny Hardwick; 3. Jackie Allen; 4. Charlie Nicholson; 5. Sarah Kendrew.”

High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

John Irving’s work is pretty hit or miss, but A Prayer For Owen Meany has a classic opening line…

“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

“In the hospital of the orphanage — the boy’s division at St. Cloud’s, Maine — two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision.”

The Cider House Rules, by John Irving

By: Maera Winters

Maera Winters — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:20:42 +0000

All of the good classics have already been taken, so here’s a fantastic opening line from contemporary southern lit:

“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus. I left one back there myself, back in Possett. I kicked it under the kudzu and left it for the roaches.” Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

And here’s another from what will become a classic:

“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.” Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

By: William Morris

William Morris — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:53:28 +0000

You know, I actually read that book when I was a kid too. It was an ancient edition from the 1920s or ’30s with pages gone sepia and woodblock illustrations. Very cool. And very weird, I seem to remember.

By: Clark

Clark — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:24:55 +0000

No one guess that first line I gave? It’s from the first John Carter of Mars book: A Princess of Mars. I tried to read it last year and it was almost unreadable to my adult eyes. But I loved it as a kid. What’s weird is that there’s this mystic element to the beginning and end that is almost like a vampire novel. But he never does anything with it anywhere else.

By: Abby

Abby — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:43:25 +0000

“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.” Dr. Seuss – The Cat In The Hat.

By: MCQ

MCQ — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:52:58 +0000

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing”

Norman MacLean – A River Runs Through It

By: MCQ

MCQ — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:47:38 +0000

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.

Those who are lucky enough to find it, ease like water over a stone, on to its fluid contours, and are home.

Josephine Hart – Damage

By: S. P. Bailey

S. P. Bailey — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:17:26 +0000

This one (Richard Bausch, Nobody in Hollywood) makes me chuckle too:

“I was pummeled as a teenager. For some reason I had the sort of face that asked to be punched.”