First Impressions: Our 30 Favorite Opening Lines in Literature

[babylonsister]

:hi:

http://flavorwire.com/75066/first-impressions-our-30-favorite-opening-lines-in-literature


snip//

29. Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov

Best opening that everyone knows is the best opening, so much so that it’s basically become a cliché to put it in a list of best openings, but so what, because it’s actually the best, and we dare you to come up with a better one:

“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 palette to tap, at three, 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.”

[hobbit709]

1. One of my faves

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god.

Roger Zelazny in Lord Of Light.

[RC]

2. Not being well read in Classic literature,

I prefer, "It was a dark and stormy night..."

[Botany]

3. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... "

This is a very poor list because it didn't have this Dicken's classic:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws 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 directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. Dear Penthouse: I am a student at a small midwestern university...

Or,

"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

[Botany]

5. Or that poem about the fun loving guy from an island off of Massachusetts

There once was a man from Nantucket ....

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. LOL to both, for different reasons

:rofl:

[Biker13]

10. Good One!

The second is "Confederacy of Dunces", right?

Biker's Old Lady

[peekaloo]

6. 10th grade Literature class 'Moby Dick'.

The class stoner gets called upon to read aloud. Call me Ishmael. "Whoa Dude was a stoner, too. Not only doesn't he leave a number but I don't think they had phones back then." :rofl:

Last time he was called upon to read to the class.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

1984

[htuttle]

9. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. "

I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...."

[Biker13]

12. Heh!

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas!

[Rowdyboy]

11. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune...

must be in want of a wife."

A perfect one-sentence opening summary from Jane Austen's masterpiece "Pride and Prejudice"

[pscot]

13. In the fall the war was always there

but we did not go to it anymore.

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

[YankeyMCC]

14. "Rage - Goddess,

sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Acheans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end."