“It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.”
What makes a great opening line?
61–70 of 202 posts
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#62"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
That one’s in the article. What’s interesting is that it suggests different colors depending on whether you grew up with CRT or flatscreen televisions.
And if you grew up with a media streaming box of some sort you might not even grok the concept of a dead channel.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#63"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." from The Go Between by L.P. Hartley.
This has always been one of my favorite lines, and I think it says so much about humanity in eleven words, as well as setting the tone of the book.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#64"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#65Does anyone know of a book wherein the last line is the same as the first? In the sense of making the book self-referencing? Something along the lines of, “And so it is with you.”
IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music . . . but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.
...
(93 chapters later)
IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.
...
--- ---
That isn't a "first and last line are the same" but rather "the prologue and the epilogue are the same".
For my favorite self reference, however, is part of the Jhereg / Taltos series by Burst. He does it a couple times, though the one that sticks in my mind the most is a prologue that is a cleaning / clothing repair list. "Tear on left sleeve" type thing. Then each chapter, that issue happens to the clothes.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#66“Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.”
―Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
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.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I rather liked the first part (2 parts?). But then there was a wildly improbable transition to the last part that I didn't find terribly interesting.
Stephenson is an excellent author of the first thirds of novels.
He continues the grand tradition of science fiction writers producing works of conceptual genius marred only by insipid characters lacking any development and absent plots.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#68“Call me Ishmael.”
Quarter Share, Nathan Lowell.
Chapter One Neris 2351-August-13
Call me Ishmael. Yeah I know, but in this case it’s really my name: Ishmael Horatio Wang. My parents had an unfortunate sense of humor. If they had known what I’d wind up doing with my life, they might have picked a different one—Richard Henry Dana, perhaps. Exactly why they picked Ishmael Horatio is a long, and not terribly interesting, story that started with the fact that Mom was an ancient lit professor and ended with my being saddled with these non sequitur monikers.
That particular story was over eighteen stanyers before the two Neris Company security guards showed up at my door with long faces and low voices. Perhaps it was their expressions, or that they were looking for me and not Mom, but either way I knew their visit wasn’t good. I didn’t think they had come to drag me off to juvie or anything. I’d never been a troublemaker like some of the others in the university enclave. They had come for me though—to tell me she was dead.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
That one’s in the article. What’s interesting is that it suggests different colors depending on whether you grew up with CRT or flatscreen televisions.
And if you grew up with a media streaming box of some sort you might not even grok the concept of a dead channel.
A disconnected video input is usually presented with a solid blue picture. I (along with this person: http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/Blue.html) would love to know who came up with the idea!
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#70Why can't I zoom in on mobile?
THIS is a great opening line. Had a good laugh :D