161–170 of 202 posts
Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy would not live another five years.
No worries, the ending is a happy one and we have the feeling that Conradin will live more than 5 more years.
"Only the young have such moments. I don’t mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection." the shadow-line
What makes a great opening line? A great rest-of-the-story. Nobody praises the opening line of a story that they otherwise think is rather boring.
Stephen King has written about how the Dark Tower was written, and it came from the opening line.
A great opening line is an inspiration for the rest of the story, it sets the scene.
- Gravity’s Rainbow
“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.
“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.”
States of Matter (1975) by David L. Goodstein, for anyone wondering.
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."
There are many great lines, here's another one I've always liked:
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."
I must admit, that opening line did very little for me. Neither did the rest of the book.