"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller."
What makes a great opening line?
141–150 of 202 posts
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#142[deleted]
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#143"Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery."
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
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Re: What makes a great opening line?
#145"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." — John Irving in A Prayer for Owen Meany
An excellent book throughout, but an especially gripping opening line.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#146"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know."
That's the version I have; the Matthew Ward translation. Some other versions start with "Mother died today" or "Mama died today", but I prefer this version.
This book also inspired the song "Killing an Arab" by The Cure.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#147Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#148His 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. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.
-- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light.
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#149I read a lot of novels, but I can't recall any really great opening lines in particular. Rap though... "I sit alone in my four-cornered room staring at candles" "I'm waking up in the morning with problems on mind, motherfuck an education, and drug rehabilitation" "Damned if I do, damned if I don't, holla fuck the world with a chest full of smoke"
Oh man, that Geto Boys song is great, haven’t listened in ages and could hear it right away
Re: What makes a great opening line?
#150Does 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.”
The first words of Finnegans Wake by Joyce are actually the middle of a sentence that begins at the end of the book.
Pink Floyd’s album, “The Wall” does it too.
“- we came in?”
“Isn’t this where -“