Thursday Rewind ~ First Lines of Favorite Books, 2003 edition

Originally posted to my LiveJournal on January 31st of 2003, this is a list of the first few lines of my ten favorite books in 2003. Not too much has changed in this list in the intervening twelve years.

�� ���� ���� ��

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed.

���Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury

When I teach a beginning class, it is good. I have to come back to beginner���s mind, the first way I thought and felt about writing.

���Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

Gentlemen:

Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books.

���84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff

The most important things are the hardest to say.

������The Body���, Different Seasons, Stephen King

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

���The Princess Bride, William Goldman

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

���The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.

���The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

This was an old man. Not an incredibly old man; obsolete, spavined; not as worn as the sway-backed stone steps ascending to the Pyramid of the Sun to an ancient temple; not yet a relic.

������Paladin of the Lost Hour���, Angry Candy, Harlan Ellison

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by

and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.

���Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney

Who am I to be writing a book about my life as a writer?

Let���s start by saying it wasn���t my idea.

���A Writer���s Tale, Richard Laymon