Poll
Sometimes the first line of a book just grabs you by the nostrils and drags your fool head into its pages, preventing escape in any way, shape or form. Which of these opening lines has its phalanges most firmly planted in your nasal cavities?
"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini
Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"He— for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it— was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Bah! Foolish poll-maker-person! The nostril seizing power of these paltry lines is minimal, at best! Look to the comments section where I shall carefully type out my choice, which you have so imprudently omitted!
"As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
"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."
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
“'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'”
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Neuromancer by William Gibson
"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."
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim and we sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening."
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up."
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
“'When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.'”
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
"Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden."
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
"Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation."
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
"When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - 'To Whom It May Concern' - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
"Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror."
Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
"My lady and I are being shut up in a tower for seven years"
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"'Barabbas came to us by sea', the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy."
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
"What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?"
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature."
The Debut by Anita Brookner
The Debut by Anita Brookner
Poll added by: Samantha
This Poll is About
Authors:
Anne Tyler, Katherine Dunn, Herman Melville, Isabel Allende, Leo Tolstoy, Douglas Adams, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Maya Angelou, William Gibson, James Crumley, J.D. Salinger, Iain Banks, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Rafael Sabatini, Gilbert Sorrentino, Marcel Proust, J.M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, W. Somerset Maugham, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Felipe Alfau, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Charles R. Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Shannon Hale, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, H.P. Lovecraft, John Wyndham, G.K. Chesterton, David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Ha Jin, Anita Brookner, Dodie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Walter Abish, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Books:
Anne Tyler, Katherine Dunn, Herman Melville, Isabel Allende, Leo Tolstoy, Douglas Adams, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Maya Angelou, William Gibson, James Crumley, J.D. Salinger, Iain Banks, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Rafael Sabatini, Gilbert Sorrentino, Marcel Proust, J.M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, W. Somerset Maugham, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Felipe Alfau, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Charles R. Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Shannon Hale, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, H.P. Lovecraft, John Wyndham, G.K. Chesterton, David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Ha Jin, Anita Brookner, Dodie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Walter Abish, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Books:
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Samantha
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Jan 21, 2009 03:52PM
Well done, Мила! I'm so sad I left out all of my Robert A. lines. First and foremost, 'cause he's just super weird.
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Although I was thrilled to begin reading "Metamorphosis" back in high school because of that opening line, I refuse to grant that piece of gosa the vote it could get.*wanders over to book shelf & pulls a couple of books*
"It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man." _The Illustrated Man_ - Ray Bradbury
"Nobody comes to Minnesota to take their clothes off, at least as far as I know." _Candy Girl_ - Diablo Cody
...and I can't lay hands on it right now, but I believe that the opening line to _Nine Princes in Amber_ by Roger Zelazny is also very good.
VanHalen! I'm shocked you'd use that kind of gorram language in a public forum like this! Shocked, I tells ya! Don't think you can get away with that kind of da-shiong bao-jah-shr duh la-doo-tze around here. :P
Shiny. Now where was I? Oh, yeah! Regreting that I didn't have more Ray Bradbury on here. And Diablo Cody? I've never read anything of her's but I loved Juno, and truth be told? Anybody with the a name like "Diablo Cody" hits my list of awesome, regardless of anything else they have ever done. I'll have to raid my dad's library to find the Zelazny opener.
I voted for the opening line of The Bell Jar, because when I first opened it many years ago, it really did grip me. I was fascinated by true crime, had a rubbernecker's interest in executions, and didn't know who the Rosenbergs were, but I had to find out.Now, I would probably vote for "For a long time, I went to bed early" by Proust. Haven't actually read any Proust, but I like the line.
I was in the same boat. My curiosity about the opening line to The Bell Jar led to my first introduction to McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Hooray for paranoia! Proust is interesting. I like the little I've read of him, but for whatever reason my head has the hardest time holding in his prose. It's weird.
More than likely, it's a'cause I'm not too bright.
Bleh. Regardless, thanks for your participation!
I voted for Vonnegut but I think my favorite recent first line(s) were for The Blonde by Duane Swierczynski. It starts out spectacularly:
"I poisoned your drink,"
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
"Um, I don't think I did."
The blonde lifted her cosmopolitan. "Cheers."
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." - catcher in the rye
I read that sentence in 8th grade and never looked back. An entire lifetime of reading opened up to me the moment I cracked open Catcher in the Rye and read that first line. Absolutely phenomenal.
I read that sentence in 8th grade and never looked back. An entire lifetime of reading opened up to me the moment I cracked open Catcher in the Rye and read that first line. Absolutely phenomenal.
Just because I happen to think this was a pretty attention-grabbing first two sentences..."There are plenty would call her a slut for it. Me, I was just glad she had shown me."
--Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan
Wonderfully worded question! Very eye-catching. Unfortunately I'm too lazy to actually look up some book titles.
some random ones I picked off my bookshelf:"A is for Amy who fell down the stairs." The Gashlycrumb Tinies, by Edward Gorey.
"Estragon: Nothing to be done." Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett.
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head." A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.
Clutching tightly at both nostrils to avoid the pain(how can she type, you ask) ....my personal favourite: "Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me." Gunter Grass. The Tin Drum.
Ah, I've always loved that line from Dawn Treader :D. And this poll has just given me a handful of new titles to add to the already immense reading list ;p.
And to share one of my favorites that isn't listed:
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." from Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin'
And to share one of my favorites that isn't listed:
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." from Margaret Atwood's 'The Blind Assassin'
I'm curious: are these all of the books the person who wrote the poll has read? It would seem so, because more than a handful of them are unremarkable openings. Indeed, of all the novels I've read, there are not more than a dozen, at most, openings worth being included in a poll along these lines.
![Emilie[-MLE-]](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1248382800p1/1568612.jpg)
"The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit."(UGLIES by Scott Westerfeld)
sorry. it's always been my fave.
Is the first line of Gone with the Wind here as Mom quoted that one to us for years. I keep looking but haven't found it. If its here then I have to vote for it.
I have always had a strange fondness for Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising:"Too many!" James shouted, and slammed the door behind him.
I was looking up a different opening line and stumbled on this quiz on a college website. Mostly the same lines, but you have to remember where they came from. [Actually, is that where you got these from?:]Curiously, they disagree with your opening line from A Clockwork Orange. They said "What's it going to be then, eh?", and I'm afraid Amazon's book preview feature proves them correct. Yours is the second line.
And, I pulled Zelazny's Nine Princes In Amber ; not too exciting: "It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me."
My mini-quiz: what books follow these two opening lines?
"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book."
and
"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it."
Had to vote for 1984, even though I didn't like it, simply because it's so very interesting to nonchalantly throw out the idea of a clock making it to thirteen.Mark, I would be so poor to live in a world where Cheetos were legal tender--I would constantly eat my life savings. (Have you seen the new Big Cheetos? They're like the Cheese Puffs from the 90s! Crazy!)
Rachael, thank you for bringing Christmas Carol to the table--what a fantastic opening line. I love that book!
Wow! That was such a short poll! Please make them a tttttttttttaaaaaaaaaaddddddd longer!
I voted for: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (from Anna Karenina) Not only is it a memorable opening line, it is a statement of fundamental truth.My very close second choice is the opening from Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
And, after reading: "Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature." (from The Debut by Anita Brookner) I've decided to track down that novel! Brookner's novels usually make me feel claustrophobic, so I haven't read any in several years, but it's intriguing to think of a life "ruined by literature".
What about a teakettle?Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safron Foer
I can sum up what I think in three words:. . .
I already voted for Catcher in the Rye, can I suggest another one?"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far"
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P.Lovecraft
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . ." A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
I voted for Harry Potter, though my second choice was Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale because I love that book.I have another one, too:
"She was born Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she did not open her eyes for three days."
-The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.
I voted for "Eustace Clarence Scrubb" (because seriously? Seriously?) HOWEVER, I feel COMPELLED to add one (only one!) of my personal favorites:"I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign."
- "The Bean Trees", by Barbara Kingsolver
my! can't pick just one among Tolkien, Austen, Rowling, Lewis... =( they all capture my imagination at the very first line.
That was hard to choose...but have always had two favorites.I didn't ask to be born a half-blood.
--Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lightning Thief
Congratulations. The fact that you're reading this means you've taken one giant step closer to surviving till your next birthday.
--Maximum Ride, The Angel Experiment
"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. Hill house, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for 80 years and might for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."The opening of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory." --Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was 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 direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." --Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." --Moses, Genesis
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." --John, Gospel According To
"Who is John Galt?" --Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
"The little man in the synthetic tweed jacket didn't look like a bomb." --Jack Chalker, Four Lords of the Diamond
"The last man in the world sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door." (The World's Shortest Sci-Fi Story)
That was a hard choice between Harry Potter and Peter Pan...but the opening line of Bras and Broomsticks by Sara Mylnowski always got me too..."I've wished for a lot of things in my fourteen years. A boyfriend. World peace. Cleavage. But none my wishes have ever come true. Until now."
Lovely poll!
Here's my personal favourite though...
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974."
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Here's my personal favourite though...
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974."
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
I recognized The Bell Jar, Farenheit 451, and The Catcher in the Rye, and had heard the Kafka line before, so I picked something I didn't know ("He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."), and found a few others I'll add to my to-read list.
I wanted to vote for at least 4 of them, which all, upon being read, immediately drag/haul/transport me into the worlds and events they introduce. Why, oh why, must there always be choices?Wanted to add Anne McCaffrey's "Lessa woke, cold."
from Dragonflight.
I, for one, appreciated the sheer size of the poll - gives me a lot of books to look up. I thank thee, Mark.
Ok, if you're adding, you left out my two favorites: The opening sentence of Anne of Green Gables (check it out--it never would have occurred to me to read Anne of Green Gables, but after reading the opening sentence, I couldn't NOT read it) and the opening of 100 Years of Solitude--which contains the key to the entire novel.Gerry
I accidentally voted for the bell jar. Oh the agony. Catcher in the Rye is the only line that doesn't smack of "literature" to my defiant ears. If you like the kid, he's gonna tell you how it is for him. And who can do more than that?
I like- "They didn't say anything about this in the books, I thought, as the snow blew in through the gaping doorway and settled on my naked back."
-"All creatures great and small" James Herriot
also-
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'
-"Alice's adventure in wonderland" Lewis Carroll
and-
Elizabeth Hall wakes up in a strange room with the strange feeling that her sheets are trying to smother her.
-"Elsewhere" Gabriella Zevin
plus-
"I hope your reading this Mark."
-"The merchant of Death" D J MacHale
also-
"There is no lake at Camp Green Lake"
-"Holes" Louis Sachar
Another one is-
"There were only two kinds of people in our town"
-"Beautiful Creature" Kami Garcia
@Richard, post 68-
1st one is "The bad beginning" by Lemony Snicket
2nd one is "The Princess Bride" By William Goldman
Nobody mentioned the incredible opening sentence of "Anne of Green Gables." Unfortunately I don't have the book so I can't quote it. I had no intention of reading the book, but out of curiosity, I read the opening sentence, and from that point on, I couldn't stop. I said to myself, "Self, anyone who can write a sentence like that has got to be one of the world's great writers."Gerry
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."Stephen King's best opening sentence.
I also love GWTW: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but few realized it when caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were." It tells so much in so few words.
I thought GWTW was one of the worst books I ever read. So totally racist I could not stand it. This is a book that glorifies a society in which human beings are property to be bought and sold. I can't abide the idea of slaves who love to be slaves. I don't believe such creatures ever existed even on the most benign plantations. To really understand slavery, read Toni Morrison's Beloved and A Mercy! GWTW is also written in a very simplistic, non-literary style and even the white characters are simple-minded, selfish, boring people. Nora Roberts writes better romances. Just my opinion.Gerry
slavery is horrible, no doubt about it, but who's to say that maybe a few slaves did not enjoy being slaves?? well, maybe they didnt enjoy being slaves, but they might have liked the people who they worked/slaved for. Maybe some people were nice to there slaves. I mean, you can't rule out that possibility. 99.999999% of slavery was horrible and it should have never happened, but there is two sides to each story. You just never know.....And the part about the white characters being selfish and all, that's what makes it good. In almost every book, the main character is always perfect. they always get what they want in the end and they are saved from the evil guy by the handsome prince come to save them. Scarlett O'Hara is not perfect, and she has to figure out and fix her own problems. She loved Rhett Butler all along but didn't realize it and when she did he was like, fed up with her. Everyone has there imperfectities and That's why scarlett is such a great character. She shows that the herione dosn't always have to be this perfect, beautiful, wonderful person. Melanie's the nice one but she isn't the main. really, GWTW is a great book.
How could you not mention the all-time best first sentence by Raymond Queneau: "Doukipudonktan?"? (Zazie dans le métro)
I'm a little late to the party. Yes. This is now a party. I've yet to read the Satanic Verses, but the opening line is quite the catcher.
How the heck am I supposed to pick ONE from this list, let alone five?! So many ones that, even if not on my list of favorite books, have remain burned in my brain. Such a good list. How can one sentence collectively show everything about the story you're about the read?
I'd have to say the opening line of The Prince of Tides ("My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call") and of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. ("They're out there").
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one." C. S. Lewis
Okay not an opening 'line' but a great opening nonetheless:"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as she drives up the onramp. She says, "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." Though that sentence shouldn't bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I'm eighteen and it's December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered on the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair's clean tight jeans and her pale-blue shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge than "I'm pretty sure Muriel is anorexic" or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blaire's car. All it comes down to is the fact that I'm a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven't seen for four months and people are afraid to merge."
- Less than Zero (Bret Easton Ellis)
