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, Iain Banks, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Rafael Sabatini, Gilbert Sorrentino, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Felipe Alfau, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Charles R. Johnson, Gabriel García Márquez, Marcel Proust, J.M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, W. Somerset Maugham, Salman Rushdie, Shannon Hale, H.G. Wells, Maya Angelou, William Gibson, James Crumley, J.D. Salinger, 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, Iain Banks, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Rafael Sabatini, Gilbert Sorrentino, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Felipe Alfau, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Charles R. Johnson, Gabriel García Márquez, Marcel Proust, J.M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, W. Somerset Maugham, Salman Rushdie, Shannon Hale, H.G. Wells, Maya Angelou, William Gibson, James Crumley, J.D. Salinger, 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:
Comments Showing 101-150 of 263 (263 new)
"It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton."The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." Stephen King, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. It encapsulates the entire novel and, in many ways, the entire seven book series. For an opening line you can't get any better than that.
I put Harry Potter because I love that line soooooooo much, but who am I to judge, seeing as I have only read Harry and Narnia among these. I loved the Narnia line too.
Hard to choose! I went with Harry Potter as I've always liked that silly line.
The line that really grabbed me more than any other was the John Donne epigraph that Ernest Hemingway included in "For Whom the Bell Tolls":"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
–John Donne
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." (Love in the Time of Cholera by G.G. Marquez)
It was a difficult choice, but I voted for Notes From Underground. A few of the ones I haven't read proved the power of a good opening line: I now want to read the rest of the book.
Here's a few that I've liked, maybe they'll have a similar effect on you:
"In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar." In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
"Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar." The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen." Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
"All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiana--that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him...." Hunger by Knut Hamsun
"A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness
And, if the criteria were altered to "great first pages", then I'd nominate both of Leonard Cohen's novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers; as well as, Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar.
Here's a few that I've liked, maybe they'll have a similar effect on you:
"In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar." In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
"Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar." The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen." Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
"All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiana--that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him...." Hunger by Knut Hamsun
"A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father." The Fish Can Sing by Halldór Laxness
And, if the criteria were altered to "great first pages", then I'd nominate both of Leonard Cohen's novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers; as well as, Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar.
This might be cheating a little, but one of the most memorable opening lines for me is from a book called The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. It's a collection of one line "stories" that were "unfinished by the mysterious author", and each story had a creepy illustration that accompanied it.The most memorable line for me was:
"He threw with all his might, but the third stone came skipping back..."
I don't know if it was because I was a child when I read, but even as an adult when I read this book it gives me chills.
"Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." Gone with the Wind.This captured my attention like no other first line had when I was 13 and first reading this book. I had always heard of Scarlett o'Hara and thought of her as this beautiful southern belle and read this line and was like huh? You mean your personality and charms and head could snare you a man as well as or better then good looks? A wonderful lesson for my 13 year old self.
Shyla wrote: ""Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." Gone with the Wind.This captured my attention like no other first line had wh..."
Thank you for sharing this wondrous experience. I would have been caught off-guard too based on all of the sumptuous Scarlett O'Hara dolls created by the Madame Alexander Doll Company.
I voted for The Bell Jar, but the one that eats at my brain is Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum = "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."
I vote for: "The thing was, we had gone fishing that day and Pa had wore himself out with it the way he usually did when he went fishing." Mac Hyman No Time for Sergeants
Reading that opening line out loud to someone usually leads to finishing the paragraph, and four times it has ended about eight hilarious hours later finishing the book, with that same colloquial dialect throughout the entire thing.
Мила wrote: "Well, I voted for "Catcher in the Rye", but i want also to suggest:ONCE UPON a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
(Stranger in Strange Land by Heinlein)
"
Excellent Choice!
So many of these lines really ignite emotions and urge me to read or re-read these stories.My favorites up there are from Harry Potter, Narnia, The Hobbit, War of the Worlds, Peter Pan. After much deliberation I voted for The Hobbit. The story and those following are so full of magic and wonder, and that line is like the thread that unravels the sweater.
But if any opening lines spark memories for me, this next one does it best.
"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines."
Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." - Stephen King, The Gunslingeror
"In the begining God created the heavens and the earth." - Book of Genesis, the Holy Bible
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Rebecca, Daphne duMaurier!
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."The Gunslinger
Stephen King
Mark wrote: "Ooooo! Rebecca! That opening line always makes me think it'd be the start of an awesome Kate Bush song. Thanks for sharing, Sara!
Jane Eyre is also a good choice, Antoine. See how hard it was to..."
Oh, I need to vote for that one too or change my vote.
Jane Eyre is also a good choice, Antoine. See how hard it was to..."
Oh, I need to vote for that one too or change my vote.
I was originally chose "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!" but that, along with reading Lindsay wrote: "Um, Mark, could you please make your polls a little bit longer?" and then Mark wrote: "I guess I could. But I have to admit, I kinda thought that 50 options would be more than enough to... Oh. Wait. I get it. You're using irony on me.
I see. It's come to that, has it? Didn't know I deserved irony... " made me laugh...so..hard...I forgot the book and my quote.
So, the person sitting in he sink it shall be.
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the the rug. (Little Women by Louisa May Alcott)
DOUGLAS ADAMS ALL THE WAY! It's GOTTA be 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'...I've had the first line memorised since I was ten years old <3
BEGINNING OF EVERY CHAPTER IN THE ODYSSEY"Dawn, with her rose-red fingers..."
Best. Poll. Ever.Seriously, these are some great opening sentences. Alas, my favorite is probably not among them (though the Metamorphosis was close enough for me to select it). I think it's Infinite Jest: "I am in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies."
Other good ones include:
House of Leaves / Mark Danielewski
JR / William Gaddis
Gravity's Rainbow / Thomas Pynchon
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas / Hunter S. Thompson
You'll just have to go read them to find out what the sentences are :)
"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."--first line of the Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Interesting, huh?
A more accurate translation of the quote from Notes is:"I am a sick man...I am a wicked man"
I know this appears annoyingly anal retentive but I think it actually speaks more to the nature of the nameless narrator's character. This appears in the newest translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky, the award-winning translators of The Brother K.
My favorite opening line is from Dandelion Fire by N. D. Wilson. "Kansas is not easily impressed." (Of course, the paragraph that follows that sentence is just as epic, but since we're only doing first lines I must leave it at that.)
May i just say that i would prefer it if nothing grabbed me by the nose?
LOL! I just had to choose the last option... hilarious :)
"The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed." (Stephen King - The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger)And a close second goes to...
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." (Hunter S. Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
Had to vote for Pride and Prejudice, if only because it was the only line on the list which came to mind before I saw it as an option.Some lines I like:
"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were." - Gone with the Wind.
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice I've been turning over in my mind ever since." - The Great Gatsby
"My suffering left me sad and gloomy." - Life of Pi
"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable child ever seen." - The Secret Garden
...and I really don't know which of these I like most...
Awesome poll, Mark. It makes me want to read a few more books that you listed.
"The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane."
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallwows
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallwows
"A screaming comes across the sky."- Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
I thought this was fun and it introduced me to somenovels I hadn't heard of before but now have to go out and get. Thanks a lot :)
Lynn wrote: ""The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."Stephen King's best opening sentence.
^^ This
I will suggest "In five years the penis will be obsolete." from STEEL BEACH, by John Varley
Great list. I chose Metamorphosis, because how could anyone put down something that opened like that, but here's another favourite of mine:ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis.
This is a hard test. Can I have the cheat sheet? I can't decide. I think I'll go with The Bell Jar, Pride and Prejudice, Orlando, I Capture the Castle, The Stranger, Middle Passage, The Graveyard Book, Scaramuche, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
I've only read like 3 out of the 9 openings. Hard selection to choose from.
This was really hard to pick. I want to read all [well, most] of these books now! Damn you! xD
I've never read Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini, which I voted for, but that opening line was irresistible. I may have to actually look into reading it now. . .Also: I thought the length was indeed difficult to read through - without forgetting the earlier options, at least - but making it shorter might indeed have been a disservice to the subject, so thanks.
This is a really interesting poll, too!
Great poll Mark! Love "Pride and Prejudice." Borrowed it from my late mom and read it when I was about fourteen years old.
AHHHHHHHH I cannot bring myself to choose just one!
"Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn't go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda."James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks
I wonder how many people voted for the book they liked best rather than the opening line that "caught" them most...
Julia wrote: "I wonder how many people voted for the book they liked best rather than the opening line that "caught" them most..."That was something I wondered when I first came across the poll. I hope that people are taking it in the spirit presented, though, 'cause this is a neat thought.
(Although I even felt weird about choosing a book I had never read, but of the lines presented here, it was the one that really drew me in and made me want to track down that book and read it.)
So many good choices. I like the Owen Meany line, but I think it means so much more after you've read the book; and the War of the Worlds line is wonderful when read aloud but feels a litte clunky, at times, on the page. The first line of 1984 really works for me because it so cogently initiates the sense of discord that runs relentlessly through the novel.
Cool poll.
Cool poll.
But - if the following ain't a first-line, it oughta be!! --
Mark wrote: "As always, you remain a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, served on a bed of lettuce."
IS that a quote, or a Mark Original?