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Gripping opening lines
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember? |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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""Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.""
 THGTTG |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"One sunny Sunday, the caterpillar was hatched out of a tiny egg. He was very hungry.
Aha we have the same taste in books "
I enjoy a challenge when I read  |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor "
 |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"One sunny Sunday, the caterpillar was hatched out of a tiny egg. He was very hungry.
Aha we have the same taste in books
I enjoy a challenge when I read "
I just like the pictures |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
Awww Harry  "
Its funny when you see it there on its own ... i think i normally get so caught up in the story that i forget it is written in the style of and is afterall a childrens book |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him 'WILD THING!' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
Awww Harry
Its funny when you see it there on its own ... i think i normally get so caught up in the story that i forget it is written in the style of and is afterall a childrens book "
Yes! |
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By *igeiaWoman
over a year ago
Bristol |
The Crow Road one is possibly my favourite. I am going to bend the rules and go for the paragraph that ends a prologue. Sets up the actual story perfectly. It's from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss:
"The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die." |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
"
You dont approve.....gutted |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him 'WILD THING!' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything"
One of my all time favourite childhood books.
I have been known to utter the words "let the wild rumpus start!" |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"The Crow Road one is possibly my favourite. I am going to bend the rules and go for the paragraph that ends a prologue. Sets up the actual story perfectly. It's from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss:
"The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.""
Oh I like this! Adding to my reading list. |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
|
"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
You dont approve.....gutted "
I'm sure it'll work for someone, afraid totally leaves me cold (polar bear and ice cold)  |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him 'WILD THING!' and Max said 'I'LL EAT YOU UP!' so he was sent to bed without eating anything
One of my all time favourite childhood books.
I have been known to utter the words "let the wild rumpus start!" "
“he sailed off through night and day,
and in and out of weeks"
Love this bit
|
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
You dont approve.....gutted
I'm sure it'll work for someone, afraid totally leaves me cold (polar bear and ice cold) "
oh my god that was cheesy  |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
|
"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
You dont approve.....gutted
I'm sure it'll work for someone, afraid totally leaves me cold (polar bear and ice cold)
oh my god that was cheesy "
Bwahahaha the hypocrisy |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
You dont approve.....gutted
I'm sure it'll work for someone, afraid totally leaves me cold (polar bear and ice cold)
oh my god that was cheesy
Bwahahaha the hypocrisy "
how very dare you slander my literature! |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
|
"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
You dont approve.....gutted
I'm sure it'll work for someone, afraid totally leaves me cold (polar bear and ice cold)
oh my god that was cheesy
Bwahahaha the hypocrisy
how very dare you slander my literature! "
Don't start what you can't take |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"My favourite opening one liner is
"Hey, do you know how much a polar bear weighs"
If you follow it with
"enough to break the ice, can I buy you a drink"
It's enough to guarantee panties hitting the floor
You dont approve.....gutted
I'm sure it'll work for someone, afraid totally leaves me cold (polar bear and ice cold)
oh my god that was cheesy
Bwahahaha the hypocrisy
how very dare you slander my literature!
Don't start what you can't take "
My number 1 rule when attempting to initiate anal sex  |
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The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain lashed hills.
In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel's eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked 'when shall we three meet again?' there was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones :
'well, I can do next Tuesday'
|
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain lashed hills.
In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel's eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked 'when shall we three meet again?' there was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones :
'well, I can do next Tuesday'
"
That sounds like Pratchett |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were 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 affairs th |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries".
C Sagan |
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"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember? "
love reading , opening line is always the best, "she put the apple pie in the oven and got on her knees to clean the floor, he stood behind her, the pie was never going to be eaten! |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Pretty much all the fairy tales...
"Once upon a time"
A timeless classic right there
And they lived happily ever after! Damn them brothers grimm"
In reality sorry OP ,not one of my favourites but one of the most poignant to me is "happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way " |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Pretty much all the fairy tales...
"Once upon a time"
A timeless classic right there
And they lived happily ever after! Damn them brothers grimm
In reality sorry OP ,not one of my favourites but one of the most poignant to me is "happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way ""
Tolstoy, |
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"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember? "
Another justly famous one is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle'.
I think my personal favourite is:
"Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."
It's from the first of J.P.Martin's wonderful 'Uncle' children's books. |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember?
Another justly famous one is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle'.
I think my personal favourite is:
"Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."
It's from the first of J.P.Martin's wonderful 'Uncle' children's books. "
|
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"The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain lashed hills.
In the middle of this elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel's eye. It illuminated three hunched figures. As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked 'when shall we three meet again?' there was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones :
'well, I can do next Tuesday'
That sounds like Pratchett"
Wyrd Sisters |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember?
Another justly famous one is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle'.
I think my personal favourite is:
"Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."
It's from the first of J.P.Martin's wonderful 'Uncle' children's books. "
Kurt vonnegut. ..swoooon |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember?
Another justly famous one is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle'.
I think my personal favourite is:
"Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."
It's from the first of J.P.Martin's wonderful 'Uncle' children's books. "
Enormous castle called homeward!! Brilliant and imaginative author |
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"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember?
Another justly famous one is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle'.
I think my personal favourite is:
"Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."
It's from the first of J.P.Martin's wonderful 'Uncle' children's books. "
is that my great uncle Oswald? |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"The 1984 thread reminded me just how good George Orwell's opening line to the book is:
"It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
There are some amazing openers to novels, such as....
Iain Banks' "It was the day my grandmother exploded." from The Crow Road.
"All this happened, more or less." Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Which do you especially like or never fail to remember?
Another justly famous one is "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle'.
I think my personal favourite is:
"Uncle is an elephant. He's immensely rich, and he's a B.A. He dresses well, generally in a purple dressing-gown, and often rides about on a traction engine, which he prefers to a car."
It's from the first of J.P.Martin's wonderful 'Uncle' children's books. is that my great uncle Oswald?"
That's roald Dahl 1979 |
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In a dark, dark town there was a dark, dark street
and in the dark, dark street there was a dark, dark house,
and in the dark, dark house there were some dark, dark stairs
and down the dark, dark stairs there was a dark, dark cellar
and in the dark dark cellar….
Three skeletons lived! |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
 |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
"
IT? |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
IT?"
Yes! |
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