Best opening lines of a book.

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Replies

  • morticiamom
    morticiamom Posts: 221 Member
    "The first thing you'll notice about this book is that it's a diet and workout guide for women, written by someone who isn't a woman."

    It's what's on my nightstand.
  • mgobluetx12
    mgobluetx12 Posts: 1,326 Member
    I tried to commit suicide on my birthday last year.
    -A book I'm writing! (not autobiographical)


    ^^ I know that line. New Rules of Lifting for Women
  • sarahz5
    sarahz5 Posts: 1,363 Member
    “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

    good choice!
  • elyelyse
    elyelyse Posts: 1,454 Member
    i know people already said this, but I have to add another vote for:
    "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." - The Gunslinger, The Dark Tower 1

    seriously, just seeing that line makes me want to read the book again right now.
  • Molly_Maguire
    Molly_Maguire Posts: 1,103 Member
    "The Dursleys of Number Four, Privet Drive were happy to say that they were perfectly ordinary people, thank you very much."

    -Had me hooked from line one.
  • cmotting
    cmotting Posts: 97 Member
    First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.


    ***HERE IS A SMALL FACT ***

    You are going to die.


    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  • Molly_Maguire
    Molly_Maguire Posts: 1,103 Member
    First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.


    ***HERE IS A SMALL FACT ***

    You are going to die.


    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak


    OMG, one of my favorite books ever!
  • cmotting
    cmotting Posts: 97 Member
    It is a fantasticlly (?) written book. I LOVED it!
  • wolverine66
    wolverine66 Posts: 3,779 Member
    Packers +3 against the 49ers
  • Admiral_Derp
    Admiral_Derp Posts: 866 Member
    "I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here, and we are dead." ~Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
  • LilacSnow
    LilacSnow Posts: 238 Member
    bump
  • tryclyn
    tryclyn Posts: 2,414 Member
    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.
  • bandedsandi
    bandedsandi Posts: 122 Member
    It was a dark and stormy night.

    How could that ever, ever, ever be improved upon?

    ^ THIS!
  • RAF_Guy
    RAF_Guy Posts: 230 Member
    It was 1913 and spring was in the air, birds were twittering, flowers were beginning to bloom and new born lambs were gambolling. Unfortunately I had no interest in these miracles of nature as I perched precariously on top of the railings that fronted my house. The problem was I couldn’t move because one of those fiendishly sharp spikes was firmly embedded in my bum!

    The Avenue by Samuel Hebert (My granddad)

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Avenue-Newcastle-Backstreet-Boyhood/dp/0752468863/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357806906&sr=1-1#reader_0752468863
  • Bucky83
    Bucky83 Posts: 1,194 Member
    It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.


    Love P&P :heart:

    This was the first sentence that came into my mind after I saw the topic! Great minds think alike!
  • eml48341
    eml48341 Posts: 88 Member
    First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.


    ***HERE IS A SMALL FACT ***

    You are going to die.


    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak


    OMG, one of my favorite books ever!

    I just asked for this book for Christmas and can't wait to start reading it! Glad to see others enjoyed it so much :smile:
  • Terryism
    Terryism Posts: 314 Member
    "Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.”

    The Shining by Stephen King
  • TheRoadDog
    TheRoadDog Posts: 11,788 Member
    "Cooing and crapping."

    Dando Shaft by Don Calhoun
  • BJPCraig
    BJPCraig Posts: 417 Member
    This opening inspired me to read Hugh Prather's "Amber Effect," the first book I ever read in the Shell Scott series:

    "Would you believe me if I told you that when I opened the door that Thursday afternoon in September an absolutely stunning and stupendously shaped strawberry-tressed lovely was standing there naked? Right there in the second-floor hallway? Of the Spartan Apartment Hotel in Hollywood? Wherein I, Sheldon Scott, reside? And that this magnificent nude beauty was calling my name and pleading with me to let her inside?

    "You wouldn't.

    "Well, in that case, you probably won't believe the other wonderful things that happened, either."

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