Best opening lines of a book.

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  • ShreddedTweet
    ShreddedTweet Posts: 1,326 Member
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    'Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...'

    100 Years of Solitude...
  • BurtHuttz
    BurtHuttz Posts: 3,653 Member
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    "I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair – it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission."
  • california_peach
    california_peach Posts: 1,858 Member
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    'Last night I dreamt I went to Maderley again.'

    Rebecca by Daphen Du Marier
  • BurtHuttz
    BurtHuttz Posts: 3,653 Member
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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."
  • 76tech
    76tech Posts: 1,455 Member
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    "It was a pleasure to burn."
    Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

    "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
    Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
  • Capt_Apollo
    Capt_Apollo Posts: 9,026 Member
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    "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
  • sarah_ep
    sarah_ep Posts: 580 Member
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    “Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theatre.”
  • Thomasm198
    Thomasm198 Posts: 3,189 Member
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    "You think you know about pain?"

    The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
  • MoreBean13
    MoreBean13 Posts: 8,701 Member
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    Who is John Galt?
    YES.
  • MidwestAngel
    MidwestAngel Posts: 1,897 Member
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    In the beginning...
  • Gabriall
    Gabriall Posts: 101 Member
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    Egbert Ramasaran kept cows.


    Recurring nightmares of English Literature
  • allisonsdaddy
    allisonsdaddy Posts: 64
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    In the beginning...
    :flowerforyou:
  • aliciagetshealthy
    aliciagetshealthy Posts: 946 Member
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    "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."
  • LittleMiss_WillLoseIt
    LittleMiss_WillLoseIt Posts: 1,373 Member
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    "I am Sam. I am Sam. Sam I am. That Sam I am. That Sam I am. I do not like that Sam I am."
  • drmerc
    drmerc Posts: 2,603 Member
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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.
  • trulabfloyd
    trulabfloyd Posts: 50
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    Rage, Sing Godess, Achilles rage, Black and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls, Of heroes into Hades dark, And left their bodies to rot as feasts For dogs and birds, as Zeus will was done. Homers Iliad
  • wolverine66
    wolverine66 Posts: 3,779 Member
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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. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense."




    ?
  • HurricaneElaine
    HurricaneElaine Posts: 984 Member
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    Merwinna's nightmare commenced as ever before, with the sound of great sails snapping in a tumultuous wind. Her own voice, small as a bairn's (as she had been) was vainly crying out for surcease, for mercy. Answered only by the savage roaring laugh of a man, her tiny frame bent near to breaking, as the pain and tears and blood began to flow...

    Merwinna (unpublished - so far)
  • EvgeniZyntx
    EvgeniZyntx Posts: 24,208 Member
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    In English,

    "For sale, baby shoes, never worn." DeGroot

    In French

    " Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure. Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n'avais pas le temps de me dire : « Je m'endors. » Et, une demi-heure après, la pensée qu'il était temps de chercher le sommeil m'éveillait ; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir dans les mains et souffler ma lumière ; je n'avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour particulier ; il me semblait que j'étais moi-même ce dont parlait l'ouvrage : une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François Ier et de Charles-Quint. Cette croyance survivait pendant quelques secondes à mon réveil ; elle ne choquait pas ma raison, mais pesait comme des écailles sur mes yeux et les empêchait de se rendre compte que le bougeoir n'était plus allumé. "
  • headoverhills
    headoverhills Posts: 70
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    Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal.

    Le petit prince.

    de Saint-Exupery rules!!! My favourite childhood book.

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