OT: Favorite opening line from a novel

[connie]

First team practice begins tomorrow. Finally, the official (?) start of a new season. In honor, let's see your favorite opening line from a novel. I'll open with something appropriate:

"It was love at first sight."

-Joseph Heller's Catch-22

 

[eebmg]

What's a novel?

 

[bags27]

Great thread, Connie. I'll play:

"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

(but there are so, so many others that it's hard for me to choose! "Call me Ishmael" etc etc. But I thought practice started on the 16th. So glad it's actually tomorrow. Even better news.)

 

[Kaizen]

“Congratulations. The fact that you’re reading this means you’ve taken one giant step closer to your next birthday.”

Maximum Ride, The Angel Experiment by James Patterson

 

[f1f1ferrari]

"It was a dark and stormy night." - Snoopy's "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night"; Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971

 

[pinotbear]

"Marley was dead: to begin with." A Christmas Carol.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

I didn't remember a lick of it, but I knew one of mine was Catcher In The Rye:

“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.”

And Slaughterhouse Five: “All this happened, more or less.”

 

[Golden Husky]

First team practice begins tomorrow. Finally, the official (?) start of a new season. In honor, let's see your favorite opening line from a novel. I'll open with something appropriate:

"It was love at first sight."

-Joseph Heller's Catch-22

"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

For the freshmen, I suspect there'll be some fear preceding and loathing following practice, Thursday.

 

[CL82]

Gotta go with Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities:

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.

 

[oldude]

From my favorite novel:

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.

(The Grapes of Wrath)

 

[bags27]

"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

For the freshmen, I suspect there'll be some fear preceding and loathing following practice, Thursday.

great one: I remember reading that line like it was yesterday, but it was decades and decades ago.

 

[pacific 44]

"It was the best of times and it was the worst of times". Also "Call me Ishmail"

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Gotta go with Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities:

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.

Only the Brits could call that a sentence.

 

[CL82]

Only the Brits could call that a sentence.

My middle school English teacher would have red lined it as a run on.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

My middle school English teacher would have red lined it as a run on.

Run on! It's a bloody marathon.

 

[JordyG]

"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo".

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man
James Joyce.

When's practice?

 

[trb123]

"Call me Ishmael"

Moby Dick
Herman Melville

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
1984
George Orwell

Too bad The dark and stormy night, Moo cow and It is the best of times did not wait for me to be posted.

 

[trb123]

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

 

[trb123]

"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
Jane Austen

"You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by a Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly."

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress"

Middlemarch
George Eliot

These are my favorite novels. I had to google for the opening lines.


An update from Paul Clifford:
"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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

 

[trb123]

"To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman."

A Scandal in Bohemia
Opening line of the book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan Doyle

 

[Golden Husky]

great one: I remember reading that line like it was yesterday, but it was decades and decades ago.

And then there's this, from later on in the book. (I think you'll like it, Bags, especially since your name is mentioned up front):

"We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...also a quart of Tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen Amyls...But the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

 

[Golden Husky]

First team practice begins tomorrow. Finally, the official (?) start of a new season. In honor, let's see your favorite opening line from a novel. I'll open with something appropriate:

"It was love at first sight."

-Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Taking license and expanding the topic just a bit to include sports writing, I offer this immortal lead from Grantland Rice:

''Outlined against a blue, gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore, they were known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley, and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice of the Polo Grounds this afternoon. . . .''

The only better lead I can imagine would be something like, "The University of Connecticut won a record 12th Women's Basketball National Championship..."

 

[Teacherdeb]

"Not every thirteen-year-old girl was accused of murder, put on trial, and proven guilty. But I was just such a girl" from The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a remarkable book by Avi. Although classified as Young Adult, if you like riveting reads, this is a winner. I would also highly recommend The Witch of Blackbird Pond and Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry- amoung my top 25 favorite books.

 

[easttexastrash]

"It was the best of times and it was the worst of times". Also "Call me Ishmail"

That one describes the beginning and ending of the season for Baylor in 2016-17.

 

[pinotbear]

Like Golden Husky, I'll take a little license here, and use the first line from a book within a book:

"The year Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette." The Princess Bride" (the good parts version), by S. Morgenstern, contained within The Princess Bride, by William Goldman.