Favourite opening lines

[Rhythm Thief]

I'm listening to Future of the Left's You Need Satan More Than He Needs You. The opening line is "Goddamn, it's gonna rain. I only brought my socks".
What's your favourite opening line?

 

[ianrauk]

"Metal on metal, it's what I crave, the louder the better, turn in my grave. Metal on metal, ears start to bleed, crank it up, fulfilling my need."

By the wonderfully very metal Anvil

 

[Norm]

"So here I am once more, in the playground of the broken hearts..." Marillion, Script, Normie's #1 track, the lyrics all the way through are just fab.

"Well you can't run away forever, but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start..." Meatloaf, Rock'n'Roll Dreams, the line always makes me giggle.

 

[Sleeping Menace]

"Before you slip into unconsciousness, I'd like to have another kiss, another flashing chance at bliss...." ' Crystal Ship' by The Doors

or

"A restless eye across a weary room a glazed look and I was on the road to ruin" 'One Slip' by Pink Floyd

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http://anotherdooratthe.endoftheinternet.org

Cycle related blog entries, including a few 5 minute reviews:
http://anotherdooratthe.endoftheinternet.org/category/cycling/

 

[vernon]

Call me Ishmael. - Moby Dick

and at the other end of the spectrum

Under Milk Wood
To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.

 

[TVC]

1,2,3,4 John the Baptist knows the score.

 

[Adasta]

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad

 

[Yellow Fang]

In the beginning was the word...

 

[ComedyPilot]

[QUOTE 1328967"]
I never thought this could happen with me and the girl from Clapham
[/quote]

...but now she's two years older, her mother's with a soldier

 

[ComedyPilot]

I think it's time we talked this over, I think we've taken this too far

 

[theclaud]

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

 

[Yellow Fang]

theclaud wins.

 

[slowmotion]

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

That is a very hard act to follow...

 

[Flying_Monkey]

That's Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers... I only know because we were playing an opening lines game on another forum and someone brought that one up. I'm never likely to forget it now.

I like simple opening lines that hint at more than they say, for example, a couple of novels:

"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K." (Kafka - The Trial)

"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel." (William Gibson - Neuromancer).

oh, and

"1-2-3-4" (many Ramones songs...)

My favourite last line is the opposite though - the 80-add page orgasm that closes James Joyce's Ulysses.

 

[theclaud]

That's Anthony Burgess's Earthly Powers... I only know because we were playing an opening lines game on another forum and someone brought that one up. I'm never likely to forget it now.

I like simple opening lines that hint at more than they say, for example, a couple of novels:

"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K." (Kafka - The Trial)

"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel." (William Gibson - Neuromancer).

oh, and

"1-2-3-4" (many Ramones songs...)

My favourite last line is the opposite though - the 80-add page orgasm that closes James Joyce's Ulysses.

To be fair, the opener is a corker as well.

Since you put in a word for simplicity, how about "All this happened, more or less."