Favourite opening lines

[661-Pete]

"The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim never would have come to Thursgood's at all."

Anyone got any of the answers without Googling?

 

[User169]

Anyone got any of the answers without Googling?

Got the "Gruffalo" without googling!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

CofG's post #44 is 'Fairy Tale of New York' and #45 is the re-issue!

 

[theclaud]

It must have been a Thursday night when I met her for the first time - at the dance hall. I reported to work in the morning, after an hour or two's sleep, looking like a somnambulist. The day passed like a dream. After dinner I fell asleep on the couch and awoke fully dressed about six the next morning. I felt thoroughly refreshed, pure at heart, and obsessed with one idea - to have her at any cost. Walking thorugh the park I debated what sort of flowers to send her with the book I had promised her (Winesburg, Ohio). I was approaching my thirty-third year, the age of Christ crucified. A whole new life lay ahead of me, had I the courage to risk all. Actually there was nothing to risk: I was at the bottom rung of the ladder, a failure in every sense of the word.

Excuse for gratuitous cool Henry Miller bicycle pic!

 

[661-Pete]

How about this one - giveaway name blanked out:

One Wednesday afternoon in late September, ******************* came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening. She had trembled on the verge of such a resolution before, but this time quite definitely she made it. A crisis had been reached, and she was almost glad it had been reached. She made up her mind in the train home that it should be a decisive crisis. It is for that reason that this novel begins with her there, and neither earlier nor later, for it is the history of this crisis and its consequences that this novel has to tell.

TC?

 

[Monsieur Remings]

Bent-double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

 

[Yellow Fang]

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

1984

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.

Easy: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

"The primroses were over."

Is it Watership Down? I looked up Watership Down yesterday but wasn't too impressed with the opening lines TBH.


How about these famous opening lines:

1. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
3. It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

 

[661-Pete]

Is it Watership Down? I looked up Watership Down yesterday but wasn't too impressed with the opening lines TBH.

Yes. The point is, the final lines say something like "just as the primroses were beginning to appear". Full circle.

How about these famous opening lines:

1. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
3. It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

Easy: 1. A tale of two cities. 2. P&P (need I say more?). 3: Catch-22. Even without the mention of Yossarian I'd have got it.

 

[661-Pete]

"Who's there?/Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself./Long live the king!"

 

[Rhythm Thief]

Bent-double, like old beggars under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Wilfred Owen - Dulce et Decorum.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

"Who's there?/Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself./Long live the king!"

Hamlet. It's a brilliant piece of writing, because in about thirteen words, most of them monosyllables, Shakespeare establishes the scene, the names of the speakers, the fact that it's cold and dark and the fact that there's tension in the air.

 

[661-Pete]

Hamlet. It's a brilliant piece of writing, because in about thirteen words, most of them monosyllables, Shakespeare establishes the scene, the names of the speajers, the fact that it's cold and dark and the fact that there's tension in the air.

Yep. It's an interesting quote, because nearly everyone can quote great reams of stuff from Hamlet (OK I exaggerate mayhap, but everyone can do the To Be or not To Be and Alas poor Yorick! stuff...) But few people can remember how the play in fact opens... But you're right, there is a bit of dramatic irony right there: which 'king' do they wish long life for?

 

[marinyork]

"The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."

 

[Cletus Van Damme]

Ain't a hope in hell,
Nothing's gonna bring us down,
The way we fly,
Five miles off the ground,

 

[TVC]

Ain't a hope in hell,
Nothing's gonna bring us down,
The way we fly,
Five miles off the ground,

Motorhead.