Great opening lines - book, song or speech

[Ming the Merciless]

Did you quote the right post? I couldn't find anything approaching the phrase in the text.

I was referring to a clock striking 13 not the whole phrase. Also appears in a book in 1605. Essential bit being it was not the first time a clock striking 13 has been used to show something amiss.

 

[Dogtrousers]

`My name is Brodeck and I had nothing to do with it.' Brodecks Report by Philippe Claudel. Brilliant writing, but also disturbing and wise.

Just looked that up. Added to my to-read list.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

One morning, as Gregor Samsa awoke from anxious dreams, he discovered that during the night he had been transformed into a monstrous bug.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

 

[raleighnut]

This tune was com-posed by Spencer The Rover, as valiant a man who ever left home

 

[PeteXXX]

Several and a half metric miles North East of Sligo, split by a cascading stream, her body on earth, her feet in water, dwells the microcephalic community of Puckoon.

Puckoon ~ Spike Milligan

 

[Alex321]

I was referring to a clock striking 13 not the whole phrase. Also appears in a book in 1605. Essential bit being it was not the first time a clock striking 13 has been used to show something amiss.

But there is no reference to a clock in that text, and the only thirteen is a reference to age (no numeric 13 in the text).

 

[Alex321]

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.

Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas.

 

[DRM]

The willow, it weeps today
A breeze from the distance is calling your name
Unfurl your black wings and wait
Across the horizon, it's coming to sweep you away
It's coming to sweep you away
Let the wind carry you home
Blackbird, fly away
May you never be broken again

Alter Bridge -Blackbird from the album of the same name

 

[DRM]

It's not a silly little moment
It's not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dyin' breath of
This love that we've been workin' on
Can't seem to hold you like I want to
So I can feel you in my arms
Nobody's gonna come and save ya
We pulled too many false alarms

We're going down
And you can see it too
We're going down
And you know that we're doomed
My dear we're slow dancing in a burning room

John Mayer Slow Dancing In A Burning Room from the album Continuum

 

[Sharky]

Yesterday

 

[Shut Up Legs]

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton"

 

[Alex321]

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton"

https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/great-opening-lines-book-song-or-speech.310850/post-7624153

 

[Shut Up Legs]

https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/great-opening-lines-book-song-or-speech.310850/post-7624153