Great opening lines - book, song or speech

[geocycle]

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French

Had to google to refresh my memory!

 

[Ming the Merciless]

“They say it takes just three alcoholics to keep a small bar running in a country town and while myself and the cousin, Thomas, were doing what we could, we were a man shy, and these were difficult days for Mr Kelliher, licensee of the North Star, Pearse Street.”

 

[Ming the Merciless]

“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door...”

 

[geocycle]

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home

 

[tyred]

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.

A Scandal in Bohemia by ACD.

 

[Profpointy]

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

Launching us immediately into the distopian world of 1984.

It was one of the books that I studied for my English Literature O-level and it made a big impact on me.

There was a Captain Scarlet episode where they foiled the Mysterons' dastardly plan because they heard Big Ben strike 13 and worked out the first 12 was a radio broadcast and the final bong was heard directly but a bit later, hence enabling them to calculate the distance from Big Ben. Clever eh?

I have heard similar myself. Someone had manage to blow up their camping gas stove whilst his partner was speaking to us on the radio. Over the radio we heard franting swearing, a big "boom!" the a worrying silence, the another quieter "boom" as the sound carried down the mountain. Thankfully all concerned were OK, apart from a singed jacket and eyebrows. The stove was wrecked

 

[Dag Hammar]

A tenement, a dirty street
Walked and worn by shoe-less feet

 

[Alex321]

"It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men".

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

(Not a great book, a rather blood thirsty Harry Potter type book - but fun)

I still have to read the third in that Trilogy, it is sat on the table next to my chair.

 

[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

 

[PeteXXX]

Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor..

Fiddlers Dram

 

[AndyRM]

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering in the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn’t seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, “Be My Baby” on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis

 

[Ming the Merciless]

“When I was small I had a cracked tooth and a mean stepfather and a dog that couldn't be trusted”

 

[Buck]

“The small boys came early to the hanging”

Ken Follett - Pillars of the Earth