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/lit/ - Literature

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1387408 No.1387408 [Reply] [Original]

Hey, /lit/.
I have to admit, I am a sucker for opening lines.
ITT: post your favorite "first line".
I'll start:

"The thousand injuries of Fourtunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge."
--Edgar Allen Poe; "The Cask of Amontillado"

I don't know why, but something about that line gives me shivers.

>> No.1387412

It was a dark and stormy night.

>> No.1387413

"All this happened, more or less." -Slaughterhouse 5

>> No.1387414

inb4 sky was something something dead TV channel whatever.

>> No.1387421
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1387421

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

>> No.1387494

riverrun, past Eve and Adam naw i'm just fucking with you.

>> No.1387501

>>1387494
You needn't have admitted it considering you omitted the first half of the sentence.

>> No.1387514

It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton.

>> No.1387525

Arma virumque cano

>> No.1387527

A GUY WALKS INTO A BAR WITH A HELM WHEEL DOWN HIS PANTS AND THE BARTENDER SEZ TO 'IM

oh wait

>> No.1387528
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1387528

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.

>> No.1387534

"Mama died today."
-The Stranger

"A screaming came across the sky."
-Gravity's Rainbow

Those two really stick out in my mind.

>> No.1387532

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

>> No.1387549

Not the opening line, but...

"I am in here." is one of my favorites.

>> No.1387566

>>1387528
stop saving my fucking images guys! get someone else's!

>> No.1387646

"Marley was dead, to begin with." I've always loved that opening line.

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." Dickens writes good opening lines.

"It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays itself without ceremony or restraint." - Kenilworth by Walter Scott. I think I only like this so much because I work in a hotel and when I was reading this we had a guy stay with us named Walter Scott. Synchronicity and shit.

>> No.1387686

See the child.

Blood Meridian. so unreal

>> No.1387694
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1387694

"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."

>> No.1387700

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

>> No.1387704

ITT: spoilers

>> No.1387742

"My penis is so big, it is not long but tall".

-Noni Maus-

>> No.1387770

>>1387742
LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

- Klaus Nomi.

>> No.1387773

It began as a mistake.

>> No.1387785

howard roark laughed

no but really, the whole first chapter of fountainhead is gold