[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 1.24 MB, 1600x1200, 1298793789701.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2707522 No.2707522 [Reply] [Original]

Epic novel opening sentences.

"The sky above the bay was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Neuromancer

>> No.2707525

"A screaming comes across the sky-" Gravity's Rainbow

>> No.2707531

" 'I've only had the opportunity to hold a hamster once,' said Dakota Fanning on Gmail chat."

>> No.2707550

"Even Camilla had enjoyed masquerades, of the safe sort where the mask may be dropped at that critical moment it presumes itself as reality."
- The Recognitions

>> No.2707570

>>2707522

What colour is that these days, blue?

>> No.2707575

"The Wildlings are Dead", said Gared. -- Game of Thrones.
Also, OP beats us all, Neruomancer is god-teir sci-fi.

>> No.2707576
File: 24 KB, 320x240, abacus.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2707576

One cannot raise walls against has been forgotten.

>> No.2707578
File: 36 KB, 300x430, david-wallace_300x430[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2707578

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

>> No.2707579

>>2707531
and we have a winner.

>> No.2707582

hodor, said hodor

>> No.2707586

"It began as a mistake."

>> No.2707589

>I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
>By the false azure in the windowpane.

Pale Fire.

>> No.2707591

My sin, my soul

lo-lee-ta

>> No.2707592

Call me Ishmael.

>> No.2707706

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra - Star Wars

>> No.2707808

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

>> No.2707819

>>2707591
You mean:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

>> No.2707834

"I will avenge you father," swore Hagor the Brave with vengeance in his voice, as he held the limp, dying body of his father after their battle with the Mardook goblins.

From Legacy of the Prophesied Sword: Vengeance of the Unseen, Book the first

>> No.2707836

>>2707834
lol

>> No.2707840

>>2707834
post the full paragraph pls

>> No.2707846

The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire.

-The Eye of Argon

>> No.2707853

“I’d never given much thought to how I would die – though I’d had reason enough in the last few months – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.”

-Twilight

>> No.2707859

>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.

>> No.2707873

Don't forget this classic opening sentence.

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

>> No.2707880

As I stood among the ransacked ruin that had been my home, surveying the aftermath of the senseless horrors and atrocities that had been perpetrated on my family and everything I hold dear, I swore to myself that no matter where I had to go, no matter what I had to do or endure, I would find the man who did this … and when I did, when I did, oh, there would be words.

>> No.2707882

"See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire."

>> No.2707890

>>2707882
Do you read anything but crap?

>> No.2707894

>>2707890

I don't read crap.

>> No.2708076

>>2707882
Confirmed for brilliant taste.

>> No.2708092

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold." - The Hunger Games

>> No.2708099

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

>> No.2708105

Wearily approaching the murder scene of Jeannie and Quentin Rose and needing to determine if this was the handiwork of the Scented Strangler – who had a twisted affinity for spraying his victims with his signature raspberry cologne – or that of a copycat, burnt-out insomniac detective Sonny Kirkland was sure of one thing: he’d have to stop and smell the Roses.

>> No.2708106

"Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while."

The ending's great too. Nice narrative bookending, Fitzgerald.

>> No.2708181

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found
himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

Though this translation really sucks.

>> No.2708189

>>2708099
First day in second year English literature class, the professor recited this from memory. It was my first time hearing it, shivers. Shivers everywhere.

>> No.2708209

>>2707589

That's not the opening of the novel.

>> No.2708213

I am a sick man. I am a wicked man.
Cheesy, but good.

>> No.2708227

For a long time, I used to go to bed early.

>> No.2708239

“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.2708272

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

I was told that the first two words in Infinite Jest are a response to the first two words of Hamlet (seeing as the title is taken from Hamlet too).

>> No.2708274

>>2707592
Call me Jonah.

>> No.2708288

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy ballon of a head.

>> No.2708350
File: 69 KB, 450x300, asian man.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2708350

>>2707834
dis nigga

>> No.2708357

>>2708272

The opening of Hamlet is

BERNARDO
Who's there?

I suppose "I am" is in some way an answer to that, but what the point is (beyond empty stylistic shout-outs, oh yeah, it's DFW) I fail to grasp.

>> No.2709502
File: 61 KB, 750x563, 2deep4u.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2709502

>>2708357

>> No.2709511

'I celebrate myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.'
>Leaves of Grass (Song of Myself) - Walt Whitman

Not a novel, but a poetry collection. I thought it was in some way relevant, however, on second inspection, it may not be.

>> No.2709515

"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him."

>> No.2709526

"The triumph of philosophy would be to reveal, amply and lucidly, the means by which providence attains her ends over man; and, accordingly, it would trace those lines of conduct which might enable this unfortunate biped individual to avoid, while treading the thorny path of life, those bizarre caprices of a fate which has twenty different names, but which, as yet, has never clearly been defined."

>> No.2709553

>"When Jesus of Nazareth hung dying on his cross, the volcryn passed within a year of his agony, headed outward.

- Nightflyers by George Raymond Richard Martin

>> No.2709561

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked don't-fuck-with-me enough, that killing time was his only problem.

>> No.2709564

Some nights we made love. Most nights we fucked.

>> No.2709586

"It was inevitable. The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love".

I don't know. Something about what Marquez writes could make anybody's heart ache.

>> No.2709590

>>2709586
My brain says every line Marquez ever wrote was insipid saccharine nonsense, but my heart does not care.

>> No.2709594

My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. … I am a terrible liar and I have always been a liar. I say that early to set things straight. Caveat emptor.

>> No.2709687

H.P. Lovecraft
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

>> No.2709697

"We were somewhere around Barton, at the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."

tl;dr - Shit's about to get real

>> No.2709704

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

I still have no idea what it means though.

>> No.2709705

>>2709687
motherfucker knew how to write his shit

>> No.2709711
File: 17 KB, 470x340, HURRRDURRRRR.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2709711

IN THIS THREAD: PARAGRAPHS.

>> No.2709712

Mother died today

>> No.2709731

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

>> No.2709735

He had seen everything, had experienced all emotions, from exaltation to despair, had been granted a vision into the great mystery, the secret places, the primeval days before the Flood. (Gilgamesh)

>> No.2709737

>>2709704
>what it means
that the narrative (and thereby history) is cyclical? since it leads on from the last sentence

>> No.2709744

"I was never one for words, but then I met Eric Bridgewater and realized that any problems I had with soliloquizing were paltry compared to the difficulties this man had with conversation."

>> No.2709751

>>2709744
What the fuck is that from?