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/lit/ - Literature

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4583125 No.4583125 [Reply] [Original]

Best opening lines from novels?

>> No.4583140

All this happened, more or less.

>> No.4583142

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!).

>> No.4583147

A SCREAMING COMES ACROSS THE SKY

>> No.4583149

>>4583140
Man, Kurt Vonnegut fucking sucks.

>> No.4583171

>>4583142
>(that's how I got my name)

I guess then she didn't have one until abround 3 years old? Lel

>> No.4583173

>>4583171
>around*

>> No.4583174

>>4583149
Vonnegut is an over-earnest faggot with too many opinions.

>> No.4583175

Alas, Abigail adored Andy, and all Andy's ardor and anticipation adhered achingly atop alternately aloof and alluring Alicia--although acrimonious Anton attracted Alicia's amour.

>> No.4583176

>>4583174
You can never have too many opinions, anon.

>> No.4583182

Too quickly the last of the pitons worked free from the sheer wall of the icy cliff, plunging Randolf and his sister Margie to a messy death 700 feet below; now, normally, this would be the end of the story, but for artistic reasons I have decided to fill the remaining 349 pages of this book with 837,541 'M's: M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M . . .

>> No.4583184

What's your opinion on starting a story with dialogue? I'm a fan of throwing the reader in without a paddle, or starting with an interesting action being played out rather than a description of the scenery.

>> No.4583185

>>4583184
So much this

>> No.4583201

>>4583174
Have you let Jesus into your hear, brother?

>> No.4583209

>>4583184
It is a classic trick, known since the Antiquity.
Google "in medias res".

>> No.4583210

Call me Israel.

>> No.4583212

It was the best of times, it was the worst of rhymes.

>> No.4583222

They're out there.

>> No.4583260

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

>> No.4583269

>>4583260
That last sentence was fantastic, but the rest was eh.

>> No.4583353

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

>> No.4583357

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.

>> No.4583413

A RIMJOB COMES ACROSS THE SKY

>> No.4583425

"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."

>> No.4583429
File: 142 KB, 500x529, 1392778058224.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4583429

What exactly is this picture saying? I've seen it around here but I can't figure out what it means. Is it supposed to be making fun of readers, ironically saying they get all the pussy?

>> No.4583432

>>4583212
lol

>> No.4583436

>>4583429


he finna get his read on an bitch be all up in his grill cause you know she be dripin for then tweed jackets but he aint havin any of that shit.

>> No.4583438

>>4583175
Alphabetical Africa?

>> No.4583439

Look, I'm not saying Hitler was perfect.

>> No.4583450

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair. This is a cold room in University Administration, wood-walled, Remington-hung, double-windowed against the November heat, insulated from Administrative sounds by the reception area outside, at which Uncle Charles, Mr. deLint and I were lately received.

I am in here.

>> No.4583472

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my lions.

>> No.4583490

>That man was better than him. So I married him.

>> No.4583501
File: 2 KB, 98x74, 1392779547662.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4583501

>>4583472
>lions

>> No.4583507

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination

>> No.4583513

"They shoot the white girl first."

I think that's how it starts, anyway.

Also, Morrison in general has good opening passages. The Bluest Eye has one of the greatest openings that I have ever read.

>> No.4583529
File: 256 KB, 1008x780, prudehon.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4583529

>>4583125
i love all of these without regards to the quality of the actual work:

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

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

> I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

>Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

worst ever:

>It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

>> No.4583554

The beginning of Heaney's translation of Beowulf:

"So."

It's like some grizzled guy, smashed at some bar, just takes a swig and rattles off a winding tale. Awesome.

>> No.4583555

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo....

>> No.4583560

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

Tell me that isn't menacing

>> No.4583563

>>4583147
always this

>> No.4583564

>>4583554
Hwæt!

>> No.4583565
File: 13 KB, 610x86, 1392781041360.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4583565

>>4583513
ugh, The Bluest Eye fucked me up hard freshman year of high school.
>washing dishes

>> No.4583586

"When the racetrack closed forever I had to get a job."

>> No.4583595
File: 1.84 MB, 4000x1758, 1390440190627.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4583595

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

>> No.4583684

>>4583560

This isn't menacing; it's nostalgic.

>> No.4583712

>>4583210

Call me Ishmael*

>> No.4583734

"Once upon a time we had a love affair with fire."

Still one of my favorite lines in any literature.

>> No.4583744

>Lolita, fire 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

>> No.4583758

>>4583429
readers prefer pussy over books, women just get in the way.

>> No.4583800

>>4583182
whatis

>> No.4583803

In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.

>> No.4583810

>>4583429
I'm pretty sure I went to school with the guy that drew that. If I remember, he said it was an editorial illustration for some article about how so many philosophers had poor luck with women because they were too intellectually self-involved to understand human interaction. Something like that.

>> No.4583821

Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce.

>> No.4583826

Apollon Apollonivich came from the most respected stock; he had Adam as his ancestor

>> No.4583832

I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I
won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and
my feeling that everything was dead.

>> No.4583905
File: 7 KB, 216x233, download (8).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4583905

>come in this thread
>ctrl+F 'Gregor Samsa'
>no matches

>> No.4583913

That shit was wack, but bro, that was the best summer vacation of my life.

>> No.4583919

>>4583174
Pretty much
But he's old he can do whatever

>> No.4583920

>>4583905
how kafkaesque

>> No.4583929

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

>> No.4584387

"It was a dark and stormy night"

>> No.4584423

>>4583595
So, blue?

>> No.4584428

A powerful monster, living down in the darkness, growled in pain, impatient.

>> No.4584432

>>4583529
1984's opening line is exactly what sucks about Orwell's fiction. There is no subtlety, it's ultra accessible, middle school literature

>> No.4584433

In the beginning, there was madness.

>> No.4584460

>>4583929
this

>> No.4584465

Mother died today.

>> No.4584467

>>4583210
Call me Chainmail.

>> No.4584481
File: 409 KB, 825x600, Abseiling.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4584481

>>4584467

Call me Abseil.

>> No.4584492

You are reading this for the wrong reason.

>> No.4584497

>>4583429
Eyes on the prize.
/LIT/ LIFE

>> No.4584503

>>4583357

>implying finneganns wake has a beginning or an end

>> No.4584516

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

>> No.4584586
File: 196 KB, 751x882, image.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4584586

>>4584481
Call me Holy Grail.

>> No.4584594
File: 621 KB, 1024x768, 1301846762295.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4584594

Beyond the hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened upon a trail of recent footprints.

>> No.4584622

>>4583210
Call me Ish (like the way rappers use it) meal

>> No.4584629

The first page of Brideshead Revisited.

>> No.4584653

>>4584432
og do get over yourself you knobber

>> No.4584660

>>4583149
THIS

>> No.4584664

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

>> No.4584666

>>4583919
he's dead

>> No.4584675

>>4584432
accessible isn't a negative quality

>> No.4584679

>>4584423
an analogue television you dumb
fuck

>> No.4584815

Merdre.

>> No.4584821

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

>> No.4584828

Not really a first line, but

"This is not for you."

>> No.4584834

It began as a mistake.

Bukowski, Post Office.

>> No.4584850

“Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.

Years later while standing before the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia had to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to see ice.

>> No.4584872

Sing, O Goddess, the wrath of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.

>> No.4584892

>>4584834
Good for you. I was going to post this but I didn't want to bother with /lit/'s massive hate-boner for Bukowski

>> No.4584900

Wenn Zarathustra dreissig Jahre alt war, verliess er sein Heimat und den See seiner Heimat und gieng in das Gebirge.

>> No.4584912

>>4584850
*would remember

>> No.4585468

>>4584850
I second this.

>> No.4585474

>>4583125
Aujourd'hui, maman est morte.

>> No.4585477

You never know how much you actually piss till you piss in a cup or on the floor.

>> No.4585543

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

>> No.4585572

>>4585474

Ta gueule, connard. Ecarte plus pour les musulmans et les nègres. Merci.

>> No.4585585

>>4583595
+

>> No.4585621

>>4585572
apprends à parler juif

>> No.4585675

>>4583125
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

>> No.4586433

>>4584912
haber de + infinitive: En el español general, esta perífrasis denota obligación, conveniencia o necesidad de que el sujeto realice la acción expresada por el verbo —o, si el infinitivo es pasivo, de que le suceda lo expresado por el verbo— y equivale a tener que, fórmula preferida en el habla corriente. So not 'would'.

The most difficult concept to capture in this sentence is the verb 'conocer', which here means to be introduced to something, to get to know it for the first time. In the tropics before electricity, ice was relatively exotic. I forget how Rabassa translated it. "took him to get to know" doesn't work for me.

>> No.4586550

>>4584872
More like:
"Rage, Goddess - sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles
Murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses..."

I don't know what translation you're reading, but it sure ain't Fagles.

>> No.4586570

I've always been fascinated by spiders.

>> No.4586634

>>4583429

the point is that women with giant freakish calves will never be valued by men

>> No.4586646

>>4583125
Opening paragraph from the Guns of August:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens--four dowager and three regnant--and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

>> No.4586664

>>4586634
what about men holding tiny books or with freaky giant hands

>> No.4586674

>>4586634
jesus christ. Her calf is thicker than her thigh

>> No.4586693
File: 12 KB, 251x250, 83.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4586693

>>4583429
It's James Joyce. He's imagining a girl between he and his book. Probably imagining her farting and quiffing too.

>> No.4587023

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom.

>> No.4587083

>>4583175
name of book?

>> No.4587227

>>4583125
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him.

>> No.4587276

Lolita's opening paragraph, of course

>> No.4587278

This translation of the Aeneid (Pound's favorite):

The batalis and the man I wil discrive,
Fra Troys boundis first that fugitive
By fait to Ytail come and cost Lavyne ;
Our land and sey kachit with mekil pyne,
By fors of goddis abuse, from euery steid,
Of cruell Juno throu ald remembrit fede.
Gret pane in batail sufferit he alsso,
Or he his goddis brocht in Latio,
And belt the cite, fra quham, of nobill fame,
The Latyne pepill takyn heth thar name,
And eik the faderis, princis of Alba,
Cam, and the wallaris of gret Rome alswa.

Also,
In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne,
I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were,
In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,
Wente wide in this world wondres to here.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.

>> No.4587284

>>4584892
It's probably a vocal minority. At least, I hope.

I think /lit/ would become a much better board if we took these words to heart: de gustibus non disputandum est.

There is no point in arguing over tastes.

>> No.4587293
File: 191 KB, 1197x1188, mon piet chou.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4587293

>>4584432
stop being confident in your opinions
eclecticism is not a positive quality
>where's the subtlety

>> No.4587296

>As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect

or

>En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.

>> No.4587432

>>4587296

That reminds me. I really need to get around to writing that Metamorphosis self insert porn where I get turned into a female beetle and Gregor succumbs to desire and helps breed a new race of giant bugs.

>> No.4587471

>>4587432
You're doing gods work anon

>> No.4587574

gregor samsa wasn't even specifically an insect in the original german

>> No.4587608

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of it all.

>> No.4587621

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.

>> No.4587714

It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.

From Book of the new sun. This line is brilliant when you learn how the story unfolds.

>> No.4588012

Protip: U all gonna die

>> No.4588062

'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.' - Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

>> No.4588073

>>4583555
The first two pages of Portrait are fucking fantastic. I wish there was more stuff written in that style.

>> No.4588076

>>4583529
>The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
damn I love Murphy
that line really foreshadows the rest of Beckett's work, too

>>It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
THAT'S AN AMAZING OPENING LINE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU
ARE YOU ALLERGIC TO IRONY

>> No.4588084

>>4587574
German word for "vermin" or something like that?
the stuff with legs kind of fits into it, but of course the whole thing's a metaphor for guilt and insufficiency brought on by depression or w/e

>> No.4588124

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

>> No.4588153
File: 37 KB, 460x276, Portrait-of-Milton-006.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4588153

>>4584516

wow slow down there chaucer

>> No.4588324

>>4583353
fucking this

>> No.4588490

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_elVGGgW8

Stupid monkey!

>> No.4588502

>>4583429
It looks like the perfect pic for a Steppenwolf bookcover

>> No.4588554

>>4583184
There is literally nothing more disgusting than starting a novel with a description.

>> No.4588563

>>4583529
>It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife

I hope a day comes to pass where we no longer remember the Victorian period or its "art"

>> No.4588567

>>4588490
Good ol' Burnsie. The best character in TV history

>> No.4588615

>>4585477
What is this opening line from?

>> No.4588810

"Shit, I forgot the power went out this morning." I tugged the spermatic cord against the scalpel. "Agh, fucking DVRs never work how you want it." Then I jammed the cotton balls into the wound as my last testicle hit the floor with a muted, mushy thump. "Well, maybe someone'll upload the latest 'Millionaire' on YouTube."

>> No.4588843

"On the day that Inni Wintrop committed suicide, Philips shares stood at 149.60. The Amserdam Bank closing rate was 375, and Shopping Union had slipped to 141.50. Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases. And that was what he remembered, if he remembered anything: the markets reports, and that the moon shone on the canal and that he had hanged himself in the bathroom because he had predicted, in his own horoscope in Het Parool, that his wife would run off with another man and that he, a Leo, would then commit suicide. It was a perfect prediction. Zita ran off with an Italian, and Inni committed suicide. He had read a poem by Bloem, too, but he could not remember which one. The dog, arrogant beast, let him down on this point."

Sounds better in Dutch but w/e

>> No.4588858
File: 215 KB, 400x504, Heil To Ze Keing.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4588858

>>4583171
/b/ here HAHA LOOK AT THIS FAGGET MAKING MISTAKES!
>ABROUND
>ON /lit/
HAHAHAHAA

>> No.4588859

>>4588843
>Nooteboom
My nigga, I'm currently reading Het Volgende Verhaal

>> No.4588906

>>4587621

Fuck off.

>>4583734

Yes.

>>4588554

This. Do not describe the sodding weather or the land or the room the protag is in. Anything else. Dialogue is fine, musing is fine, just anything but description.

>> No.4588958

>>4588906
>A Screaming comes across the sky
shit
>I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies
shit
>The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
shit
>Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
shit

Not saying you're wrong (more often than not your're right) but some of the best opening lines have been what you dismissed.

>> No.4589237

>>4588859
I bought it 4 months ago but still haven't touched it

;_;

>> No.4589247

>>4586634
Never noticed this until now, don't think I can unsee it. Holy crap how does that even work, jesus.

>> No.4589266

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

>> No.4589279

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. -- John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

>> No.4589281

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." -- Samuel Beckett, Murphy

>> No.4589340

Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.

>> No.4589336

as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months

>> No.4589342
File: 24 KB, 631x105, Today, Maman died..jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4589342

>>4584465
Should be "Today, Maman died."

But I agree, Camus is great.

>> No.4589349

Doby relished his groinsaw's roar as he withdrew the flesh choked bladed from the astronauts ruined skull.

>> No.4589365

>>4586550
Fagles is such quality.
I took latin in high school, and my teacher had us reading the Fagles translation while we translated the actual Aeneid. It's faithful to the original AND makes sense if you don't know a word of latin.

However, this is actually the worst opening line ever:
Gallia est omnes divisa in partes tres; unam partem incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertian qui ipsorum linque Celtae, nostra Galli, appellantur.

>> No.4589376

>>4589349
what kind of trash are you reading.

>> No.4589390

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings

>> No.4589413

>>4589390
As much as that is probably the best short story in existance, I don't think much of the opening or much of Borges' translators' prose.

>> No.4589426

>>4589413
*existence, my bad

>> No.4589435

>>4583174
>Criticizes a writer for having too many opinions

You're a funny man.

>> No.4589443

Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaus.

>> No.4589453

There has not been one revolution in the world's history which was carried out by the working people in their own interests - by urban workers and poor peasants who do not exploit the work of others.

- Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist movement, 1922

>> No.4589489

>>4589376
>the greatest work of prose in the English language
>trash
Just what I would expect from somebody who doesn't capitalize on an Anime image board.

>> No.4589576
File: 239 KB, 960x895, 1391971625621.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4589576

>>4589453
hmm?

>> No.4589591

>>4584666
So it goes.

>> No.4589681

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

>> No.4589873

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

>> No.4589898

Six North Africans were playing boule beneath Flaubert's statue.

>> No.4589955

>>4588563
Jane Austen didn't write in the Victorian era.

>> No.4589960

>>4589873
what book?

>> No.4590976

>>4589898
Quel livre? (please)

>> No.4591003

>>4590976
Flaubert's Parrot
that took two seconds to find with google

>> No.4591008

>>4591003
But I'm lazyyyyyyy. (Thanks)

And if Google is my friend, Anon is my best friend.

>> No.4591015

>>4587293
>1392781041360.png
owned.
he was up himself though and deserved it

>> No.4591049

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under
conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed,
by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its
hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and
might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks
met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay
steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever
walked there, walked alone.

>> No.4591071
File: 682 KB, 1200x720, 1392990752654.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4591071

>>4583125
i bet the novel ended the same way

>> No.4591076

Stately

>> No.4591087

>>4583142
Like many other of my favorite passages in literature, I have this one more-or-less memorized.

>> No.4591108

>>4591076
plump

>> No.4591161

>>4588062

Fantastic opening line, fantastic book - I wonder how many on /lit/ have read it.

If more did, I'm sure it'd be given "god-tier" status. Horrendously overlooked, and losing out to some dull Golding novel for the 1980 Booker didn't help its posterity either.

Excellent post, anon.

>> No.4591193

All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

>> No.4591405

>>4589960
City of Glass by Paul Auster

>> No.4591770

halfway on the road we have to go, I found myself obscured in a great forest, bewildered, and I knew I had lost the way

>> No.4591804

Praise be to Allah
The Beneficent King
The Creator of the Universe
Lord of the Three Worlds
Who set up this Firmament without Pillars in its Stead
And who stretched out the Earth even as a bed
And Grace, and Prayer - Blessing be upon our Lord Mohammed
Lord of Apostolic Men
And upon his Family and Companion Train
Prayer and Blessings enduring and Grace which unto the day of Doom shall remain
Amen!
O thou of the Three Worlds sovereign.

-ALF LAYLAH WA LAYLAH

>> No.4591828

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen gives me shivers.

>> No.4591846

>>4588563
300lb, androgynous bulldyke detected.

>> No.4591868

>>4588563
>not getting satire
>thinking austen is victorian
cool beans

>> No.4592044

>>4583125

>The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault.

>There can only be one true religion. Are you feeling lucky, believer?

>According to popular imagination, squirrels are supposed to be adorable. As they scurry about on this tree branch or that trunk, people point at them and say, "Awww, how cuuuuute!" with their voices turning sugary and spiraling into falsetto ecstasy. But I'm here to tell you that they're cute only so long as they're small enough to step on. Once you're facing a giant bloody squirrel the size of a cement truck, they lose the majority of their charm.

>> No.4592146

It was noon before they finished scraping Uncle Louie off the dining room table.

>> No.4592216

>>4584892
/lit/ hates Buk?
this board is dropped.
so long /b/ tier faggots
fuck you all to hell

>> No.4592240

>>4583142
The thing that bothers me the most about this is the apostrophe in "Dark'ness."

It's not like it was playing with words. It is just taking a word and cutting it in two, and even then it's still pronounced the same.

>>4583429
I always thought this was fanart of Lolita. That girl looks short to me.

>> No.4592254

>>4588554
>>4583184
>>4588906
Why? What is your opinion based on?

>> No.4592291

>>4592146
source?

>> No.4592309

>>4592291
Lady Slings the Booze by Spider Robinson

>> No.4592351

In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.

>> No.4592505

>>4591071
Nope,it ended in one beautiful paragraph about art and eternity,but in the book it's always said that H.H. had some heart problems.

>> No.4592513

>>4592351
is this a metaphor?

>> No.4592524

>>4592513
>I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.

>> No.4592709

Maman died today.

>> No.4592757

>>4583125
Here's the person that I want. Hullo, person! Doesn't hear me.

>> No.4592778
File: 90 KB, 607x599, 1393028043021.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4592778

>>4583125

"Sing to me of the man, Muse,
the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy"

>> No.4592780
File: 100 KB, 471x410, 1393028104348.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4592780

>>4592709

>> No.4592789

>>4592709
>Huehuehue I read dis buk guiz

You don't think that's a "great opening line"

>> No.4592800

>>4584850

Fucking this

>> No.4592822

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

>> No.4592825

One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

>> No.4592827

>>4592524
>>4592822
Mah negroids.

>> No.4592832

>>4592825
>is that DFW?
>look it up
>it's Pynchon, close enough
>ain't even read him, dats funny I thought it was DFW...

>> No.4592838

>>4592832
0/10

>> No.4592851

>>4588062
One knows at once who is the object of this pastiche. One knows it before "Geoffrey," described tersely as "my Ganymede or male lover as well as my secretary," is further described as responding to the intrusion by "pulling his overtight summer slacks." Yet one is tempted to continue quoting, about the Mediterranean villa and the goings-on there ("I lay a little while, naked, mottled, sallow, emaciated, smoking a cigarette that should have been postcoital but was not"). This is quite simply because the parody is so much better than anything that W. Somerset Maugham ever wrote himself. Poor old "Willie" was more given to openings like this: "I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it.

>> No.4592866

>>4588958
>>Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
this is an amazing opening line

>> No.4592884

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
Too bad the book was pretty shit.

>> No.4592935

>>4592884
It was good compared to the rest that followed.

>> No.4592966

>>4589340
Gb2 >>>/ALevelEnglish/

Corelli is a fun book, though.

>> No.4592970

>>4592789
Actually, I do. Not only is it memorable, but it sets the tone for the whole novel and gives insight to Meursault's character, like his relationship to his mother.

>huehuehue I know what strangers on the internet think

>> No.4592985

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

>> No.4592995

The bible probably has the greatest opening lines of any piece of literature.

I don't care if you're atheist or of any other religion beyond Christianity; but the way it starts is just brilliant.

>> No.4593001

>>4592995
A lot of people follow it for a reason,big words.

>>4592970
I believe that the opening line has to have the part of 'I don't remember if it was today or yesterday'. That really sets the tone for the whole book.

>> No.4593012 [DELETED] 

>"Life begins," I thought, as I waved goodbye to mom and dad and pulled away from the curb in my reliable old Valiant, its faded white body stuffed with the belongings I'd packed for my first year at college.

>> No.4593018

>>4583125
there was a time....

>> No.4593027

"They all said it began with the massacre in New York, so that's where I'll start my tale."

>> No.4593040

>I have to begin by saying that I am deeply dissatisfied with this book.

>> No.4593049

>>4593040
My green nigga <3

>> No.4593051

>>4591804
Sounds like a nice novel, will read.

>> No.4593134

>>4584594
>Cloud Atlas
mah nig

>> No.4593146

>>4593051
It's the best. I'm completely serious and it's not the Quran or any other book part of the Islamic Canon.

>> No.4593295

>>4593001
OP said opening line. That means one sentence. So I put one sentence.

>> No.4594507

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

>> No.4594601

There was me, that is Alex, adn my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.

>> No.4594603

>>4594507
The book of John is not a novel.

>> No.4594608

124 was spiteful.

>> No.4594809

It was a pleasure to burn.

>> No.4594967

>>4594603
its not a book either if you wanna really nitpick
its a gospel

>> No.4594997
File: 26 KB, 300x300, gilly.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4594997

>>4583174

>too many opinions

Has he got too many words, too?

>> No.4595002

>>4583413

Low quality banter.

>> No.4595014

>>4588615

'4chan: The Novel, ou The Importance of Being NEET'.

>> No.4595022

>>4593040
Source of this? Basically what keats wrote at the beginning of endymion but thats not a novel of course.

>> No.4595029

>>4591193

Not a huge fan of aphoristic openings, but this is certainly a good one.

>> No.4595041

>>4584850

yes.

>> No.4595043

>>4592832

David Foster Wallace is sometimes reminiscent of Vineland, but he can't touch Pynchon at his best.

>> No.4595047

>>4595043
>he can't touch Pynchon at his best.

He can't even touch Pynchon at his worst. Pynchon's worst paragraph ever written is still head and shoulders above the best one DFW produced.

>> No.4595054

>>4593040

This conceit, the so-called 'modesty topos', recurs throughout literature up-to, and including, the Romantic era. It's not really that interesting.

>> No.4595063

>>4588124
...Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner

>> No.4595086

In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in
an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the
curling star-mists waver and part . . .
See . . .
Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly
through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his
ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked
With meteor craters.

>> No.4595142
File: 12 KB, 261x184, 1388847604202.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4595142

>>4592513

>> No.4595165

It began as a mistake.

>> No.4595457

>>4592709
see:

>>4585474
>>4589342
>>4585474

>> No.4596153

>>4584387
Until this day I insist, that is not a bad opening line at all.

>> No.4596217

"This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast."

>> No.4596543

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.

>> No.4596552

>>4596217
is that vonnegut
sounds like vonnegut

>> No.4598026

>>4583125
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say
that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last
people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious,
because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

>> No.4598038

>>4583595
Fuck me long and hard anon

>> No.4598043

They sent a slam hound after him

>> No.4598626

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.4598792

>>4583450
Yes. Yes, I actually read it.

Frank Burns is the avatar of the anti-Christ.

>> No.4598795

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

>> No.4599865
File: 18 KB, 305x399, writing-snoopy.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4599865

>>4584387
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.
A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery.

>> No.4599885
File: 1.97 MB, 496x368, get out.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4599885

>>4598795
>>4599865

>> No.4599905

>>4596552
Yes. Breakfast of Champions.

>> No.4599911
File: 4 KB, 221x170, 1393199357448.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4599911

>>4599885
I'm sorry, does it lack subtlety?

>It was a kind of dark and sort of stormy night...

>> No.4599942

>>4592995
Speaking of which what is the best version of the Bible to read for literary value?

I read King James and it was a pile of shit both literary and religiously.

>> No.4601301

>>4596543
Loved the book, but didn't actually like the opening line that much.

>> No.4601328

>>4599942
>I read King James and it was a pile of shit literary
uh, you're wrong

>> No.4601454

>>4583184
I like it, it works especially well for a horror or eerie novel. Don't let them get their bearings, the more left up to the imagination the better.

>> No.4601459

>>4592778

Definitely this.

>> No.4601462

>>4583260
That's not the first line. The first line is: "In the beginning, God had created the Sky and the Earth".

>> No.4601464

>>4589342
Shit like this is why I refuse to read translated fiction.

>> No.4601541

>>4598038
o-okay

>> No.4601699

>>4591049

God, so good. Those four simple words -- "Hill House, not sane" -- get me every time.

>> No.4601732

I guess it's not too late to find another niche
I always wish I would have died when I was twenty six
Laying in the sheets with a honey dipped
Not a worry in my mind because I quit
Stress drowns the sounds that makes pounds and props
feeling like I'm bound to these down town blocks
I don't know anybody guapped up, I'm living out in traffic under city limits every minute
lots of shit I never finish and I don't even want a little smidgen
All these critics try to tell me my music is a shitty gimmick
Shit
I'm just spitting for the fuck of spitting
I ain't worried about some idiots that caught up in the analytics
Never liked the limelight, never was compatible
Only press you getting outta Ugly is the lateral
People too concerned with strictly adding up their capital but dollars are collapsible, so y'all ain't even rational
But just to keep my motives in the open, never wanted no exposure
Never needed to be noticed, never bothered with promotion, kept the photo out of focus
The mental state was humble though the rhymes was brag-a-docious
Wandered with my hoody up down narcissistic avenues
Vastly captivated turned rapping into stacking loot
But why pursue that gratitude if nothing is a absolute
The aptitude is too acute to navigate my attributes

But I'm way too impatient to wait for stupid vacant disgraces to wake
This the human race and y'all standing in place it's a waste
It's the age of information and all the truth and all the lies
Are just there for the taking
The temporary and ancient, face it, you're basic
Safe and complacent, you’ll never escape it
Totally okay with being under surveillance

This is not praising the foil hats
Y'all are obvious monkeys, go crawl back to your bunkers
And boil rats for your lunches
Shit is too far out of your clutches
Your protests and disruptions just confuse all the dunces
Anyone with brain function already deduced all your hunches
The sky's blue bitch, give me newer assumptions
I'm in the Unabomber’s shack with a Buddha’s snack cuz the rap games neutered and truly whack
Cuz rappers milk every last drop till the hooters flat
Nursing off the same dead putrefied titty
I don't remember tellin' you that you could ride with me

>> No.4601813

>>4583929
How has this not been posted several times.

10/10 opening line

>> No.4601852

If vacillation dwell with the heart, the soul will rue it. Shame and honour clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like a magpie. But such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven amd Hell have equal part in him. Infidelity's friend is black all over and takes on a murky hue, while the man of loyal temper holds to the white.

>You will never be a knight

>> No.4601936
File: 32 KB, 640x480, pixies.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4601936

>>4601464
French, Portuguese, Spanish can all be translated between themselves almost perfectly. Oh the joys of speaking Portuguese fluently.

>Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.
>Hoje, a mãe morreu. Ou talvez ontem, não sei bem.

>> No.4601942

>>4601936
Because they are such simple languages. Only english is worse!

>> No.4601970

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

>> No.4601991

>>4601942
They might be easy compared to Chinese or shit like that, but I rarely meet any tourist getting right the conjugation of common use Spanish verbs like "ser".

>> No.4602000

>>4601991
They are easy compared to german, russian, finnish etc.
Just because some tourist doesn't speak them fluently doesn't mean they're hard.

>> No.4602004

>>4602000
try dutch nigga

>> No.4602007

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as “Claudius the Idiot,” or “That Claudius,” or “Claudius the Stammerer,” or “Clau-Clau-Claudius” or at best as “Poor Uncle Claudius,” am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the “golden predicament” from which I have never since become disentangled.

>> No.4602011

>>4602004
Very similar to german. Though let's stay on topic rather than circlejerk about languages.

>> No.4602029

>>4602011
Dutch is actually much harder than German.

>> No.4602854

>>4583560
>ctrl+f "Barstow"
>1 result

Well done you

>> No.4602857

>>4583595
Snow crash?

>> No.4602882

This time there would be no witnesses.

>> No.4602900

>>4599942
King James is pretty awful, but the Douay-Rheims Challoner version is A+

>> No.4602910

>>4601732
LUM <3

Best contemporary poet.

>> No.4602916

>>4599865
>Suddenly... suddenly
>doesn't justify the repetition by adding another 'suddenly'

>> No.4602926 [DELETED] 

>>4585675
>english
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che la verca via era smarrita

>> No.4602936

I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles

>> No.4602943

It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.

(A first line that you can't truly understand until the last line)

>> No.4602959

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me

>> No.4603451

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

>> No.4603538

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

>> No.4603599

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.

>> No.4603630

>>4592709
>>4584465
No! You're missing the part that makes this opening line encapsulate the whole book.
It should be:
"Today, Maman died. Or was it yesterday? I don't remember."

>> No.4603639

>>4599942
New King James. Modernizes the artifacts, but keeps the linguistic power.

>> No.4603647

"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."

Sets the tone and the voice of the narrator perfectly.

>> No.4603683

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

>> No.4605298

>>4601942
>French
A language so easy that half it's country's population can't speak it properly

>> No.4605413

>>4592825
>>

I find this style to be completely unreadable. Just one long, babbling, structureless sentence.

>> No.4607368

>>4584465

Or it was yesterday? I don't remeber.

>> No.4607611

>>4602857
Fucking Neuromancer scrub, get your lineage sorted

>> No.4607645

>>4587284
but MY opinions are RIGHT

>> No.4607666

He pissed into the bottle and knew it was a mistake.

>> No.4607680

>>4607368
The stranger? Does anyone want to discuss this seriously with me?

>> No.4607685

>>4583929
I had to scroll too long

>> No.4607692

in my younger more vulnerable days...

Come on!

>> No.4607915

>>4594601

I started A Clockwork Orange today
Jesus Christ. The bastardization of Russian and English is annoying, though even at ten pages in it's obvious that it benefits the story as a whole.

>> No.4608092
File: 80 KB, 333x400, gaddisbling.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4608092

-Money...? in a voice that rustled.

>> No.4608843

>>4601462
The Word as the first thing to come seems more correct to me.

The Word, the Light, and then all the other stuff.