Best Opening Paragraphs

[pennimania]

High Rise - JG Ballard.

I have to say that I think that book is a load of tosh.

Not wanting to offend, but after I'd read it I used cliches from it to irritate mr mania for weeks

 

[quimcunx]

Not at all offended. I'm not JG Ballard. It's the best first 10 words from a book just about ever and I bought it on the strength of that. I think I enjoyed it well enough.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.

 

[8115]

I only have opening lines as the internet is not co-operating

Mother died today. Or it could have been yesterday, I can't be sure. - Camus, The Stranger.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.

 

[Firky]

I have to say that I think that book is a load of tosh.

Not wanting to offend, but after I'd read it I used cliches from it to irritate mr mania for weeks

It's a terribly boring book. Good ideas but so boringly presented.

Even the parties sounded dull. Most exciting part in the whole book is the dead dog in the pool

(Sorry quimy!)

 

[pennimania]

I might read it again just to remind myself why I hated it so.

And to revisit the clichés.

 

[Greebo]

"It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach."
'The Crow Road' Ian Banks.

 

[Firky]

"It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach."
'The Crow Road' Ian Banks.

It's funny how you recognise the opening lines but can't always place it until you read the source. Like the opening bars of a song you once heard.

 

[pennimania]

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

Day of the Triffids. John Wyndham

 

[pennimania]

' I wore my bridal robe, and I rivall'd its whiteness'

Brighton Rock. Graham Greene

 

[Bakunin]

'In darkness there is death...'

Eric van Lustbader, 'The Ninja.'

 

[Dr. Furface]

"Someone must have been spreading lies about Josef K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning"
Kafka, The Trial

 

[peterkro]

Sorry if it's been posted but Hardy comes up with this cracker after only three hours of writing:

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment"

It's from Monty Pythons by the way:

And now it’s time for novel-writing, which today comes from the West Country, from Dorset

 

[hegley]

In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages. His story will be told here. His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name – in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, de Sade’s, for instance, or Saint-Just’s, Fouche’s, Bonaparte’s etc. – has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of those more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immortality, or, more succinctly, wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no trace in history: to the fleeting realm of scent.

 

[hitmouse]

Discussion over on the reading thread made me think we could do with a thread of best opening lines/paragraphs, and I found this one already existed. I'd put in a word for:

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.

And

What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.