Posted by MaggieH (admin)
Mar 1, 2010 10:13 pm

Replies (14)

Posted by

• I went through the list of First Lines and have finally came to a conclusion, I'm going to have to go with A Tale of Two Cities By Charles Dickens as my favorite. It's pretty much self-explanatory.
  
  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. - A Tale of Two Cities

  Mar 2, 2010 9:58 am
  by MonicaR

• The best first line? It HAS to be "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." A brilliant piece of exposition, and you're already unsettled. All in 14 words.

  Mar 2, 2010 12:38 pm
  by Aphida

• The opening line of Pride and Prejudice-"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

  Mar 2, 2010 1:34 pm
  by MollieMorris

• The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. From The Go-Between one of those lines you never forget after reading.

  Mar 2, 2010 2:31 pm
  by dreamdust

• Seeing as Dickens and Orwell have already been chosen I will go with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina:
  
  "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"
  
  But I also rather like the opening to G.K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill:
  
  "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games since the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the people who grow up."

  Mar 3, 2010 9:07 am
  by cresswga

• "It was a pleasure to burn."
  
  Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

  Mar 3, 2010 10:16 am
  by Alex.Allen

• "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
  Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

  Mar 4, 2010 2:59 am
  by Nerina

• "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport.""
  
  -Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

  Mar 4, 2010 11:12 am
  by Golem100

• I've never read it but this one made me laugh:
  
  "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
  -The Road, Iain Banks

  Mar 4, 2010 11:40 am
  by Lolabean

• "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
  
  -One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Mar 4, 2010 6:49 pm
  by SamanthaC

• Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
  
  it was because of that line that I got into that book, such a goofy beginning was a great hook for me

  Mar 9, 2010 3:13 am
  by peterh

• The first line of The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka!
  
  (It's a little difficult because of the translation, but still awesome!)
  
  "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

  Apr 5, 2010 11:33 pm
  by emilyyoung

• The best first is line
  Do not count what u have lost.
  Just see what u have now,
  because past never comes back
  but sometimes future can give
  u back ur lost things!

  Apr 6, 2010 7:24 am
  by dsdincsoftware

• Jose Saramago perplexed me with
  
  "The next day nobody died", first line of Death with Interruptions, just brilliant !

  Jul 6, 2010 9:03 am
  by Kiribati