Monday, December 14, 2015

A Tale Through Time: 20 of the Most Memorable First Lines in Literature

A Tale Through Time: 20 of the Most Memorable First Lines in Literature.  

Link via SF Signal.

13 comments:

Jeff Meyerson said...

"They threw me off the hay truck about noon."

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

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

"Call me Ishmael."

Unknown said...

Those are better than some of theirs.

Deb said...

And I hate to be "that person" (ha!), but the writer's very last comment makes no sense. Mr. Collins was not Jane Austen 's beau, he was a possible husband for Elizabeth in P&P, but ended up marrying her best friend.

Deb said...

My favorite first line:

"Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write."

--Ruth Rendell, A Judgement in Stone

SteveHL said...

It was a dark and stormy night.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford

Not known as a good first line, but a memorable one.

Bill Pronzini said...

"We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge."

John D., DARKER THAN AMBER

Unknown said...

Bill, the opening line made DARKER THAN AMBER my favorite McGee.

Don Coffin said...

I will admit I have always loved this opening line: "“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” (#10 on that list) I also liked the movie, but found the book to be all but unreadable. And I also like Jeff's.

Unknown said...

There are actually two books that open with "Call me Ishmael." Can you name the other one?

Unknown said...

I used to know that.

Kyle said...

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

C.S. Lewis, THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER

Unknown said...

Bill,

It opens the novel THE VALE OF LAUGHTER (1967) by Peter DeVries.

Unknown said...

Yes! I wish I could've remembered it.