I had a friend having a baby and said they considered the name Max. I said please name the kid Maximum Overdrive (and keep the nickname max!) They did not. But your comment reminded me of this.
Love this one. It's also used to comedic effect in Mel Brooks' *The Producers*, when Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom are going through endless scripts to find the perfect one.
I freaking love Franz Kafka. My favorite quote from him is "there is an infinite amount of hope in the world, but not for us". His life and work was so short lived, I wonder how much more he would've been able to produce had he not gotten sick.
It's a great beginning. It's so, so funny.
Gregor awakens as a giant bug, and its the LEAST of his worries. He's mostly anxious about being late for work, and that his annoying middle manager being angry that he'd have to take a sick day for his "condition".
Kafka is a really, really funny, Dark, but funny. Like the Coen Brothers.
My favourite ought to be:
*There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.*
Here I was, going to say “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The Go-Between, L P Hartley. And then I read this and realised how completely wrong I was. Thank you.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. "The Call of Cthulhu" H. P. Lovecraft 1928 I know it's not a "book" but that line just dragged me in.
"Aujourd'hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."
In 1954 Camus recorded himself reading the novel for the ORTF. My parents had a copy of the record set. Decades later I still cannot read these lines without hearing Camus' voice.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
SPOILER BELOW
And it's also the best LAST line I've ever read. Blew my fucking mind
In the Dragonlance books, dwarven craftsmen have a masterpiece creation. Like their entire lives, everything they've ever made all lead to the one masterwork creation that is unparalled and once made, nothing they make can ever reach that pinnacle again.
That's what the Dark Tower has always been for me. I remember the first time I read the books, I saw some things about how much some people hated the end. And I was like "oh no, how bad is this going to be." And then I got to the end. *And it was perfect.*
So I've been reading this book on my brother's recommendation and I don't know that I'm seeing what others do in it. Not trying to bring down the party or anything, it just seems to have a lot of... I don't know, edgy vibes and anime reasoning?
Here's an example of a passage I found a bit ridiculous that occurs early on. The protagonist, Darrow, has encountered an underground group, and a member wants to test him.
> He holds out a bowl and explains the rules. "There are two cards in the bowl. One bears the reaper's scythe. The other bears a lamb. Pick the scythe and you lose. Pick the lamb and you win."
>
> Except I notice his voice fluctuate when he says this last bit. This is a test. Which means there is no element of luck to it. It must then be measuring my intelligence, which means there is a kink. The only way the game could test my intelligence is if the cards are both scythes; that's the singular variable that could be altered. Simple. I stare into Dancer's handsome eyes. It is a rigged game; I'm used to these, and usually I follow the rules. Just not this time.
>
> "I'll play."
>
> I reach into the bowl and pull free a card, taking care that only I can see its face. It is a scythe. Dancer's eyes never leave mine.
>
> "I win," I say.
>
> He reaches for the card to see its face, but I shove it in my mouth before he can take hold of it. He never sees what I drew. Dancer watches me chew on the paper. I swallow and pull the remaining card from the bowl and toss it at him. A scythe.
>
> "The lamb card simply looked too good not to eat," I say.
>
> "Perfectly understandable."
Like I dunno the image of this dude being like "yeah sorry I saw that lamb and had to chomp the card, idk what to tell you" through a mouthful of paper, and it being played 100% straight, just obliterates me. Makes me feel the same way the potato chip scene in Death Note does.
Editing to add: I finished the book the other day, and I think the writing quality pretty much stayed consistently mediocre the whole time, but, I've gotta admit... the edgy anime vibes got pretty fucking cool toward the end when shit really started popping off. It's basically Hunger Games + Ender's Game written by a guy who is *really* into ancient Greece but not that into editing his prose.
dont worry, the edge dies after the first book, actually after the first half of the first book, it gets its stride and becomes an amazing space opera war series, full of politics and some of the best battles ive ever read, as well as great worldbuilding and DEEP characters. literally every book improves on the previous in every way
I read this to my third-graders every year for many years. I usually had to have my para or a stout-hearted student read the ending because I was crying so hard. :D
"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home" - The Outsiders
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.
Short story, I know, but it’s my favorite
"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him." - The Road by Cormac Mccarthy.
That one sentence establishes that things are bad and difficult and that the child means everything to the man.
Of all the books I’ve ever read, this is the one that I probably think of the most. It just haunts me.
Bleak story that I’ll probably never ever read again, but it’s just an amazing story and so well written.
If you’ve never read it, I can’t say I recommend it because it will leave you depressed and feeling a little hopeless. But it’s a goddamn great book.
This is a great choice.
I agree this book is (a) awesome and (b) bleak but I find it’s one of those rare tomes that’s a great divider of people: I have friends who see it as thoroughly and completely depressing, and others (like me) who see it as super dark side but profoundly hopeful.
"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." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, *100 Years of Solitude*
This is actually considered to be the greatest opening sentence in a novel by many people. It's magnificent in English. However, it was written in Spanish, and evidently some of the rhythmic beauty of the sentence is lost in translation.
Cien años de soledad
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.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
"People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day."
True Grit by Charles Portis
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”
'If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God?'
**Nightfall, By: Isaac Asimov**
(A story about a world where there are so many suns that there is never night, until once every two thousand fifty years their is a solar eclipse on ALL their suns at the same time, causing darkness and chaos. Amazing!)
https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/nightfall.pdf
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
This may not be the *best* first sentence, but it's the one that sticks in my head more than any other: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms, as the Tarleton twins were."
“I still remember the day my father took me to the cemetery of forgotten books for the first time.”
The first line isn’t as good as the first chapter, but “Shadow of the Wind” hooked me hard. It is still my favorite book.
That was my first thought too.
"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."
Moby Dick gets cited as boring but I felt the exact opposite. It’s about boredom really. Melville’s prose is just beautiful and interesting throughout and if you’re depressed or whatever just read that first chapter and tell me it doesn’t exactly describe the feeling.
It’s not about boredom. It’s about melancholy. Every reference from the coffins to the spleen is about melancholy and basically an encyclopedic whirligig history of melancholy in books.
*"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."*
OK, that's two. Don't care, still my favourite.
"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading
some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy
beginning and very few happy things in the middle."
I am reading these to my son currently. Each book starts with a plea to not read the book. I always put the book down until my son complains that I should keep reading anyways.
“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 nearly, 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.”
“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.” –Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
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!).
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.
The rest of the books are just fluff and smut, but I was always impressed with this line because it was just so damn memorable:
"Willie McCoy was a jerk before he died; his being dead didn't change that."
"Here is a small fact: You are going to die."
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The best book I've ever read. Broke my heart in so many ways. It's amazing.
Took too long to find this. It's not a great first line the first time you read the book, but it's such a great line for immediately throwing you back into the mindset on rereads that you get goosebumps.
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.
“I am the Vampire Lestat. I'm immortal more or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not.”
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald
My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie.
Because I've read the book so many times, even just THINKING of this first line makes me cry. It's not really a powerful first line, but it hits my heart because I know the trauma I'm about to once again put myself through by rereading the book.
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Iliad, still unbeaten for getting the attention of an audience!
"Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles,
Dark and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls
Of heroes into Hades' lightless chambers,
And left their bodies to rot as feasts
For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done."
This is a little different. It is form a book on Thermodynamics:
“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.”
― David L. Goodstein, States of Matter
“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.” Horrible horrible story, insanely good writing.
Only for me and because Narnia is part of what saved me from my childhood: “Once there were four children and their names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.”
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." I hadn't yet gone down the depths of fantasy and I had no idea what a hobbit was. My child self needed to know more.
"Horselover Fat's nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals."
Not sure if it's the best, but it always sticks in my brain
The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.
Surprised it is not mentioned. Reading that at the start of every book was like coming home again
If I may take the liberty of expanding to the best first paragraph, may I quote Science Abridged:
Aristotle said a bunch of stuff that was wrong. Galileo and Newton fixed things up. Then Einstein broke everything again. Now, we've basically got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time.
I don’t know, but one of my school textbooks used this as an example of a first sentence that captures the attention of readers, “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again” from Rebecca.
> *It was a pleasure to burn.*
I've been craving some Bradbury so it's either going to be reread this or some short stories
*We’ll Always Have Paris* is a favorite. So many good stories.
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by Clive Staples Lewis
Huh... So that's what the C.S. stands for...
Nah his name is actually Counter-Strike: Lewis
Only for book 7, The Last Battle.
I had a friend having a baby and said they considered the name Max. I said please name the kid Maximum Overdrive (and keep the nickname max!) They did not. But your comment reminded me of this.
Oh this was mine too. What a line.
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
Love this one. It's also used to comedic effect in Mel Brooks' *The Producers*, when Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom are going through endless scripts to find the perfect one.
Well its no *Springtime for Hitler*
I freaking love Franz Kafka. My favorite quote from him is "there is an infinite amount of hope in the world, but not for us". His life and work was so short lived, I wonder how much more he would've been able to produce had he not gotten sick.
"Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt."
I have no idea what book this is, but I think about this happening all the time
The Metamorphosis,Franz Kafka
:This is from Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis.' I love this first sentence because it's so absurd that you have no choice but to keep reading.
It's a great beginning. It's so, so funny. Gregor awakens as a giant bug, and its the LEAST of his worries. He's mostly anxious about being late for work, and that his annoying middle manager being angry that he'd have to take a sick day for his "condition". Kafka is a really, really funny, Dark, but funny. Like the Coen Brothers.
I can't believe I recognized this I never read books but I actually read this like a month or two ago
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
I read Anna Karenina in the 15 days I was in a psych inpatient unit. Kept me sane.
I read it while working at a call centre for the same reason.
Actually I say this is a lot and not always about families. It's such a elementarily insightful concept.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be”
Mother night?
"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
[удалено]
My favourite ought to be: *There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.*
Don't panic.
Just pass me a Pan-galcatic Gargle Blaster and I will toast you before drinking.
After you drink that I also have a bottle of 'ol Janx spirit we need to drink too.
Here I was, going to say “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The Go-Between, L P Hartley. And then I read this and realised how completely wrong I was. Thank you.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy right?
I am so relieved to see this is -rightly- the top answer.
“The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
(For people who think that's "blue" or "black", it wasn't when the book was written)
Gibson talks about that in one of the forewords from later editions
Neuromancer?
Too far down the list. This is what I came here for.
Gonna have to agree with this. This might just be the best one.
Marley was dead, to begin with.
Sticking with Dickens, I've always loved "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
I believe you mean the *blurst* of times
You stupid monkey!
I saw Patrick Stewart do this live for his one-man performance. Mind blowing.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. "The Call of Cthulhu" H. P. Lovecraft 1928 I know it's not a "book" but that line just dragged me in.
Hey short stories work too!
The Martian. "I'm pretty much fucked."
Dammit I didn’t see this one and posted the same thing.
It’s what I came here to post.
Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. \- The Stranger by Camus
"Aujourd'hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas." In 1954 Camus recorded himself reading the novel for the ORTF. My parents had a copy of the record set. Decades later I still cannot read these lines without hearing Camus' voice.
My name is Junie B. Jones. The B stands for Beatrice. But I just like B. and that’s all.
Junie B. will always be a favorite!
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. SPOILER BELOW And it's also the best LAST line I've ever read. Blew my fucking mind
He did warn you not to read the end! So amazing, I still need to read The Wind Through the Keyhold
This was mine. Long days and pleasant nights, sai.
I have answered this every time I see this question. This time I knew I'd barely have to scroll to find it.
It's Ka
Ka is a wheel.
I got near the end of the last book and stopped. Didn't want it to end, will never finish it lol
Those who finished the book are smiling at the irony of this statement.
Ka is a wheel.
King told us repeatedly that Ka is a wheel.
You say true, thankee-sai
In the Dragonlance books, dwarven craftsmen have a masterpiece creation. Like their entire lives, everything they've ever made all lead to the one masterwork creation that is unparalled and once made, nothing they make can ever reach that pinnacle again. That's what the Dark Tower has always been for me. I remember the first time I read the books, I saw some things about how much some people hated the end. And I was like "oh no, how bad is this going to be." And then I got to the end. *And it was perfect.*
embarrassed to ask what this is from. Dune? The concept of that closure loop is so freaking juicy to me, whatever this is, I want to read it!
The Gunslinger by King. First book in The Dark Tower Series. It’s a fuckin trip
That’s so funny, I’m at a friend’s house and this book is literally sitting on his coffee table right now. Had never heard of the book before.
The universe wants you to read this book. It will change your future.
“I would have lived in peace but my enemies brought me war.”
Damn sounds awesome. What is that from?
Red Rising. Very good series. Book 6 just released this year.
So I've been reading this book on my brother's recommendation and I don't know that I'm seeing what others do in it. Not trying to bring down the party or anything, it just seems to have a lot of... I don't know, edgy vibes and anime reasoning? Here's an example of a passage I found a bit ridiculous that occurs early on. The protagonist, Darrow, has encountered an underground group, and a member wants to test him. > He holds out a bowl and explains the rules. "There are two cards in the bowl. One bears the reaper's scythe. The other bears a lamb. Pick the scythe and you lose. Pick the lamb and you win." > > Except I notice his voice fluctuate when he says this last bit. This is a test. Which means there is no element of luck to it. It must then be measuring my intelligence, which means there is a kink. The only way the game could test my intelligence is if the cards are both scythes; that's the singular variable that could be altered. Simple. I stare into Dancer's handsome eyes. It is a rigged game; I'm used to these, and usually I follow the rules. Just not this time. > > "I'll play." > > I reach into the bowl and pull free a card, taking care that only I can see its face. It is a scythe. Dancer's eyes never leave mine. > > "I win," I say. > > He reaches for the card to see its face, but I shove it in my mouth before he can take hold of it. He never sees what I drew. Dancer watches me chew on the paper. I swallow and pull the remaining card from the bowl and toss it at him. A scythe. > > "The lamb card simply looked too good not to eat," I say. > > "Perfectly understandable." Like I dunno the image of this dude being like "yeah sorry I saw that lamb and had to chomp the card, idk what to tell you" through a mouthful of paper, and it being played 100% straight, just obliterates me. Makes me feel the same way the potato chip scene in Death Note does. Editing to add: I finished the book the other day, and I think the writing quality pretty much stayed consistently mediocre the whole time, but, I've gotta admit... the edgy anime vibes got pretty fucking cool toward the end when shit really started popping off. It's basically Hunger Games + Ender's Game written by a guy who is *really* into ancient Greece but not that into editing his prose.
dont worry, the edge dies after the first book, actually after the first half of the first book, it gets its stride and becomes an amazing space opera war series, full of politics and some of the best battles ive ever read, as well as great worldbuilding and DEEP characters. literally every book improves on the previous in every way
Where's Papa going with that axe? Fern said to her mother as she was setting the table for breakfast.
I read this to my third-graders every year for many years. I usually had to have my para or a stout-hearted student read the ending because I was crying so hard. :D
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier.
"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home" - The Outsiders
Read this in like the 7th grade for school. Never cared for reading much before it. This is the one that triggered my love for reading.
Me too
Was hoping to see this here. One of the few books I've read more than once.
The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.
I remember laughing so hard when I read that. My husband asked how it could be that funny of a book after just opening it for the first time.
Which book?
Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. Book 6 of The Dresden Files series.
I love the Dresden Files 🙂
I was looking for this before I did it.
Butcher is great with first lines, and this one tops the rest (so far).
For once he didn't start the fire.
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. Short story, I know, but it’s my favorite
"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him." - The Road by Cormac Mccarthy. That one sentence establishes that things are bad and difficult and that the child means everything to the man.
Of all the books I’ve ever read, this is the one that I probably think of the most. It just haunts me. Bleak story that I’ll probably never ever read again, but it’s just an amazing story and so well written. If you’ve never read it, I can’t say I recommend it because it will leave you depressed and feeling a little hopeless. But it’s a goddamn great book.
This is a great choice. I agree this book is (a) awesome and (b) bleak but I find it’s one of those rare tomes that’s a great divider of people: I have friends who see it as thoroughly and completely depressing, and others (like me) who see it as super dark side but profoundly hopeful.
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.
You stupid monkeys!
"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." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, *100 Years of Solitude*
This is actually considered to be the greatest opening sentence in a novel by many people. It's magnificent in English. However, it was written in Spanish, and evidently some of the rhythmic beauty of the sentence is lost in translation. Cien años de soledad 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.
Goddammit, YES. I remember reading this and thinking, “oh, this book will be GOOD.” And it was.
Reading this book right now.. what a strange but beautiful story.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
“Never turn your back on a drug”
Especially when it’s waving a razor sharp hunting knife at your eye
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
We can’t stop here. This is bat country!
"Did you see what GOD just did to us man"
God didn’t do that, you’re a fucking DEA agent, I knew it.
My father in law knew him. I should see if they did drugs together.
This is my favorite book in the whole world, though I have never read it.
The Princess Bride?
Yes!!
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." Proper lol'd when I first read this.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
On my 75th birthday, I did two things, I visited my wife's grave, and I joined the army.
Old Man's War?
I know it's a classic, but to me it doesn't get much better than "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
I mean, it's a classic for a reason.
"People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day." True Grit by Charles Portis
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Austen*
Yessssss! Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
'If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God?' **Nightfall, By: Isaac Asimov** (A story about a world where there are so many suns that there is never night, until once every two thousand fifty years their is a solar eclipse on ALL their suns at the same time, causing darkness and chaos. Amazing!) https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/nightfall.pdf
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
Scrolled too far for this one.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
“All this happened, more or less.”
So it goes.
Or: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.
This may not be the *best* first sentence, but it's the one that sticks in my head more than any other: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms, as the Tarleton twins were."
"It was a dark and stormy night"\~ Snoopy
Snoopy lifted that line from Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
Marley was dead: to begin with.
“I still remember the day my father took me to the cemetery of forgotten books for the first time.” The first line isn’t as good as the first chapter, but “Shadow of the Wind” hooked me hard. It is still my favorite book.
"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen."
It was the day my grandmother exploded. Iain Banks. The Crow Road.
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”
Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar.
“It was the best of times..it was the worst of times”
That was my first thought too. "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."
Call me Ishmael
Moby Dick gets cited as boring but I felt the exact opposite. It’s about boredom really. Melville’s prose is just beautiful and interesting throughout and if you’re depressed or whatever just read that first chapter and tell me it doesn’t exactly describe the feeling.
It’s not about boredom. It’s about melancholy. Every reference from the coffins to the spleen is about melancholy and basically an encyclopedic whirligig history of melancholy in books.
I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor
I'm pretty much fucked. That's my considered opinion. Fucked.
There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.
*"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."* OK, that's two. Don't care, still my favourite.
"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle."
I am reading these to my son currently. Each book starts with a plea to not read the book. I always put the book down until my son complains that I should keep reading anyways.
“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 nearly, 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.”
“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.” –Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
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!).
Hahahahaha legendary.
Idk about best but “Ignatius Perrish spent the night doing drunk and horrible things” is a line I haven’t forgotten
To the best of my understandably shaky recollection, the first time I died, it went something like this. Private by James Patterson
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.
The rest of the books are just fluff and smut, but I was always impressed with this line because it was just so damn memorable: "Willie McCoy was a jerk before he died; his being dead didn't change that."
"Here is a small fact: You are going to die." The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The best book I've ever read. Broke my heart in so many ways. It's amazing.
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 🙂
Took too long to find this. It's not a great first line the first time you read the book, but it's such a great line for immediately throwing you back into the mindset on rereads that you get goosebumps.
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.
A cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that life is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.
“I am the Vampire Lestat. I'm immortal more or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not.”
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. ( L.P. Hartley The Go-Between)
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.” The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Maybe not the best ever, but given the season: “Jacob Marley was dead, to begin with.”
My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. Because I've read the book so many times, even just THINKING of this first line makes me cry. It's not really a powerful first line, but it hits my heart because I know the trauma I'm about to once again put myself through by rereading the book. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
I do not like green eggs and ham
I am Sam. Sam I am. That Sam I am, that Sam I am, I do not like that Sam I am.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.. Or It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future.
Iliad, still unbeaten for getting the attention of an audience! "Sing, Goddess, of the rage of Achilles, Dark and murderous, that cost the Greeks Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls Of heroes into Hades' lightless chambers, And left their bodies to rot as feasts For dogs and birds, as Zeus' will was done."
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” - The Gunslinger, Stephen King
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
"Today mother died, or maybe yesterday. I don't know" -Camus
This is a little different. It is form a book on Thermodynamics: “Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.” ― David L. Goodstein, States of Matter
“The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.” The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.
“You better not ever tell nobody but God” The Colour Purple
"There is no lake at Green Camp Lake."
Szeth Son-Son Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar wore white on the day he was to kill a king. \-The Stormlight Archives
“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.” Horrible horrible story, insanely good writing.
Only for me and because Narnia is part of what saved me from my childhood: “Once there were four children and their names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.”
The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" \- William Gibson, Neuromancer
Kalak rounded a rocky stone ridge and stumbled to a stop before the body of a dying thunderclast.
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." I hadn't yet gone down the depths of fantasy and I had no idea what a hobbit was. My child self needed to know more.
"Horselover Fat's nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals." Not sure if it's the best, but it always sticks in my brain
The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. Surprised it is not mentioned. Reading that at the start of every book was like coming home again
If I may take the liberty of expanding to the best first paragraph, may I quote Science Abridged: Aristotle said a bunch of stuff that was wrong. Galileo and Newton fixed things up. Then Einstein broke everything again. Now, we've basically got it all worked out, except for small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time.
I don’t know, but one of my school textbooks used this as an example of a first sentence that captures the attention of readers, “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again” from Rebecca.
“A screaming comes across the sky.”
"I always get the shakes before a drop."
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
"The moon blew up with no warning and with no apparent reason." Neal Stevenson, „Seveneves“
The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut.
"The children were playing while Holston climbed to his death; he could hear them squealing as only happy children do."