# Best opening lines/coda, novel? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 7, 2001, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484 "2001-02-07T11:35:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2001, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/41 "2001-02-14T07:44:11Z")
I love Ruth Rendell’s opening lines. “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.” — **A Judgement in Stone** “The winter before he was sixteen, Pup sold his soul to the devil.” — **The Killing Doll** “Once, when Benet was about fourteen, they had been on a train together, alone in the carriage, and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife.” — **The Tree of Hands** “Scorpio is metaphysics, putrefaction and death, regeneration, passion, lust and violence, insight and profundity; inheritance, loss, occultism, astrology, borrowing and lending, others’ possessions. Scorpians are magicians, astrologers, alchemists, surgeons, bondsmen and undertakers. The gem for Scorpio is the snakestone, the plant the cactus, eagles and wolves and scorpions are its creatures, its body part the genitals, its weapon the Obligatory Pain, and its card in the Tarot is Death.” — **The Lake of Darkness**. I know that’s a mouthful, but I remember reading that for the first time when I was sixteen, in November, no less, having gotten it off the shelf of the living room where I was babysitting. Brrr. I also love the opening sentence (paragraph, in fact) of **The Chocolate War** : “They murdered him”. “He” was just taking a particularly hard tackle during football tryouts, but I can’t think of a better way to set the tone of the story. ---
**Author:** ![ElwoodCuse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/edb3f5/32.png) [@ElwoodCuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElwoodCuse)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2001, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/42 "2001-02-15T05:28:37Z")
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. HST Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas ---
**Author:** ![Simple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Simple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2001, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/43 "2001-02-15T20:50:53Z")
“This is what happened.” “The Mist” by Stephen King And what about one of the best opening lines in all of literature? “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” _The Metamorphosis_ by Franz Kafka And a great ending… Vladimir: Well? Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let’s go. They do not move. _Waiting For Godot_ by Samuel Beckett ---
**Author:** ![Medievalist2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e19adc/32.png) [@Medievalist2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Medievalist2)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2001, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/44 "2001-02-18T10:16:47Z")
Are you a medievalist, too? > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by matt\_mcl \* > \*\* Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote > The droghte of March hath perced to the roote > And bathed every veyne in swich licour, > Of which vertu engendred is the flour; > Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth > Inspired hath in every holt and heeth > The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne > Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, > And smale foweles maken melodye, > That slepen al the nyght with open eye- > (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages); > Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages > And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes > To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; > And specially from every shires ende > Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, > The hooly blisful martir for the seke > That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. > > -Geoffrey Chaucer, _The Canterbury Tales_ > > Hwaet! We Gar-Dena, in gear-dagum, peod-cyninga, prym gefrunon: hu tha aepelingas ellen femedon. > > (Listen! We, the Spear-Danes, have heard of the renown of great kings in days of yore, and how those princes displayed their valour.) > > -_Beowulf_ > > (Apropos of nothing, when I used to work in a library, I came across a book, evidently by an extremely anal-retentive author, entitled _The Old English Verse Epic Beginning “Hwaet! We Gar-Dena In Gear-Dagum” And Commonly Known As Beowulf_. (“Beowulf” was, of course, in huge letters.) \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Soda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@Soda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soda)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2001, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/45 "2001-02-18T15:05:53Z")
_The Crow Road_ by **Iain Banks** : “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” ---
**Author:** ![Cumber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5ac83/32.png) [@Cumber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cumber)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2001, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/46 "2001-02-18T16:03:45Z")
> [@](#): > > Poor people of the past, poor poor people, so many of them, for long thousands of years, not knowing anything, fumbling and stumbling and longing for something different but not knowing what had happened to them or what they longed for. > I can’t stop thinking of them, our ancestors, the poor animal-men, always murdering and destroying because they couldn’t help it. > And this will go on for us, as if we were being slowly lifted and filled and washed by a soft singing wind that clears our sad muddled minds and holds us safe and heals us and feeds us with lessons we never imagined. > And here we all are together, here we are… Close of _Shikasta_, by Doris Lessing. ---
**Author:** ![trose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f9ae1b/32.png) [@trose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trose)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2001, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/47 "2001-02-18T23:50:07Z")
This one’s pretty obscure, but it’s my all-time favorite novel: > [@](#): > > The country is most barbarously large and final.It is too much country–boondock country–alternately drab and dazzling, spectral and remote. It is so wrongfully muddled and various that it is difficult to conceive it all of a piece. Though it begins simply enough, as a part of the other. ``` --Billy Lee Brammer, *The Gay Place* ``` There follows the most breathtaking description of the Central Texas landscape, but if I attempt to quote more I’ll get caught up in the book yet again, and there will go the next two days. BTW, if you look into this book, just so you’re not misled it has nothing to do with homosexuality. The title is lifted from a Fitzgerald poem. ---
**Author:** ![Eutychus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Eutychus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eutychus)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2001, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/48 "2001-02-19T00:13:42Z")
Most pretentious opening line : “I was born in the house my father built.” RN : the Memoirs of Richard Nixon ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2001, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484/49 "2001-02-19T05:24:26Z")
“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring!!!” _Native Son_, by Richard Wright [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-opening-lines-coda-novel/53484.md?page=2)