# Favorite opening lines in fiction. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 9, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070 "2005-05-09T15:52:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Krebbs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5fc32e/32.png) [@Mr.Krebbs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Krebbs)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/1 "2005-05-09T15:52:47Z")
As a reader, it’s always wonderful to see a great opening line in a novel. It gives some assurance that the book you’re delving into will be worth reading. As a wannabe writer, I would like to read some opening lines that have proved memorable to Dopers. I’m particularly interested in anything shocking, profound, weird or just plain interesting. I would like to limit this to fiction with some literary merit, as opposed to genre fiction. But a good first sentence is a good first sentence, whatever genre it falls under, so let’s not make that an absolute. Please include the title and author of the book, and why you’re fond of it. Anyway, here’s mine: “You are hearing the screams of a small, fat man.” - Word Made Flesh by Jack O’Connell This is my favorite line I’ve read in that it is delivered in first person, to the audience. This novel practically throws the reader into the fray, and this first line not only sets the tone of the novel well, it leaves the reader asking, “Wtf is going on, here?” Unfortunately, O’Connell dispenses with the first-person narration after the prologue and the first several chapters of the book are lame and cliched by comparison. Word Made Flesh isn’t O’Connell’s best work, but it’s still pretty damn good. ---
**Author:** ![N.Sane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f19dbf/32.png) [@N.Sane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N.Sane)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/2 "2005-05-09T16:03:53Z")
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.” I had to read the book (_Rebecca_) after that! ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/3 "2005-05-09T16:03:56Z")
“I hadn’t meant to kill the cat.” Telempath, by Spider Robinson. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/4 "2005-05-09T16:38:08Z")
“You stole my story.” John Shooter accuses Mort Rainey of plagerism. Shooter wakes Rainey up from a nap with this line, and the reader is just as comfused as Rainey is at the start of the story. This, of course, is from Stephen King’s \*Secret Window, Secret Garden[/.] Ibsen it ain’t, but enjoyable. ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/5 "2005-05-09T16:43:14Z")
It’s more than one sentence, but I’ve always liked… > [@](#): > > His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Roger Zelazny - _Lord of Light_ ---
**Author:** ![Hal\_Briston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a9a28c/32.png) [@Hal\_Briston](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hal_Briston)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/6 "2005-05-09T16:58:22Z")
“Death was driving an emerald-green Lexus.” – Dean Koontz, _Winter Moon_ ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/7 "2005-05-09T17:04:18Z")
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a gigantic insect.” Franz Kafka, _The Metamorphosis_ ---
**Author:** ![lee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lee/32/7455_2.png) [@lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lee)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/8 "2005-05-09T17:22:20Z")
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. " _1984_ by George Orwell. It seems almost absurd and really helps to twist the readers mind to get ready for the rest of the book. ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/9 "2005-05-09T17:29:32Z")
From Shirley Jackson’s _The Haunting of Hill House_: “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.” ---
**Author:** ![Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stark_Raven_Mad)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/10 "2005-05-09T17:30:47Z")
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” _Lolita_, of course, by the pen of the Lord my God Vladimir Nabokov. ---
**Author:** ![Redwing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dfb087/32.png) [@Redwing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Redwing)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/11 "2005-05-09T17:44:38Z")
“The bureaucrat fell from the sky.” _Stations of the Tide_ by Michael Swanwick ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/12 "2005-05-09T18:28:14Z")
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” _Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas_ by Hunter Thompson. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” _The Hobbit_ by Tolkien ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/13 "2005-05-09T18:33:43Z")
“Many years later, as he sood facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” - The opening lines of \*Cien Años de Soledad \* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez One sentence in, and you already know you’re in for a few hundred pages of flashback before you find out why Buendia is being executed, but you can’t put it down anymore. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/14 "2005-05-09T18:53:29Z")
That is certainly the greatest opening line in the history of literature. Garcia Marquez hooks you after the second clause. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/15 "2005-05-09T19:02:10Z")
> [@Mr. Krebbs](#): > > Word Made Flesh isn’t O’Connell’s best work, but it’s still pretty damn good. Holy crap! So YOU’RE the one other person on the planet who’s read Jack O’Connell! Wasn’t _Wireless_ amazing? Me, I’m going to pick the line I always choose for this particular game, from the private eye novel _The Last Good Kiss_ by James Crumley (1978): “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 of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” ---
**Author:** ![Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Stark\_Raven\_Mad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stark_Raven_Mad)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/16 "2005-05-09T19:02:47Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > “Many years later, as he sood facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” > > - The opening lines of \*Cien Años de Soledad \* by Gabriel Garcia Marquez > > One sentence in, and you already know you’re in for a few hundred pages of flashback before you find out why Buendia is being executed, but you can’t put it down anymore. It took me two weeks of tossing and turning every night in bed befor I could bring myself to read the last bit in Melquiades’ room. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/17 "2005-05-09T19:03:58Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > That is certainly the greatest opening line in the history of literature. Garcia Marquez hooks you after the second clause. Dangit, I was gonna say this one too. Except I was going to say, “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.” The first chapter of that book is one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever run across in literature. I’m also rather fond of “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” There’s something so delightfully self-assured about it. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/18 "2005-05-09T19:35:33Z")
From **Charlotte’s Web**. > [@](#): > > “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. That’s just so full of grizzly potential, it’s brilliant; especially in a children’s book. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/19 "2005-05-09T19:39:44Z")
> [@Ol'Gaffer](#): > > “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” > > _Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas_ by Hunter Thompson. > “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” > > _The Hobbit_ by Tolkien I came in here to say those exact two. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2005, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070/20 "2005-05-09T19:45:02Z")
**tanstaafl** , I joined this thread specifically to use the line you did. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-opening-lines-in-fiction/303070.md?page=2)