# How many first lines from books do you have memorized? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 5, 2009, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382 "2009-11-05T02:49:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![movingfinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@movingfinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/movingfinger)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2009, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/61 "2009-11-07T07:01:47Z")
Okay; top this one: _“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four bullets ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life…but first, let me tell you a little about myself.”_ It’s from Max Shulman’s **Sleep 'Til Noon** , in which the main character is an unsuccessful author, searching for a gripping opening line for his novel. The fact that the line has nothing to do with the plot is unimportant. What is important is that the opening line grab the reader’s attention. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/62 "2009-11-09T01:43:19Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful but men seldom realized it when caught in her charm like the Tarleton twins were.” - Gone with the Wind You beat me to it! ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/63 "2009-11-09T02:09:56Z")
Three or four of the short, simple ones already mentioned (_Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities, Atlas Shrugged_) and most of _Catcher_’s first line, with the allusion to David Copperfield. And this one: “Behavioral sciences, the FBI section dealing with serial murder, is located on the bottom floor of the academy building at Quantico, half buried in the earth”.The Silence of the Lambs ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/64 "2009-11-09T02:22:56Z")
> [@Enright3](#): > > I always thought that “It was a dark and stormy night” came about because of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest where participants try to come up with the ‘best’ opening line to the worst novel. > [http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/](http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/) Then you had it exactly reversed. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Pulp\_Friction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@Pulp\_Friction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pulp_Friction)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/65 "2009-11-10T17:22:52Z")
Here’s mine: 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. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/66 "2009-11-10T19:37:42Z")
“Tom!” –It’s the only one short enough for me to remember. (I believe the next paragraph is “No answer.”) ---
**Author:** ![Motorgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e36b37/32.png) [@Motorgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Motorgirl)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/67 "2009-11-10T20:07:54Z")
None, which is why I have never realy played the game “ExLibris” [Ex Libris | Board Game | BoardGameGeek](http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9619) which someone gave me for Christmas this year. ---
**Author:** ![ministryman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@ministryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ministryman)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/68 "2009-11-17T22:44:09Z")
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/69 "2009-11-17T22:45:19Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > No “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly”? Seriously? No takers at all? ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/70 "2009-11-18T03:48:06Z")
> [@ministryman](#): > > In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Actually, it’s already been mentioned. 😉 Of man’s first disobediance, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe … Paradise Lost - I had an English “professor” in college who offered up an “A” to anyone who produced the first two sentences (26 lines) letter perfect, as opposed to completing the two medium length essay answers on the poem. :rolleyes: My father had a small estate in _Nottinghamshire_; I was the third of five sons. A truly Brobdinagian sentence. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2009, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/71 "2009-11-18T03:51:33Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Some more easy ones > > Well, I know “All of Gaul is divided into three parts” despite never having read Cesar (or what the three parts are, or why its important). “GALLIA est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.” ---
**Author:** ![ryobserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b2d939/32.png) [@ryobserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryobserver)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/72 "2009-11-19T00:45:14Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > No “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly”? That was the first one I thought of. Nitpick: it’s “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderly again.” The “again” is kind of important. Never read the book but I always thought this a great first sentence: “We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.” –John D. MacDonald, the first Travis McGee novel (I had to look up the title; it’s _Darker than Amber_) ---
**Author:** ![Cuckoorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Cuckoorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cuckoorex)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382/73 "2009-11-19T01:32:15Z")
How about a first paragraph? From Shirley Jackson’s 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. 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 neatly, 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.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-first-lines-from-books-do-you-have-memorized/516382.md?page=3)