Scaramouche:
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
Hmm. You’re right. Which is too bad, because while it’s a joke it’s not nearly as good a one. I wonder if I’m remembering some National Lampoon spoof or the like?
“Death came for him by mistake” - Black Steel.
“Death came quietly to The Row.” - Sten.
“Death came for Bork’s sister during the party.” - Brother Death.
“Imprimis, they nuked the spaceport.” - We Few.
Besides the two above – and I only know “It was a dark and stormy night” from Peanuts; knew it was from an actual novel but can never remember which one – there’s:
“Mother died yesterday; or maybe today, I don’t know.” Albert Camus, The Stranger. And I’m not even sure I have that correct.
Lessee,
“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
“Mother died today.” - The Stranger
“Events cast shadows before them, but the larger shadows creep over us unseen.” - Logopolis. (A Doctor Who novelization. Does that count?)
I used to know this kinda stuff.
Ah, see? I screwed it up above.
“The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” I liked this one, because the meaning has changed, most peoples TV’s turn a sky blue when there’s no signal nowadays.
Do plays count: “Now is the winter of our discontent, turned glorious summer by this son of York”.
Only kinda remember this one:
“Rage
Sing o ye muses of the rage of Peleus’s son
Murderous man killer
That cost the Acheans so many good men,
dragged down to Hades.”
Call me Ishmael
and
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed
Well, I know quite a few famous first lines, but, of books I’ve read, only one first line stuck with me.
‘There was a wall.’ - The Dispossessed, Ursula LeGuin.
Among others:
“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”
Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers.
I find it rings true.
I once saw a photo of the first MS page of 1984, typed but covered with Orwell’s handwritten edits. There was very little white space showing. He rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” - The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
“Fred was halfway to the safe house when he realized that he should’ve put down plastic before dumping Ron’s headless body in the trunk.” - Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler (paraphrased - that’s close to it, at least).
I always assumed that “13 O’clock” was just a Britishism for 1pm that was current at the time, which would make the sentence not so interesting. Wikipedia is somewhat ambigious:
Maybe one of our older british posters can set us straight. Was a “clock striking 13” supposed to invoke a slightly different and futuristic world to Orwells readers, or was it just a common way of saying it was an hour after noon.
“Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.”
“The Sun did not shine.”
- “Arma virumque cano Trojae qui primus ab oris…”
(Opening line of “The Aeneid,” which I know only because Father Callaghan taught us to sing it to the tune of “The Stars and Stripes Forever”)
2. “Marley was dead, to begin with” (Gee, I wonder who’ll solve THAT one.)
- “Riverrun” is the first "sentence of “Finnegans Wake.” The last “sentence” is “along the.”
I confess freely, I never managed to read much of what lay between those lines.
I’ve NEVER read anything by Nabokov, but I still know the opening line:
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
“The British are frequently criticized by other nations for their dislike of change, and indeed we love England for those aspects of nature and life which change the least.”
Mutiny on the Bounty
“The gale tore at him and he felt its bite deep within and he knew that if they did not make landfall in three days they would all be dead.”
Shogun
I was a big Robert A. Heinlein fan in my youth, so I can remember a couple of first lines from his books:
“You see I had this space suit.” (“Have Space Suit – Will Travel”)
“Max liked this time of day, this time of year.” (“Starman Jones”)
Who remembers the first line to Tom Sawyer?
“Tom!”
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).
And “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth”.
“He was one hundred and seventy days dying, and not yet dead”.