Quote your favourite opening lines to a novel.

[Deleted member 34529]

Go on, share!

 

[Rachel_Leia_Cole]

On here or in general? I haven’t read a lot on here, but one of my favorite lines ever comes from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

 

[Jerynboe]

The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.
- Blood Rites, the Dresden Files

 

[ArchlordZero]

"I'm pretty much fucked."
-The Martian by Andy Weir

 

[Deleted member 34529]

"I would have lived in peace, but my enemies brought me war", Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

 

[Nekyo]

"Mine has been a life of much shame."
- No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

I found that line very impactful the first time reading it.

 

[Our_Lady_in_Twilight]

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light.

The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

 

[AnEmberOfSundown]

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Book #2 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Jinx

 

[Sylver]

Animals don't bite as much as people do.

Chapter 3 cx a simple line yet it says a lot about the male protagonists' background and mindset in just a brief sentence.

 

[AnEmberOfSundown]

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Book #2 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Jinx

And here I was shocked that it hadn’t been posted yet, turns out I just needed to wait 4 minutes.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

And here I was shocked that it hadn’t been posted yet, turns out I just needed to wait 4 minutes.

Lol I was making sure I had the right book it was from. I couldn't remember if it was 2 or 3

 

[Deleted member 34529]

“When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.” Circe by Madeline Miller.

 

[ElijahRyne]

Go on, share!

“
There is no end though there is a start in space. — Infinite.
It has (its) own power, it ruins, and it goes though there is a start also in the star. — Finite.
Only the person who (has) wisdom can read the most foolish one from the history.
The fish that lives in the sea doesn't know the world in the land. It also ruins and goes if they have wisdom.
It is funnier that man exceeds the speed of light than fish start living in the land.
It can be said that this is (a) final ultimatum from the god to the people who can fight.
. “ Okabe Rintarou Steins;Gate Visual Novel

 

[Omarfaruq]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” — A Tale of Two Cities

 

[RainyLiquid]

"No."

 

[Deleted member 34529]

"No."

From what book?

 

[Omarfaruq]

From what book?

It's in every book ?

 

[Joyager2]

I’ve taken opening lines a bit literally here. Here’re the opening paragraphs of two of my favorites.

The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats. Beyond the marsh flats and the natural canals lies the ocean and, a little farther down the coast, a derelict lighthouse. All of this part of the country had been abandoned for decades, for reasons that are not easy to relate. Our expedition was the first to enter Area X for more than two years, and much of our predecessors' equipment had rusted, their tents and sheds little more than husks. Looking out over that untroubled landscape, I do not believe any of us could yet see the threat.

- Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

I don’t know if it’s necessarily my favorite, but it certainly is the most dramatic of my favorites.

Or maybe,

Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his. In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness that comes over us at evening, with the odour of the elephants after the rain and the sandalwood ashes growing cold in the braziers, a dizziness that makes rivers and mountains tremble on the fallow curves of the planispheres where they are portrayed, and rolls up, one after the other, the despatches announcing to us the collapse of the last enemy troops, from defeat to defeat, and flakes the wax of the seals of obscure kings who beseech our armies' protection, offering in exchange annual tributes of precious metals, tanned hides, and tortoise shell. It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our sceptre, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing. Only in Marco Polo's accounts was Kublai Khan able to discern, through the walls and towers destined to crumble, the tracery of a pattern so subtle it could escape the termites' gnawing.

From Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.