Great opening lines

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Stewie
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 05:14 AM

Last night I found Jesus Christ washing my windshield
with a crumpled up page of the Los Angeles Times
and the headlines they read we'd be better off dead
or lucky just to make it to Christmas

[Alan Whitney 'Crucifixion Waltz' from 'The Borderland' CD.]

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 12:31 AM

100

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: voyager
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 12:30 AM

I killed him for the money---and a woman
I didn't get the money. And I didn't get the woman.

Walter Neff (Fred McMurray)
Double Indemnity (James M. Cain)
Screenplay - Raymond Chandler

I'll also throw my two cents in for
'Call Me Ishmael'

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: gnomad
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 04:15 PM

"When the winds blew strongly from the North, bringing an icy reminder that the great ice-cap was still advancing, we used to pile all our stores of brushwood and broken trees in front of the cave, make a really roaring fire, and tell ourselves that however far south it came this time, even in Africa, we could meet it and beat it."

Roy Lewis 'Once upon an ice age' (Also published as 'And what we did to Father' and as 'The evolution man')

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

Joseph Heller 'Catch 22'

"When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans"

Vera Brittain 'Testament of youth'

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Fossil
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 04:04 PM

"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"

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,old git
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 03:39 PM

Aujourd'hui,maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier,je ne sais pas.
(Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday ,I don't really know)

Camus....L'Etranger....The Outsider

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,old git
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 03:14 PM

The fretwork hands stood at five past four.In the dying light of the December day the bronze face of the clock on the shelf looked black.
(The First Circle..Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

On top of it all the cancer wing was "number thirteen". (Cancer Ward

,,,,,A. Solzhenitsyn)

Mr Jones ,of the Manor Farm,had locked the hen-houses for the night,but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.
(Animal Farm....George Orwell.)

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Dave Illingworth
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 03:10 PM

Opening line of Rodney Crowell's SONG FOR THE LIFE:-

"I don't drink as much as I ought to."

Sadly others (including Johnny Cash) changed it to:

"I don't drink as much as I used to".   May be more meaningful to them, but not quite the same.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,old git
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 02:52 PM

I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three;and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. (Cider with Rosie...Laurie Lee)

In his new boots,Joe Buck was six foot one and life was different.   
(Midnight Cowboy...James Leo Herlihy)

geoff t

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: musicmick
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 10:39 AM

Sheridan Whiteside's opening line in The Man Who Came To Dinner by Kauffman and Hart, "I may vomit."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Phil B
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 09:33 AM

I went home with the waitress as I usually do

How was I to know she was with the Russians too?



Warren Zevon. Lawyers guns and money.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Anne Neilson
Date: 27 Sep 12 - 08:20 AM

"Arise, ye workers (starvelings) from your slumbers!"

Or how about "Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin."? (Impressive to a non-believing 10 year-old, though possibly more for the tune...)

And definitely one of my favourites, as well as "Ever since the day my dug ate Auntie Bella" (quoted by the second poster -- written by Jimmy Copeland, the late Scottish actor) --

   "I to the hills will lift mine eyes", first line of Paraphrase 121 in the Scottish Metrical Psalms.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: The Sandman
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 06:45 PM

once upon a time there was a little white bull

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Joe_F
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 06:32 PM

"The meanest man in the United States, unearthed the other day in Chicago..." -- beginning of a newspaper column by H. L. Mencken in 1908. Who could resist reading on?

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Gill
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 05:38 PM

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island from the beginning to the end...
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest...
and I guess you know the rest...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Midchuck
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 02:39 PM

Let me sit down a minute, a stone got in my shoe.
Don't you commence your cursin', I ain't done nothin' to you.
Once I was young and handsome, had plenty o' cash and clothes.
That was before I got to tipplin', and the gin got in my nose.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Micca
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 01:14 PM

[Silence]

FIRST VOICE [very softly]

To begin at the beginning:

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.
Dylan Thomas, "Under Milk Wood"

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 01:00 PM

In -------town, where I was born, there was a fair maid dwellin'

My mother done me deadly spite, for she sent thieves in the dark of the night...

As I walked out one bright summer's morning..

etc anon strikes again...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 12:47 PM

When a man grows old,
And his balls grow cold,
And the tip ...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 11:54 AM

nOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT MADE GLORIOUS SUMMER BY THIS SUN OD YORK   Though I'm a Lancastrian I still think this is as good an opening line as any.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: meself
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 10:09 AM

'Twas on the good ship Venus,
My god, you should have seen us!

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 08:57 AM

There's always been Ethel !!....
Peter Gabriel

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs ...
Paul McCartney

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: ranger1
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 08:29 AM

Terence, this is stupid stuff - A. E. Housman
Tiger, tiger, burning bright - William Blake

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Hendrix
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 08:19 AM

Well Frank settled down in the valley, and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 07:58 AM

She stood on the bridge at midnight

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Black Belt Caterpillar Wrestler
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 07:29 AM

"Life is hard but life is hardest when you're dumb". - Mark Graham.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Clive Pownceby
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 06:49 AM

"You've got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend. When I was down you just stood there grinning."

Dylan - Positively 4th Street

"Oh my but you have a pretty face, you favour a girl that I knew. I imagine that she's back in Tennessee and by God I should be there too. I've a sadness too sad to be true."

Jesse Winchester - Brand New Tennessee Waltz



                         Ain't it the truth?

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: BrendanB
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 06:40 AM

'Wasted and wounded, it ain't what the moon did, I got what I paid for now'.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 06:22 AM

A specialist drift ~~ IYO which of Shax plays has best opening line?

12N "Music food of love"
Riii "Winter of discontent"
Hamlet "Who's there?" "Nay, answer me!"
???

My own candidtae is probably Ant&Cleo: "Nay, but this dotage of our general's O'erflows the measure" -- obviously middle of a conversation, lands us superbly & dramatically in medias res. Unfortunately a rather uneven and messy and largely opaque play thereafter, IMO. Reminds me always of Rossini on Wagner: "de beaux moments, mais de mauvais quart d'heures."

~M~

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: kendall
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:30 PM

Marley was dead; to begin with... A Christmas Carol.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:21 PM

It was the beast of times, it was the wurst of times. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 03:35 PM

שיר השירים אשר לשלומו

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 03:30 PM

Arma virumque cano...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,achmelvich
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 03:09 PM

her i am in your room, going through your stuff -said you'd be gone 5 minutes, that's time enough......

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 02:12 PM

Reminding me of some more books to reread -- everything on my shelves by Sabatini, "Towers of Trebizond"...just reread "Moby-Dick" not that long ago (but I find new things in it every time I read it).

Linn

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: DMcG
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:38 AM

"Science is the study of live, dead, and never-alive things. It is also about what happens to them". Not exactly famous, but it was the first sentence I copied into my science notebook at primary school and I clearly remember thinking that this was education really started.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:02 AM

In comes the captain's daughter, the captain of the Yeos
Saying "Brave United Irishmen, we'll ne'er again be foes."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Acorn4
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 11:38 AM

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

Kafka "Metamorphosis".

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Mark Ross
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 09:58 AM

For Don Firth. The opening line from SCARAMOUCHE is my absolute favorite opening line.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 08:41 AM

from a song,
1. In Nottamun town, not a soul would look up,
Not a soul would look up, not a soul would look down,
Not a soul would look up, not a soul would look down,
To show me the way to fair Nottamun town.
and this my all time favourite
'Twas gettin' dark, the team got bogged,
The axle snapped in two
I lost me matches and me pipe,
Now what was I to do?
The rains come down, 'twas bitter cold,
And hungry too was I
And the dog shat in the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai ..

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Bainbo
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 08:33 AM

I love Warren Zevon's For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer.

Opening line: "I can saw a woman in two / But you won't want to look in the box when I do."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: kendall
Date: 08 Sep 12 - 07:19 AM

Sing oh goddess the anger of Achilles... The Iliad of Homer.

Tell me, oh Muse of that ingenious hero...The Odyssey of Homer.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 08:41 PM

"I'm going back, can't way for day" from Rocky River Home

MtheGM 05:18 PM

'"Take my camel, dear", said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.' - I've gotta read this!

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Brian Peters
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:16 PM

"Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months."

J. G. Ballard, High Rise

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:40 PM

gnomad, nice to see Lindsey Davis quoted...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Howard Jones
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:20 PM

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

Ian Banks, The Crow Road

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: gnomad
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:58 PM

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,        
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;        
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot        
O'er the grave where our hero we buried."

'The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna', Charles Wolfe.

"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

'The charge of the Light Brigade', Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

'The Old Man and the Sea' Ernest Hemingway.

"Have you stood by the ocean on a diamond-hard morning,
And felt the horizon stir deep in your soul;
Watched the wake of a steamer as it cut through blue water,
Been gripped by a fever you just can't control?"

'Safe In The Harbour' Eric Bogle.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:47 PM

"she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff I was
careful of her"

e.e.cummings

(who knows where the 1st line ends in a cummings poem?)

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,petecockermouth
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:36 PM

hot chilli peppers in the blistering sun...

rest of the line isn't so hot - nor has it popped into my brain most days in the last 40 years. and no,it hasn't become annoying, yet.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Don Firth
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:27 PM

Two nearly guaranteed LAST lines in real life:

"Hey, guys! Watch this!"

And

"What's this red button for?"

Don Firth