Great opening lines

Subject: Great opening lines
From: kendall
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:45 PM

How about a bit of fun?
All poems, songs and stories start with a single line. They are meant to grab you right off the bat. Some of my favorites:

In the beginning.The Bible
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.Tale of two cities
If I had wanted to live, I would have died.Silverlock
Awake, for morning in the bowl of night...Omar Khayyam.
I woke up this Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt. Sunday morning coming down.
She went down last October in a pouring driving rain.. Mary Ellen Carter.
Call me Ishmael. Moby Dick.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:53 PM

My favourite opening:

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade, but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar.

A close second:

The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. Ah wis jist sitting thair, focusing oan the telly, tryin no tae notice the cunt. He wis bringing me doon.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,kenny
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:57 PM

"Ever since the day mah dug ate Auntie Bella..........."
Sung by Iain MacIntosh [ RIP ]

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: frogprince
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 03:59 PM

I remembered this as the opening line of a cloak-and-dagger/espionage tale, and tried to google the correct book; what I got was a different book which uses it as the title .

"The last camel died at noon."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Ed
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 04:05 PM

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,jonesnudger
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 04:14 PM

The wind is in from Africa, last night I couldn't sleep - Joni Mitchell

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 04:18 PM

"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

The opening line of Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini. One of the most gripping historical novels I've ever read!

(Compared to Sabatini's original story, the movie version with Stewart Granger kinda stank a lot! The acting was fine, but the script must have been written by the legendary "infinite number of chimpanzees.")

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Wesley S
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 04:25 PM

Ten years ago on a cold dark night, someone was killed 'neath the town hall light

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 04:44 PM

"Well I'll be damned, here comes your ghost again..." Diamonds and Rust, Joan Baez. The rest of the song drags on a bit, though.
- Phil

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,999
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:07 PM

"When a Peacemaker's bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don't curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When the Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh."

Alistair MacLean, 'When Eight Bells Toll'.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:18 PM

'"Take my camel, dear", said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.' -- Rose Macaulay, The Towers Of Trebizond


'When men grow old and their balls turn cold...' -- Eskimo Nell

~M~

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Autoharper
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:19 PM

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." G.G. Marquez _One Hundred Years of Solitude_

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Guest TF.
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:20 PM

"When I think of all the crap I learned in High School" Paul Simon.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:35 PM

"Sitting in the shade of a rain-soaked orange blossom" as recorded by Lulu, composed by Tony Hazzard.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:39 PM

"I've been in this world all I wanta be.."

old gospel/religious song "Bring My Savior to Me"
-----------------------------------------
"Climb aboard a butterfly, and take off on a breeze..."

1950s pop song.. "Dreamer's Holiday"
------------------------------------------

"Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid?"

"Edward"...(and several of the following lines are kinda memorable, also)

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 05:44 PM

"There used to be olive groves in Oldham till the government went and sold 'em"...

Opening line of "I Scream for Ice Cream" by late, lamented Manchester punk band, The Corleones.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Guest
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 06:11 PM

Well I'm most depressed and sad   When following a request for a happy song form a session attendee

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Acorn4
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 06:23 PM

"I like a good bum on a woman" -Jake Thackray.

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

"Who is John Galt?"


"I dreamed I was back at Manderlay last night."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: SINSULL
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 06:35 PM

or
Last night I dreamed I was back at Manderlay



One of them is right.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Deckman
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 06:35 PM

"I haven't had so much fun since the time the hogs ate my kid sister!" ... bob nelson

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Spleen Cringe
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 06:54 PM

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Joe_F
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 08:08 PM

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
Eh bien, mon prince,...
See what the boys in the back room will have
The young man walks by himself through the crowd that thins into the night streets; feet are tired from hours of walking; eyes greedy for warm curve of faces,...
Let it rain, let it pour
Eternal Father, strong to save
You must eat when you are hungry
Inch by inch, row by row
Hark! the herald angels sing

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 08:33 PM

You read my fine print like a scholar...

a song by a long ago friend, it ends with, "I love ya, honey. That's the bottom line."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 06 Sep 12 - 11:27 PM

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:07 AM

Mama gripped onto the milkman's hand
And then she finally gave birth
Years go by still i don't know
Who shall inherit this earth

(Mark Oliver Everett (The Eels): Lucky Day in Hell.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Allen in Oz
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:39 AM

" Unemployed at last !" Such is Life. Tom Collins aka Joseph Furphy.

AD

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 02:46 AM

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day..."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,BobL
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:07 AM

Once upon a time, there was...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: gnomad
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:12 AM

"Listen to me. I will tell you the truth about a man's life. I will tell you the truth about his love for women. That he never hates them. Already you think I'm on the wrong track. Stay with me. Really - I'm a master of magic." More than a line, but a terrific short opening paragraph from Mario Puzo's 'Fools Die'

"When the girl came rushing up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes." Lindsey Davies 'The Silver Pigs'

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:15 AM

Here we go round the mulberry bush

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:29 AM

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again": Rebecca

"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.": The day of the Triffids"

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:50 AM

If music be the food of love, play on

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:53 AM

Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore

.,,.,.

I come from haunts of coot and hern

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,raymond greenoaken
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 04:25 AM

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar – Paul Simon

We're all still here, no-one has gone away – Robin Williamson

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' lazy on the sea – Rudyard Kipling

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Don Wise
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 04:27 AM

"They're selling postcards of the hanging........."


"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree"

"The morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse."

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: fat B****rd
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 05:42 AM

'It was the day my grandmother exploded' Iain Banks. The Crow Road.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Blandiver
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 05:54 AM

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, fishboat-bobbing sea.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:04 AM

Under Milkwood can only be followed by

It was a dark & stormy night ... (Snoopy)

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Northerner
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:19 AM

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 06:21 AM

Sandra ~~ Lord Lytton beat Snoopy to it, alas...

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: kendall
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 07:14 AM

I'm surprised that there are so few of the classics.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Bert
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 07:32 AM

There's a storm across the valley, clouds are rollin' in
I sing a tale of a jealous male and a maid of sweet sixteen
In Scarlet town where I was born, There was a fair maid dwellin'
I won't sing of sherbert and water for sherbert and beer do not rhyme
Believe me if all those endearing young charms which I gaze on so fondly today
Who wipes me off when I get gravy on my shirt?
Bheir me o, horo van o
Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day
Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry,
In the twilight glow I see, Blue eyes cryin' in the rain
There was a troop of Irish dragoons Come marching down thru Fyvie, O
Bows and flows of angel hair
They are shifting Daddy's bones to build a sewer
Butterfingers, I let you go.
Cailin mo rùin-sa is leannan mo ghràidh,
In days of jade there lived a maid, a prostitute of low repute

Nah! there's just too many, I'm not through the letter 'C' yet.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Micca
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 07:43 AM

"White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
    And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
    There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
    It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
    It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
    For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships....."
G K Chesterton "Lepanto"

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Wesley S
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 08:26 AM

Johnny's in the basement mixing up the medicine.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Kit Griffiths
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 08:33 AM

The mountain sheep are sweeter, but the valley sheep are fatter,
We therefore deemed it meeter to carry off the latter.

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: Larry The Radio Guy
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 09:37 AM

"Well hello there!
It's been a long long time"

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 11:35 AM

Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water

Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet

Little Polly Flinders sat among the cinders

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner

The Grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men

Hushabye baby on the tree top

Here we go looby loo, here we go looby light

Goosey Goosey Gander, whither do you wander?

One misty moisty morning when rainy was the weather

    ·································································

Within the purview of the topic of this thread, doesn't Mother Goose have it every time!...

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,PatrickH
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 12:26 PM

The rain falls on my yellow locks, and the dew wets my skin
My babe is cold in my arms, Lord Gregory let me in.


Long past the midnight curfew we sat starry-eyed

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 01:33 PM

"F**k me she's got nice tits" said the judge as he observed the woman in the dock

The Day Of The Grocer by William Rushton

Subject: RE: Great opening lines
From: GUEST,Hendrix
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 01:35 PM

A-wop bop-a loo-mop, a-lop bam-boom

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

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: 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: 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: 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: katlaughing
Date: 07 Sep 12 - 03:40 PM

gnomad, nice to see Lindsey Davis quoted...

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 03:30 PM

Arma virumque cano...

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: 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: kendall
Date: 09 Sep 12 - 04:30 PM

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

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: 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: 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: 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
Date: 26 Sep 12 - 07:58 AM

She stood on the bridge at midnight

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: 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
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: 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 - 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,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: 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: 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: 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: Richard Bridge
Date: 28 Sep 12 - 12:31 AM

100

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.