ITT: perfect opening lines >The man in black fled across

>Call me Ishmael.
It's so simple, yet so effective.

>Bitch be spitting teeth out afta they done sucking on my dick.

>>9209870
A Wrinkle in Time:

"It was a dark and stormy night."

>>9209878
i never understood why this line is loved by so many, i sure would love to know why.

>>9209878
I never understood why this was so praised.

>>9209949
>>9209951

lol thought I had posted the same thing twice for a second there

>>9209878
too obvious dude suggest a different one.

>Wir liegen neun Kilometer hinter der Front

>riverrun

>>9209870
I wish The Gunslinger was just its own book, it's so good but everything after in that infernal series is torture to read.

>>9209870

>Waking up to a loud crash rarely means something good is happening. It’s never “CRASH! Mom made pancakes!” or “CRASH! We decided to adopt a Golden Retriever!”

>Call me Ishmael.

This is how you instantly connect the reader to the character in less than 3 words.

Imagine being in a bar and a very attractive guy just walks up to you and says, "Hi, My name's ____.", you instantly connect with them because of their confidence. Also, think about the authoritative barrier that gets knocked down when someone tells you to call them by their name. From the perspective of the japs, you only use their last name out of respect, until the person tells you to use their first name. In a way you connect with Ishmael for both of these reasons when he says "call me Ishmael."

Does anyone have a link to read Moby's Dick online?

"I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies" is unironically a fantastic line

"You're probably wondering"

>>9210013

Here's your (you) and your "holy... I want more," in that order exactly

>>9210076
I instantly knew that was DFW despite only reading ch1 of infinite jest briefly, and nearly a year ago. Holy shit, maybe he's not a meme after all. I gotta actually sit down and read that book. No idea how I was able to recall that almost instantly, I guess his writing really is memorable, even at a subconscious level.

>>9209951
>>9209949
quoting the first line of a classic or popular book makes you seem cultured and cool without effort

>>9210076
only well written sequence in the book

>The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.

That's pretty sick

"You're dead."

I always liked the first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

>Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice

>>9210013
crash! only one golden retriever remained, two if you counted mom's pancakes.

One morning near the end of October not long before the first drops of the mercilessly long autumn rains began to fall on the cracked and saline soil on the western side of the estate (later the stinking yellow sea of mud would render footpaths impassable and put the town too beyond reach) Futaki woke to hear bells

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

Straight to the point, no bullshitting around it.

>It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

>>9210013
I honestly just learned today that this wasn't a John Green excerpt.

In the Game of Thrones, some win, some lose: WATCH OUT!

>>9209870
I honestly tried reading that book and got bored immediately. Is something wrong with me?

My favourite one
>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.

>I put on my robe and wizard hat.

>>9210176
>Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to score ice
Brilliant!

why are these threads the same 20 fucking lines every time

moby dick
100 yrs of solitude
kafka
mason and dixon
gravity's rainbow
the iliad / the aeneid (never the odyssey)
the fucking gunslinger
a bunch of memers
some faulkner
infinite jest
lolita
mrs dalloway
gatsby
notes from underground
the stranger
portrait of the artist
sometimes jane austen
sometimes calvino

like fuck
do we read any other books
do we read any books
god dammit lit
aren't you sick of this shit

just fucking google "iconic opening lines" and it's the same shit

alright and I'll share something so I'm not just complaining.
Coetzee's Disgrace
"For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well"

>>9210069
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=moby+dick&go=Go

>>9209870

See the child.

>>9209870

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.

>>9209870

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

>Midnight mass of dismembered members of the Low Lutheran Church; a flock disbanded by the Booming Bells, a scurried snow fight on the whitened steps of a Church not hundred years old, yet forgotten by the once-so-bold; and a priest awakens from his Red Sleep down in the crypt, covered in cold, red wine stains and - not his - shit.
Some anon once posted this. Still think it's brilliant.

>>9209949
>>9209951
Have you ever tried to understand, its like 3 words?
1. He doesn't say "my name is Ishmael" he says "call me" suggesting that his name might not actually be ishmael, and because of this inauthentic persona presented, his narrative might be inauthentic or partly inauthentic as well.
2. call me also has the suggestion of intimacy, ie my name is robert, but call me bob, which sets the tone for his intimate and conversational tone throughout the rest of the narrative
3. Ishmael contains biblical significance

Thats just a surface level examination of the opening sentence,I'm sure if you sat down and applied yourself you could come up with more.

>>9210300
this.
fucking plebs on this board srsly!

>>9210293
isn't this from a pynchon novel?

>>9209903
o scholar where might this beautiful prose come from

>>9209878
Gives me that shitty 80s movie vibe.

>>9210300
>>9210310
alright alight mate, calm you yourselves, blimeh

>>9210320

Lil' Machinegun & He Crew

>>9210064
Is this a joke?

>-Money? in a voice that rustled.
From 'J R,' perfect opening

>Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster
From 'Laughter in the Dark,' by Nabokov. Very underrated btw

File: 1438385040118.jpg (50KB, 512x397px) Image search: [Google]

50KB, 512x397px

>>9210112
No.

>Jim not that way Jim. That's no way to treat a garage door, bending stiffly down at the waist and yanking at the handle so the door jerks up and out jerky and hard and you crack your shins and my ruined knees, son. Let's see you bend at the healthy knees. Let's see you hook a soft hand lightly over the handle feeling its subtle grain and pull just as exactly gently as will make it come to you. Experiment, Jim. See just how much force you need to start the door easy, let it roll up out open on its hidden greasy rollers and pulleys in the ceiling's set of spiderwebbed beams. Think of all garage doors as the well-oiled open-out door of a broiler with hot meat in, heat roiling out, hot. Needless and dangerous ever to yank, pull, shove, thrust. Your mother is a shover and a thruster, son. She treats bodies outside herself without respect or due care. She's never learned that treating things in the gentlest most relaxed way is also treating them and your own body in the most efficient way. It's Marlon Brando's fault, Jim. Your mother back in California before you were born, before she became a devoted mother and long-suffering wife and breadwinner, son, your mother had a bit part in a Marlon Brando movie. Her big moment. Had to stand there in saddle shoes and bobby sox and ponytail and put her hands over her ears as really loud motorbikes roared by. A major thespian moment, believe you me. She was in love from afar with this fellow Marlon Brando, son. Who? Who. Jim, Marlon Brando was the archetypal new-type actor who ruined it looks like two whole generations' relations with their own bodies and the everyday objects and bodies around them. No? Well it was because of Brando you were opening that garage door like that, Jimbo. The disrespect gets learned and passed on. Passed down. You'll know Brando when you watch him, and you'll have learned to fear him. Brando, Jim, Jesus, B-r-a-n-d-o. Brando the new archetypal tough-guy rebel and slob type, leaning back on his chair's rear legs, coming crooked through doorways, slouching against everything in sight, trying to dominate objects, showing no artful respect or care, yanking things toward him like a moody child and using them up and tossing them crudely aside so they miss the wastebasket and just lie there, ill-used. With the over-clumsy impetuous movements and postures of a moody infant. Your mother is of that new generation that moves against life's grain, across its warp and baffles. She may have loved Marlon Brando, Jim, but she didn't understand him, is what's ruined her for everyday arts like broilers and garage doors and even low-level public-park knock-around tennis. Ever see your mother with a broiler door? It's carnage, Jim, it's to cringe to see it, and the poor dumb thing thinks it's tribute to this slouching slob-type she loved as he roared by.

File: hello earthlings.png (379KB, 640x483px) Image search: [Google]

379KB, 640x483px

>>9210316
No.

Searching it in quotes on Google, I only find a /lit/ thread and a "veekyforums" thread.

>>9210355
I loved that bit. The Eschaton chapter was really fun too

>>9210365
damn. i always thought it was from, say, mason & dixon. never trust /lit/.
it's pynchon-esque though...

File: tmp_4105-Tumblr_inline_ncwy0aXinj1r23t7i-704544777.jpg (67KB, 424x255px) Image search: [Google]

67KB, 424x255px

>Yo what's up my name is Ishmael and we're going to hunt Moby Dick, or The Whale.

FUCKING REALLY

>CRASH, Pancakes, Golden Retrievers. Some called it the Unholy Trinity or an Omen. I called it business as usual.

>Call me CRASH.

File: into the trash it goes.jpg (31KB, 300x400px) Image search: [Google]

31KB, 300x400px

>>9210243
>gigantic insect
>not "monstrous vermin"

>>9210455
This, gigantic insect is a trash translation

>There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

>The world is my idea : " — this is a truth
which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness.

>The world is everything that is the case

Stately, plump

>Crash! Only one Korean pancake remained; two, if you counted the Golden Retriever.

>>9210090
Do it. Some parts you'll have to power through but the book is immensely rewarding if you manage to complete it. It made me completely reevaluate and changed the way I treated people in my life.

>I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man.

>My whole life I've been a fraulein

>>9210355
Fuck, that's beautiful

File: time to go.gif (616KB, 200x200px) Image search: [Google]

616KB, 200x200px

>>9210493
>spiteful

See the child.

Better than Moby Dick imho

File: vomit.jpg (134KB, 1300x1363px) Image search: [Google]

134KB, 1300x1363px

>>9210064
go back

I really liked the opening dialogue in War and Peace.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Literally the greatest sentence ever written.

>>9210258

underrated

File: SLAYERS_EXCELLENTOVA02BDRIP_1440x1080_x264_FLAC.mkv_snapshot_26.09_2016.05.20_03.42.45.jpg (116KB, 1504x1080px) Image search: [Google]

116KB, 1504x1080px

>>9210069
>reading online
>reading moby dick online

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

>>9210635

That sentence, man. It's the perfect example of three or four rhetorical figures. I wish I could remember them. Parataxis is one of them.

>>9210064
I'm sorry what

>>9210143
"I'm dead?"

>>9210253
Which version? The earlier copies are pretty bad - they're just stitched together from short stories that King got published in Playboy or some shit. The later editions (from ~2002 onwards) are more polished and have a more cohesive narrative.

>He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

Fucking beautiful.

>>9210815
from?

>>9210013
crashes rarely good
never CRASH! mom made pancakes
or CRASH!
mom adopt golden retriever

>All this happened, more or less.
Spicy first line for a spicy ass book

I'm searching I'm searching I'm trying to understand

>>9210849
>saying "spicy"
>Liking that dumb lmao so randumb meme book
Please go back to plebbit

>>9210876
yeah you're right, probably should have written a novel on why "Call me Ishmael" is the greatest thing a human has ever written

>>9210897
Atleast then you wouldn't have come off as 15 year old wannabe memester

>It was a pleasure to burn.
I hated F451 but I'll never forget that opening line.

>>9210959
like a bad neochmia

>Boo!

Nearly shit my pants with that one.

Who is John Galt?

>>9210284
>
shit, I have to read this

>>9209870
>I am a product of Don Smith's balls

>I am an invisible man.

>>9210300
Honestly I gotta wonder if Melville actually thought about shit like this or just started started the narrative with the main character's name in mind

>What should be the opening line?.....
>Whatever its not like I'm writing the greatest novel in my country's history, just a story about whales
>hmmm, fuck it. Call me Ishmael!

>>9210452

>OOGA BOOGA!

All this talk about Call Me Ishmael reminds me of the book Memoir From Antproof Case which starts in this manner:
>"Call me Oscar Progresso."
only to be followed by
>"Or, for that matter, call me anything you want, as Oscar Progresso is not my name. Nor are Baby Supine, Euclid Cherry, Franklyn Nuts, or any of the other aliases that, now and then over the years, I have been forced to adopt. No one knows my real name anymore: it’s been too long. And all the things that I myself once knew are like a ship glittering in the dark, moving away from me as I am left in homely silence. My time is drawing to a close, so I thought I would take one last shot."
The protagonist's name is never mentioned again after the opening.

>>9209870
Good fucking choice OP, that's epic

>>9211064
>melville doesn't know what to write
>oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck
>copy and pastes some 19th century whaling manual
>wew, that was a close one

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

C’était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d’Hamilcar.

>>9211064
Moby Dick was just an adventure book first and foremost. He never had notions of making it some intelligent literary piece.

>>9211743
That's just not true. He started writing it as a whaling adventure, then drastically revised and altered his approach after befriending Hawthorne and reading Shakespeare.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick

>>9210179
kek'd

>>9210820
Underworld, iirc

To the vermin that first nibbled the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with wistful remembrance these posthumous memories.

>The Minotaur sits on an empty pickle bucket blowing smoke through bullish nostrils.

>>9210411
It was from a critique thread, some anon actually wrote it

Not a novel, but I've always liked 'Let us go then, you and I'

>>9209870
>Dear Diary,

>>9211743
Lol not sure where you got that my man

File: contempt-500x354.jpg (33KB, 500x354px) Image search: [Google]

33KB, 500x354px

>>9209870

>>9209870
>So I've stopped masturbating. The voices in my head didn't actually condone it when I did it.

>>9211844
Look, I don't mean to be rude, Anon, but this is a little bit garbage.

>>9209929
Shitbook

>>9209929
That author taught at my school, terrible book.

>>9211743
Have you read it? It clearly makes huge literary/philosophical pretensions. I don't make pretension in the sense of pretentiousness, either.

>Money...? in a voice that rustled

Also,

>Here they come, marching into American sunlight.

>>9210815
That book is full of beauty. It sure is disjointed as hell, but goddamn if it's not full of beauty.

>>9210455
>>9210463
Ever since I learned it was definitely not an insect I'm annoyed that I can't remember what the (Dutch) translation I read called it.

>>9213415
ur a little bit garbage

>Four soldiers, Severus Severianus Caropophorus Victorinus, cross the market blocks, knowing they will be detained.

>The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

>>9211427
lek

>>9209951

Ishmael was the first circumcised son in the Torah, its simultaneously a statement of frustration with society and a dick joke in just three words.

A tale of two cities

Opening lines are so overrated. Who gives a fuck.

So is nobody going to call out OP for posting fucking Stephen King?

>Maman died today.

Obligatory (?)

>>9216267
Let me guess, you have a great personality to make up for it?

>It was love at first sight
>I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man. No, I’m not a pleasant man at all.”

>>9210269
Well, to be fair, the quote you posted is shit.

>>9209870

>I sing of warfare, and a man at war.

>>9210239
Works even better in the film

AUJOURDHUI

Who's there?

>Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight
The tin drum was amazing

>Niggers. Niggers never change.

Now, I only needed to score one more point to win the championship. Two if you counted God.

The telephone that was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 became a staple in 50,000 American households alone within 4 years.

>>9210269

...Because they have great opening lines?

Dad kicked the bucket today, or what is it yesterday? Heck if I know.

>ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ / πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν:

>>9210069
Find something better to read. Moby is a shitty fag musician and his dick is probably tiny and full of aids

>>9209870
April is the cruellest month, breeding

>>9210698
Especially when you tie it to the end. Absolute genius.

>>9209870
Is this singlehandedly the best thing King has ever written?

>>9219079

Yes. He even thinks so himself

My grandmother's cousin's neighbor's dog's veterinarian's wife bought the farm today. Wait a second, wasn't it yesterday? Ah fuck it, I can't remember.

“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

>>9215416
Came here to post this.

>>9209870
>>9219079

It's really fucking mediocre guys.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour