15 ways: favorite first lines

favorite first lines

← created by cobra libre on April 9, 2005, with contributions from pogo, pusgums, Gaijin, fhazel, blueyed pop, and SudoNimm. →

from novels, stories, poems, songs, plays, movies, essays, editorials, prefaces, epilogues, web pages, cookbook recipes, comic books, whatever

For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story. (added by cobra libre)
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. (added by cobra libre)
There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl. (added by cobra libre)
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. (added by cobra libre)
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. (added by cobra libre)
The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passageways. (added by cobra libre)
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free. (added by cobra libre)
Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. (added by pogo)
I am a cat. (added by pogo)
The moment one learns English, complications set in. (added by pogo)
I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. (added by pogo)
When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie," which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta. (added by pogo)
A merry little surge of electricity piped by automatic alarm from the mood organ beside his bed awakened Rick Deckard. (added by pusgums)
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. (added by pusgums)
When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. (added by pusgums)
McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed / There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head. (added by pusgums)
No sun will shine in my day today / The high yellow moon won't come out to play. (added by pusgums)
Well my daddy left home when I was three, and he didn't leave much for ma and me / Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze. (added by pusgums)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (added by cobra libre)
First, you make a roux. (added by pogo)
Verde que te quiero verde. (added by pogo)
When I cannot look at your face, I look at your feet. (added by pogo)
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. (added by pogo)
Well, I'm a King Bee buzzin' around your hive... (added by pogo)
Hello, I'm a truck. (added by Gaijin)
I am the God of Hellfire!!! (added by Gaijin)
It is not the living, it is the being lived on. I must remember to write that, along with some other things, down. (added by Gaijin)
The mother of Little Tancred sent him into the twilight to buy three pennies' worth of tapioca with which to make their evening meal. (added by Gaijin)
One winter morning Friedrich woke with an idea for a joke. (added by Gaijin)
if everything happens that can't be done (added by cobra libre)
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. (added by cobra libre)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre (added by cobra libre)
Mrs. van Bleck of the Newport van Blecks/Is so goddamn rich she has gold-plated sex (added by Gaijin)
Whan that Aprille with his shoores soote/The drought of March hath perced to the roote/And bethed every vein in swich liquor/Of which vertu engendred is the flour (added by Gaijin)
God told me to skin you alive. (added by Gaijin)
Hi everybody, I'm Archie Bell of the Drells from Houston, Texas. We don't only sing, but we dance just as good as we walk. (added by Gaijin)
Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard, but I think: OH BONDAGE UP YOURS! (added by cobra libre)
When shall we three meet again/In thunder, lightning, or in rain?/When the hurlyburly comes/When the battle's lost and won/That will be ere the set of sun (added by Gaijin)
You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't. (added by cobra libre)
All you punks and all you teds / National fronts and natty dreads / Mods, rockers, hippys and -- skinheads / Keep on fighting 'til your dead. (added by pusgums)
It is dangerous to go alone! Take this. (added by pusgums)
I'm a mummy! I scare people! (added by pogo)
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. (added by fhazel)
cub is goddess. (added by blueyed pop)
Man is his own star; and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man, commands all light, all influence, all fate; nothing to him falls early or too late. (added by SudoNimm)
Hi, we're the weather girls, and have we got news for you! (added by SudoNimm)

comments

posted 2005-04-11 11:45 AM by pogo:

This list is making me happy because it’s caused me to revisit e.e. cummings and be so in love with everything he wrote that i can’t even pick just one to add here.

posted 2005-04-11 12:36 PM by cobra libre:

oops, i was testing things and deleted the cummings line that i had initially included, and then i read your comment. so i added another.

it’s easier for me to pick one now, since i’m at work and have to rely on my poor memory.

posted 2005-04-11 02:39 PM by Gaijin:

I’m having that problem with e.e. cummings too. also, prince.

posted 2005-04-11 04:13 PM by pogo:

I thought Archie Bell said, “We dance just as good as we want!”

posted 2005-04-11 07:33 PM by Gaijin:

Actually, I did too. I looked up the lyrics, and it said, “walk.” I dunno. I like “want” better.

posted 2005-04-12 07:15 AM by cobra libre:

I always thought he was saying, “Hi everybody, I’m Archie Bell and the Drells,” which made me giggle.

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