Tag: line Page 1 of 2
33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. “Stop!” cried the groaning old man at last, “Stop! I did not drag…
32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are…
31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz) Part of my 100…
30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from…
29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project….
28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful. It’s the…
27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a…
26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful. It’s the author’s best chance to…
24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for…
25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) Part of my 100 Best First…
23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she,…
22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which…
21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Part…
20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show….
19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they…
18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First…
17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down…
16. 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…
14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979;…
15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are…
13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell) Part…
12. You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. —Mark Twain,…
11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss…
10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful. It’s the author’s…
9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the…
8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels…
7. 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….
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett) Part of my 100 Best…
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful….
4. 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. —Gabriel…