Favorite introduction lines to novels?

What is your favorite introduction line to a novel, something that grabbed you immediately?



Some of my favorites:

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would get the flowers herself"

- Mrs. Dalloway

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know"

- The Stranger

Favorite introduction lines to novels?
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta" (opening line of Nabakov's Lolita)



["fire of my loins" - how could you not want to read the rest?]
Reply:loved The Stranger

Mine is from "The Famished Road" by Ben Okri

"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry"
Reply:"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

-The Restaurant At the End of the Universe\



I would consider those the introductory lines but I feel it absolutely necessary to type out about the first paragraph for posterity's sake.



"Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel."
Reply:Not sure if its the opening line or not but from Grapes of Wrath "Sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land". I haven't read the book but its also the opening line from Pink Floyd's Sorrow.
Reply:i like the lolita one too and the tale of two cities one :)



'Marley was dead to begin with' A Christmas Carol, very famous.



'I've lost the baby? I can't have lost the baby- I never lose anything' From, I admit, my own, The Seventh Commandment.



'It was a pleasure to burn'. Fahrenheit 451.



Who wrote The Stranger?
Reply:My absolute favourite :~



"It was the day my grandmother exploded"

- 'The Crow Road' ~ Ian Banks
Reply:Revised answer;



"For the rest of her life Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son's death..."

- The Little Friend by Donna Tartt



and



"My father's family name being Pirrip and my Christian name being Phillip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit that Pip. So, i called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip"

- Great Expectations by Charkes Dickens



Slightly off-topic ramble; I had to study Great Expectations in school and I hated it but it's funny how when you come out of the educational situation and just read it for the sake of it how the appreciation grows.

... go to sleep Cinnamon. ha.
Reply:the stranger















last night the most
Reply:"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." - Rebecca



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



"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." - Jane Eyre
Reply:lolita...but its already taken...



i love this conversation off Walter Dean Mayer's "Fallen Angels":



"Somebody must have told those suckers I was coming."

"Told who?" I asked.

"The Congs man. Who do you think I am talking about?"

"Why do you think somebody told them you were coming?"

"' 'Cause I don't see none of them around here. They don't want their butts kicked."

"I'm going to go in the bathroom," he said. "Make sure they ain't none in there."

"Does he really think we are in Vietnam already?" Specialist, 5th class Judy Duncan asked.





Yeah...Its a good book...depressing, but good.

"the spoils of war" too...
Reply:"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was 14 when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

----The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold



"There was nothing left to say."

---- The Pact by Jodi Picoult
Reply:"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."

--L P Hartley, The Go Between
Reply:It was the best of times it was the worst of times...
Reply:"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

--Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy
Reply:"Dear mom,

some one's trying to kill me"

-nightmare mountain, peg kehret



"i didn't write this story..."

-tennis shoes among the nephites, book one.

mens leather boots