Apr 22 2008
This is the one about the first line.
I’m a sucker for a good hook. I have purchased a book simply because when I opened it up and read the opening line it worked. I wanted to throw together a collection of good opening lines from some of my favorite novels. Do you have any favorite hooks?
In no particular order.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
“Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.”
Apathy And Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
“I was stealing saltshakers again.”
Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates
“I was a child murderer. I don’t mean child-murderer, though that’s an idea. I mean child murderer, that is a murderer that happens to be a child, or a child who happens to be a murderer. You can take your choice.”
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
“What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask.”
The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
“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.”
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish aboard. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.”
Sammy’s Hill by Kristin Gore
“The party really started to rock when Willie Nelson and Queen Nefertiti began pouring shots.”
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
“It began as a mistake.”
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
“All of this happened, more or less.”
Pizza and beer at NiMarcos in Flagstaff.
Great Post!
What do you think of this first line:
“Mile after endless mile, past oaks and lakes and towns, I long for you while counting white lines and dreaming of warm winds blowing stars around us.”
I found you through entrecard and I’m going to favorite you…looking forward to checking back often.
Cheers!
OMG…I heart you! Here are mine!
“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
“Havana vanities come to dust in Miami” — Miami
“I will be her witness” — A book of common prayer
[...] of the most favorite first lines of your favorite books have been compiled in a list, but before you take a peek there, maybe you’d like to test your knowledge first by taking [...]
“Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar’s own figuring, hardly human at all.” -”Dirty White Boys” by Stephen Hunter