Before we get to this week’s You Tell Me, I have a request, nay, a plea. Please please please don’t forget about the blog archives — they are down on the right side of the page, just itching to be clicked on. The older posts get lonely and they need friends, and then they start getting depressed and they turn to the drinking, and pretty soon I have a bunch of drunken old blog posts blathering about how people have forgotten all about them and confuse them with old Miss Snark posts and that gets them to fighting and I really don’t need a riot on my hands. (Those of you wondering about how to query trilogies and series, please visit this post from July). Thanks for your understanding. They’re crazy, I know.
So for this week’s You Tell Me, I’ve been wondering: What is your favorite first line in a novel? And why did it hook you?
I’d have to go with the old standby: “Call me Ishmael.” So simple, so awesome. Also because MOBY DICK happens to be my favorite novel.
What’s yours?
Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!
For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.
And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!
I’m with topher1961. Favorite first line…
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice–not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he’s the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
My favorite: “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.” A Judgment in Stone by Ruth Rendell
This breaks all the rules — tells the reader who committed the murders and why — and sucks the reader into the madness because of it.
Wish I’d written it!
This is off topic as it’s my first visit to your site. I was cruising down your ‘Books by My Clients’ and stopped dead in my tracks when I came to ‘The Philadelphian’. Richard Powell couldn’t possibly be your client (he wrote The Philadelphian in 1956) unless – a) your photo has had some major retouches, b) you have a terrific plastic surgeon or c) you’ve discovered the fountain of youth!
Linnea
Call me, Ishmael. I’m not totally sold on the entire novel, but that first line is killer.
I would always vote for the way JD Salinger introduces us to Holden Caulfield, and the way Nabokov brings us Humbert Humbert, but they’ve already been mentioned so I’ll add:
For a children’s classic, how about, “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents” (Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN)
For a more adult adventure: “Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara. It was a local and I intended to sleep on the beach at Santa Barbara that night . . .”
(Kerouac, THE DHARMA BUMS, a book I have always preferred to ON THE ROAD).
Linnea-
Yes so! Yes so!
Richard Powell has passed away, but I proudly represent his works. Representation does not usually end at the grave — Curtis Brown represents many literary estates, and I look after Richard Powell’s works, make sure they are in print, and try to find new audiences for them. I sold the edition of THE PHILADELPHIAN that I link to on my site.
I definitely sell bottles of Fountain of Youth water, but that’s another story entirely.
linnea:
You missed the Winston Churchill volume shown immediately above Richard Powell’s book. Churchill died in 1965.
My guess is that Curtis, Brown represents these writers’ estates and that Mr. Bransford handles these accounts on a day-to-day basis. If so, it’s an interesting aspect of the business.
Sorry.
Nathan has a faster finger on the ‘enter’ key than I do.
getitwritten_guy-
Correct. Representing literary estates is one of my favorite things about this job — I represented the Churchill estate on the recent new edition of THE WORLD CRISIS and on an upcoming new collection of quotes (which I will be able to speak more about in the future).
“At fifteen minutes after midnight on January sixth, when Merrill Liberty took a phone call at her table in Liberty’s Restaurant, she had thirty minutes to live.”
Judging Time, Leslie Glass
Actually, I love the way all the April Woo mysteries start–right away, someone doesn’t know they’re about to die!
“The moment the door opened I knew an ass-kicking was inevitable. Whether I’d be giving it or receiving it was still a bit of a mystery.” ~Rachel Vincent, Stray
Okay, so it’s two lines, but the first is fun on it’s own, just better with the second.
“Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.”
Brilliant, no?
The Pride and Prejudice one. It’s already been posted, and looks like it’s a favorite of many. Best first line ever!
I’m not much for first lines… I usually like last lines much better. That being said, the only first line I can remember off the top of my head has got to be one of the greatest ever…
“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.” UGLIES, Scott Westerfeld. I don’t know why, but I love that line. It’s actually the whole reason I bought and read the book in the first place.
Amanda h, I, too, think of Snoopy when I read “It was a dark and stormy night.’
Branfan — oh! Awesome choice! I’d forgotten that one, but only 5 words into it, I knew exactly what it was!!! chills.
Scott, you really did cheat. You used Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado,” which is a short story, not a novel. (And no, I didn’t google it. I’ve read that story a hundred times at least while teaching 9th grade English.)
Some of my favorites include:
In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.
(Uh, do I have to tell you where that’s from?)
Also:
Marley was dead, to begin with.
(That’s another obvious one, I think.)
Now, as for LAST lines, my all-time favorite is also Dickens:
It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far greater rest that I go to than I have ever known. (Tale of 2 Cities — hope I didn’t mess up, as I was going from memory.)
But the best back-of-the-book-blurb EVER WRITTEN (in my humble opinion) has to be from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
About the end of the world and the happy-go-lucky days that follow… About the worst Thursday that ever happened, and why the Universe is a lot safer if you bring a towel….
There has never been anything that ever made me want to read a book right that second more than those words. Wow.
“All this happened, more of less.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Ah, ever the cynic. R.I.P.
Make that, “..more OR less…”
mistype 😉
Okay, now that you guys have put me in my place, I’ll play the game. My all time favorite first line is “Marley was dead, to begin with.” Why? Because how could you help but read on with a statement like that. What a hook. I aspire to such a hook!
Linnea
“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians.” -Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
As soon as I read that line I knew I would love that book. But then, I tend to shower that book with a lot of well deserved love…
Two first lines:
When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, In slender Book his vast Design unfold, Messiah Crown’d, Gods Reconcil’d Decree, Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree, Heav’n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All;
which is Paradise Lost by Milton.
And number two:
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” which is from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
I have a new favorite, from a very recent read:
“My name is Perry L. Crandall and I am not retarded.”
Lottery, by Patricia Wood.
Close Second:
“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.”
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
It’s the first one I can remember off the top of my head. The picture might not be pleasant, but it’s oh so vivid and descriptive.
On a softer note, I had to look up the exact wording of this, but I did remember most of it:
“Out of a land laid waste
To a land untamed,
Monster ridden,
The lad Drualt led
A ruined, ragtag band.
In his arms, tenderly,
He carried Bruce,
The child king,
First ruler of Bamarre.“
The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine. I never get tired of quoting that book. It’s what got me hooked on the bittersweet ending. As for the beginning, the snippet of epic poem sets the tone for the rest of the book. It’s gorgeous.
And, of course, one of the greats:
“Marley was dead to begin with.”
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Succinct and to the point. I think that’s the only time he ever pulled that off, and consequently it’s the best line he ever wrote.
Oh, forgot one. (As if my post wasn’t already long enough.)
It’s technically the first full sentence from a manga, but SO WHAT. It’s probably my all time favorite. I quote it in real life all the time.
“Teachings that do not speak of pain have no meaning…
…for humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return.”
Hiromu Arakawa, [i]Fullmetal Alchemist[/i] (vol. 1)
Tell me that doesn’t send just a little shiver down your spine.
I love “Harriet thinks it was William Faulkner who said that Mississippi begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel,” from Lee Smith’s The Last Girls. (It does, but it wasn’t Faulkner who said it.)
Also caught by “The first time we were in bed together he held my hands pinned down above my head,” from Elizabeth McNeill in Nine and a Half Weeks.
And Mr. Bransford, may I suggest you change “old Miss Snark posts” to “Miss Snark’s old posts” before old Miss Snark gets wind of it? She may be retired, but she can still get quite snarky. You don’t want to be on the wrong end of her clue gun.
My favorite all time ‘FIRST LINE is really quite simple,there is almost a Zen quality about it and it always makes me GIGGLE. It is from a gangster style novel (not my type of book at all but I had seen the 60’s film with Michael Caine ‘GET CARTER’ and adored it to the point of having to search the author out / The book title: Jack Returns Home
by T ed Lewis and the line …….
The rain rained.
I definitely second The Princess Bride. B-)
My favorites that have yet to be mentioned:
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
“Of arms and a man I sing, [a man] who first from the edges of Troi
fleeing by fate, came to Italy, and Lavinian shores”
— Vergil’s Aeneid
Because dactyllic hexameter never gets old for me, and it really is a beautiful opening. Also gives you a very clear snapshot of what’s going on, and the tone of the story.
and, just to be predictable,
Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
— Homer’s Odyssey
Because isn’t that what we all try to do. *sighs*
And I’m surprised this one hasn’t been mentioned:
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
— Joseph Heller, Catch 22
Lots of great ones here already. Let me add:
“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.” (A Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket)
Breaks all the rules: Gives away something about the ending … addresses the reader in second person … even invites the reader to put the book down! Gotta love it!
So, Nathan,
Now that we’ve read all of these amazing classic openings–how many of them would work today? So much great writing of the past breaks today’s rules. I think it was one of Noah Lukeman’s books (wait, maybe it was Stein on Writing) that takes Gatsby and rewrites sections for modern styles.
So what makes an opening great today, and which of the great openings would fail today if it showed up in your slush pile?
Glad somebody else mentioned A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. But I don’t see this gem anywhere:
“Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.”
–The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, by one R.L. Stevenson, circa 1886.
“Lovable” and “lawyer” in the same sentence. What’s not to like? Besides, it introduces the scariest story EVER. (Sorry, Big Steve.)
Glad somebody mentioned Irving’s Owen Meany and King’s The Gunslinger. Now for my favorite:
“Mr Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable.”
–The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, by one R.L. Stevenson, circa 1886.
“Lovable” and “lawyer” in the same sentence? I’m hooked. Besides, it introduces the scariest story EVER. (Sorry, Big Steve.)
Jen in Dallas
I even love just typing this:
“They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.”
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Thanks for the blog, NB.
Cheers, Erica
“It was somewhere near Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”
‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’
Haven’t read the book for years, but the line has stuck in my head.
Love that line because first, where the f*** is Barstow? And, ‘on the edge of the desert’ has that sense of the precipitous, the opening of an adventure…and,’when the drugs began to take hold’ – definitely spoke to me, saying that this author was intending to take his reader where no reader had been before,into Hunter’s own, intentionally and obviously,drug-addled brain.
How delicious.
Sure, I could refer to more classically literary opening lines, like that from ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, or, ‘Tropic of Cancer’ (also faves), but, in all honesty, this was my first thought.
“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.”
–The Catcher in the Rye
Oh. Whoops – didn’t see someone had already written that.
I wasn’t going to add anything, but some of the best ones ever haven’t gotten a shout-out yet. These three for instance:
“It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
1984, George Orwell
“Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of princeton.”
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
“In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“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 epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” — A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
150+ years have passed since he wrote this, and its as true today as it was then.
Ok, my main man, Dave, beat me to the punch with the opening line from Rebecca, so I’ll just add the opening from Toni Morrison’s “Paradise” – “They shoot the white girl first.”
Welcome to the blogosphere, Linnea!
“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”
From MT Anderson’s Feed. I love this novel, and I love this first line. Right away you know that you’re in the future and you know that teenagers haven’t changed a whole lot — but you want to find out more about the world, and more about why the moon is so sucky.
“It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
And a bit longer, but too long to quote in entirety here I think, is the expansive first paragraph of Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King. It begins, “Once upon a time, in a land that was called Britain, these things happened,” and ends rather later with “These are the tales of Arthur, the Warlord, the King that Never Was, the Enemy of God and, may the living Christ and Bishop Samsum forgive me, the best man I ever knew. How I have wept for Arthur.”
That paragraph tells you everything there is to know about the stories Cornwell will tell of Arthur, his potential, his greatness, the ultimate failure and loss of his reign. Brilliant.
“Marley was dead, to begin with.”
What a line.
Durn it, dramabird beat me to the line from Princess Bride, but another I like is, “The Universal soil is not uniformly fertile.” That’s from Starwell, by Alexei Panshin. I think the reason I like both of these so much is because I like narrators who stand outside the narration yet are strong characters in their own right. The narrators in both books lend their own extra layer of humor and interest.
Seems that, for a first line to be great, it has to be backed up by a great book.
A great opening line is like an amuse-bouche, isn’t it? Makes you want to devour what’s coming next.
Anon – I love the Middlemarch quote.
Scott – I wonder, too, how many of these would fly today. Would a literary agent swim through that first line of Tale of Two Cities without tossing it into the recycle pile?
I have to agree with Gina, that the opener for P&P is awesome. I love that line.
Another favorite:
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
I’ve always like the first line, “In the beginning…” from the bible. It’s nice because sometimes you’re not sure if you’re really at the beginning, or if you’re still reading an introduction, or a title page, or maybe a few pages stuck together and you’re 2 pages in. Just in case you’re insecure, it reassures you by telling you where you are. You’re at the beginning.
My only complaint is that there isn’t a similar passage somewhere that says, “In the middle…” or “…and that’s the end.”
“Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel.”
“Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there’s a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.”
This is the first sentence of Gunter Grass’ THE TIN DRUM, so of course it’s a translation, and it’s no doubt even better in the original German.
It’s funny how my favorite books don’t have awe-inspiring first lines… Brave New World starts out with: “A squat grey building of one thrity-four stories.”
And Grapes of Wrath starts out with another grey reference.
I guess, if I had to pick one, the opening 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.’
It does everything. It sums up the whole book as a family history and a parallel of South American history and still adds the peculiar element of magical realism by the fact that ice had to be “discovered”, and then you begin to wonder, ‘Where is this taking place?’
“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, bit tits, and also Jesus.” – from gods in Alabama, by Joshilyn Jackson
The next line is: “I left one back there myself, in Possett. I kicked it under the kudzu and left it to the roaches.”
“The sun rose, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”
from Murphy, by Samuel Beckett.
I like it because it’s funny, spare, and confounds your expectations about what a first line should do. And it’s an accurate forecast of the brilliant whimsy that will pervade the rest of the book.
From a short story, not a novel:
“I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.”
I think it’s a pretty good hook. The narrator takes shape immediately, and you want to know who asked her the question, what the question was, and what’s so tormenting about it.