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I've always liked the opening sentence of Plato's Republic. Any suggestions of others you like?
I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Meandering, stream of consciousness writing. Start with one thing and move onto several others. More than a sentence - I apologise. A challenge to read:
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. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades' magical irons. ......
Excellent. Love it. I love stream of consciousness. I try to do it myself, really, because that's the way i think; always going off on tangents. I love the 'sparrow hands'. The first line alone though is in itself great...
The whole book is like that. Snippets of information buried away amongst other details. The "firing squad" business in the first line is just left behind while you move on to other things. Many pages later something adds to it and you gradually piece things together.
The Go Between (LP Hartley)
"The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there"
The Beginning
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
The Bible
All the entrances, before you walk forward,
you should look at,
you should spy out;
for you can't know for certain where enemies are sitting,
ahead in the hall
-From Håvamål
"Call me Ishmael."
- Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson.
My arn't we all looking quite discerning
how about
"A Long Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away"
:jedi:
(Finally found an excuse to use that smilie)
Simple, but if you've never heard it before it pulls you in to find out more. And if you have read it before, it gets you excited to start the adventure.
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
-The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know.
-The Stranger, Albert Camus
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Ulysses
James Joyce
It's translated in various ways, but I like this one:
"Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from fitful dreams to find he had been transformed into a giant beetle."
Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Also:
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."
A River Runs Through It, Norman MacLean
"You boys gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie"
I think the best way to tell the story is by starting at the end, briefly, then going back to the beginning, and then periodically returning to the end, maybe giving different characters' perspectives throughout. Just to give it a bit of dynamism, otherwise it's just sort of a linear story.
David Ershon in The Other Guys
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Jane Austin and Seth Grahame-Smith (2009).
And, my all-time favourite:
And the next sentence is pretty awesome too:Quote:
Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Quote:
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
The Raven Edgar Allen Poe
James.
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
Cannery Row - John Steinbeck
I'll have to get the book, sounds excellent.Quote:
Originally Posted by possumbelly
I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!
Notes from the Underground
Feodor Dostoevsky
Excellent, I love Kafka. I like this translation, all the commas, bits building and building:Quote:
Originally Posted by Oakeshott
One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa fund himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.
Some great opening lines there everyone!
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
HST, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." – William Gibson, Neuromancer.
"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again." Henry David Thoreau- Walden
PERHAPS the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. Thomas Paine-Common Sense
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Ralph Waldo Emerson- Self Reliance
In a semester full of Marxist, Left Wing Indoctrination and Post-Modernist, nihilist panther piss, these guys (along with John Locke, Adam Smith, Nietzsche and Mark Levin) literally talked me off the ledge. Without the brief respite of rational thought I would have most certainly turned into a tower sniper. There's probably guys that spent 7 years in the Hanoi Hilton that got less Communist propaganda than I've received this semester. Damn hippies are taking over the world! No worries though, Summer semester is a teaching class and a creative writing-poetry class so the fun stuff is on the way.
Amazing Revalation: I just referred to Nietzsche as a respite in rational thought. Just goes to show how absolutely off the chain the rest of this garbage I've been reading is. Anyway, Freddy is a cool cat and he had a boomin moustache too.
Attachment 127163
Fiskadoro
Denis Johnson
“Here, and also south of us, the beaches have a yellow tint, but along the Keys of Florida the sand is like shattered ivory. In the shallows the white of it turns the water such an ideal sea-blue that looking at it you think you must be dead, and the rice paddies, in some seasons, are profoundly emerald. The people who inhabit these colors, thanked be the compassion and mercy of Allah, having nothing much to trouble them. It’s true that starting a little ways north of them the bodies still just go on and on, and the Lord, as foretold, has crushed the mountains; but it’s hard to imagine that such things ever went on in the same universe that holds up the Keys of Florida. It strains all belief to think that these are the places the god Quetzalcoatl, the god Bob Marley, the god Jesus, promised to come back to and build their kingdoms. On island after island, except for the fields of cane popping in the wind, everything seems to be asleep.”
This is the first novel that really captivated me. Though I appreciate Johnson's other works this one will always be my favorite.
Wait till he sees those goddamn batsQuote:
Originally Posted by Cangooner
"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 by J.D. Salinger
"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
William Blake-"Auguries of Innocence"
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
The Old Man And The Sea
Ernest Hemingway
I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
Okay so that's the opener. The rest of Walt Whitman's quote is below just in case your interested.
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”
TYRANNY, BROADLY DEFINED, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature. Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable, and even paradisiacal governing ideology. There are, of course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite fantasies. But there are common themes. The fantasies take the form of grand social plans or experiments, the impracticability and impossibility of which, in small ways and large, lead to the individual’s subjugation. Mark Levin- Ameritopia
"Who is John Galt?"
- Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
I like Walden, but it gets a bit boring when he goes on about the accounting stuff...Quote:
Originally Posted by 1OldGI
I think maybe I'm becoming a Socialist or whatever bees are, these days...
There's some excellent stuff here, I'm really glad I posted this. I think I'll have to read The Catcher in the Rye again...
Hmm, that book has shown up in to many murder cases for my liking...hehe!Quote:
Originally Posted by carlmaloschneider
Yeah, one I think...or maybe two?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemur
I could name TWO books involved with a LOT of other murder cases. I think the titles both start with 'The'. Not against the books, against the people who may have been misrepresenting the books and the messages therein. Sorry for posting that, couldn't resist...
I'm cheating. It's two sentences, but what sentences they are...
When you seem to have finally made up your mind to stay home for the evening, have slipped into your smoking jacket, are sitting at the illuminated table after dinner, and have gotten down to the work or the game which you habitually follow by going to bed, when the weather outside is disagreeable, causing you to stay at home as a matter of course, when you have remained quietly at the table for so long that going out would be bound to provoke general astonishment, when, moreover, the staircase is already dark and the front door is locked, and when you now, despite everything, stand up in a sudden fit of uneasiness, change your jacket, instantly appear dressed for the street, declare that you have to go out, and indeed do so after a brief goodbye, depending on how fast you slam the apartment door, believing you have annoyed someone more or less, when you find yourself on the street, with both limbs that respond so flexibly to this unexpected freedom obtained for them, when you feel that all ability to decide is concentrated in this decision, when you realize with greater significance than usual that you have more strength than you need to easily prompted and endure the speediest change, and when you thus hurry down the long streets--- then for this evening you have fully withdrawn from your family, which fades off into nonexistence, while you yourself, a sharply define black silhouette, slapping the backs of you thigh, rise to your true stature.
And everything is intensified when you drop in on a friend this late in the evening to see how he is getting on.
Franz Kafka, The Sudden Stroll...
The introduction to The Great Short Works of Kafka, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, states:
"...like Kleist, Kafka piles on the prepositional phrases to increase the tension; but in English (as opposed to German or French), a sequence of even two prepositions can sound clumsy - and adverbs tend to be discarded in favor of adjectives. All of which make for syntactical headaches in a literary translation..."
Sorry Matt - I completely missed your post and didn't mean to steal your opening line! So in an effort to make amends, here is the first line of what is still my favourite novel. Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird"Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt69
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
It must be thirty years since I first read that book, and I still love it.
I am sorry for straying a bit :OT but given the number if Kafka readers here, I can't resist linking to this:
https://soundcloud.com/alishahnovin/...s-meets-kafkas
Featuring the late, great David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein.
I have a friend who's an artist, and he sometimes takes a view which I don't agree with.
Richard Feynman, from The Making of a Scientist
