Thread: Great Opening Sentences

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"




(Finally found an excuse to use that smilie)