I collect first lines, here are some of this year's crop:
June 30, 2014
The Return of London's Palaces
First up, one of the best first lines of the month:July 14, 2014
I was born in 'The Towers' in The Bishop's Avenue Hampstead London. This is the only photograph that I could find of it I'm afraid . It had 28 rooms, a bathroom for each bedroom, an island with palm trees in the middle of its indoor swimming pool, a staircase fit for a Queen and a huge ballroom....
"Has ‘Disruptive Innovation’ Run Its Course? Not Yet…"
One of the great first sentences and a picture thrown into the bargain. How can one say no?Feb. 22, 2014
Economic theories emanating from business schools do not usually draw 6,000-word takedowns in the popular press....
Great First Lines: Econo-luxury Edition
Izabella Kaminska writing for the paper rather than for Alphaville.And a few more.
From the Financial Times:
I am on the train from Geneva to Zurich, bound for the annual forecasting dinner of the Swiss Chartered Financial Analyst society...
From American Book Review:
100 Best First Lines from Novels
1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)...MORE
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
4. 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. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)
7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
9. 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. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
HT: Open Culture
I suppose we could add, as a special bonus:
"Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were both punched in the face by girl fans as the Sex Pistols performed today deep in the heart of Texas."From Open Culture's "The Sex Pistols Do Dallas: A Strange Concert from the Strangest Tour in History (January 10, 1978)"
