Great opening Lines Challenge

[Hard-Luck Henry]

Re: RE: Great opening Lines Challenge

"I must admit I didn't think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him; looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over. That was my first impression of the man. "

Is this The Shawshank Redemption?

(And i know peapod's is The Hobbit, even with the * :wink: )



"It was love at first sight." (not much to go on, sorry)

 

[peapod]

Henry I think that is the name of the book and the first line..maybe

A stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.'

 

[zenfisher]

Re: RE: Great opening Lines Challenge

Hey Zen,

Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying,

You betcha Tom


The day the stock market falls out of bed and breaks its back is the worst day of your life. Or so you think. It isn't the worst day of your life, but you think it is. And when you give voice to that thought, it is with conviction and a minimum of rhetorical embellishment.

Look Homeward Angel...Peapod?

 

[peapod]

how did you know that????????????? are you a wolfean???????????????

 

[zenfisher]

No I'm a googler :twisted:

 

[Hard-Luck Henry]

Henry I think that is the name of the book and the first line..maybe

In fact, it was Catch 22. :lol:

- It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

 

[peapod]

See I don't know everything henry :wink:

As the days went on Salar became heavy with weariness. Most of his milt was shed: in slow pluse after slow pluse his life's sweetness had been drawn from him, leaving with each emptiness a greater inflaming desire, which during the day lapped about the wasted body with dreams of everlasting sea of rest; but when darkness came, and the water was ashine with stars, he felt himself running bright with the river, and sweetness returned to him on the redd beside Gralaks.

There is no way you can google that

 

[Tom McNall]

Re: RE: Great opening Lines Challenge

"I must admit I didn't think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him; looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over. That was my first impression of the man. "

Is this The Shawshank Redemption?

Oh yeah!

 

[Tom McNall]

See I don't know everything henry :wink:

As the days went on Salar became heavy with weariness. Most of his milt was shed: in slow pluse after slow pluse his life's sweetness had been drawn from him, leaving with each emptiness a greater inflaming desire, which during the day lapped about the wasted body with dreams of everlasting sea of rest; but when darkness came, and the water was ashine with stars, he felt himself running bright with the river, and sweetness returned to him on the redd beside Gralaks.

There is no way you can google that

Salar the Salmon
by Henry Williamson

 

[Tom McNall]

Try this classic:

"Where's my wallet?!

YOU IDIOT!!

MOM!

SHUT-UP!

I NEED A TOWEL!

JOYCE!

(whispers, sadistic)

When you turn ten, your head's going

to swell up real big like a watermelon

and we're going to have to put you

to sleep like they do with a dog."

 

[peapod]

hey that is from the ferris buller movie 8O you are suppose to be quoting the opening paragraph of a book. But it was a good movie...What
the hell!!! did you google to get Salar the salmon...ehm you know when a kid reads Salar the salmon, reading Darwin is not far behind.

"When I was fifteen, I got heapatitis, It started in the fall and lasted until spring. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker and weaker. Things didn't start to improve until the next year. January was warm, and my mother moved my bed out on the balcony. I saw sky, sun, clouds and heard the voices of childern playing in the courtyard. As dust came one evening in February, there was the sound of a blackbird singing.

This is a gem of a book :wink:

 

[SilentSwirl]

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink?

"Randall was asleep on his chicken-wire bed in the company headquarters dugout. He was sleeping dreamlessly and without any jerky movements, for he was young and had not as yet been worn down by war. In sleep he could forget his peril and his fatigue, live unconscious through some hours of his stay in the line, so that when he should awake he would be that much nearer to the time of his relief."
:twisted:

 

[peapod]

Yes it is...did you actually read the book

Randall and the river of time...C.S. Forester

"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on the bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun."

 

[Hard-Luck Henry]

Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood. O, my America, my new found land. She embarked on a tranced voyage, exploring the whole of herself, clambering her own mountain ranges, penetrating the moist richness of her secret valleys, a physiological Cortez, da Gama or Mungo Park.

 

[peapod]

k..henry did you read the god of small things or not

angela carter...the magic toyshop....

Call me *******. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. :twisted:

 

[zenfisher]

Moby Dick...& I didn't google it.

The woman caught a glimpse through the dusty haze ahead and wondered if it was the wolf she had seen loping in front of them earlier.

She glanced at her companion with a worried frown, then looked for the wolf again, straining to see through the blowing dust....

 

[Vanni Fucci]

Yeah...I didn't google Melville either...but I did this one...

The Plains of Passage -- Jean M. Auel

"In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to
call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it."

 

[zenfisher]

Don Quixote - Cervantes I had to google who wrote...ah the joys of aging.


Early on the Morning of August 19,1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in Southwest Arkansas, three miles East of the Texas border at Texarkana.

 

[Hard-Luck Henry]

k..henry did you read the god of small things or not

Hasn't everbody? :wink:

 

[peapod]

hmmmm...I dunno but I think twila would really like it..."the god of small things twila.. and ehm...moby dick...herman melville 8) Have you noticed that starbucks logo...you know the mermaid I often wondered if that had something to do with moby dick...and ehm..there was a starbuck in moby dick...it drove me nuts...so I finally emailed and asked..something to do with homer