Opening lines Wikiquote. Opening lines are the initial portions of dialogue or text in a written book often constituted by at least the first sentence or a fragment thereof. A good opening line, or incipit, is usually considered desirable. A number of them are so well known that they are remembered long after the book, while others are so famous that they can end up parodied. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. From a little after four oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that sight and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. I am an American, Chicago bornChicago, that somber cityand go at things as I have taught myself, free style, and will make the record in my own way first to knock, first admitted sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what is the use of a book, thought Alice, without pictures or conversation. I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate,first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to Lavinian shores hurled about endlessly by land and sea, by the will of the gods, by cruel Junos remorseless anger, long suffering also in war, until he founded a city and brought his gods to Latium from that the Latin people came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome. Muse, tell me the cause how was she offended in her divinity. Queen of Heaven, to drive a man, noted for virtue, to endure such dangers, to face so many trials Can there be such anger in the minds of the godsThe candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce Pierce and twenty six doesnt seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, Be My Baby on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop holes. One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening. Mrs Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade but by the time it reached Lyndes hollow it was a quiet, well conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs Rachel Lyndes door without due regard for decency and decorum it probably was conscious that Mrs Rachel Lynde was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed any thing odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. In July, my father left to take the waters he left me with my mother and older brother at the mercy of the summer days, white from the heat and stunning. August by Bruno Schulz, in The Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories trans. John Curran Davis. If you were going to give a gold medal to the least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didnt give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didnt know what I was doing in New York. The world is what it is men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. It was about eleven oclock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp. A squat grey building of only thirty four stories. Over the main entrance the words Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre and, in a shield, the World States Motto Community, Identity, Stability. In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder ten Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing youll 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 dont feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. It was dark by the time I reached Bonn, and I forced myself not to succumb to the series of mechanical actions which had taken hold of me in five years of traveling back and forth down the station steps, up the station steps, put down my suitcase, take my ticket out of my coat pocket, pick up my suitcase, hand in my ticket, cross over to the newstand, buy the evening newspaper, go outside and signal for a taxi. Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour 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. On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. One summer afternoon Mrs. Cities-Adelma-Kish.jpg' alt='Invisible Cities By Italo Calvino Pdf Reader' title='Invisible Cities By Italo Calvino Pdf Reader' />The subscription details associated with this account need to be updated. Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your subscription. Jim Crace web site for information about the novels and works of author Jim Crace. Best First Lines from Novels 1. Call me Ishmael. Herman Melville, MobyDick 1851 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of. Top VIdeos. Warning Invalid argument supplied for foreach in srvusersserverpilotappsjujaitalypublicindex. Computer Engineering Island Opportunity Rhode Software Engineering. Opening lines are the initial portions of dialogue or text in a written book often constituted by at least the first sentence or a fragment thereof.