# opening lines

Category: book Nook

## Post 1 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Saturday, 24-Jul-2010 14:22:27

Hi all
I'm on an email list where every once in awhile we are asked to write down humorous or otherwise attention grabbing opening lines from books we are reading. So I've been keeping track of opening lines and paragraphs for awhile now. Here are some from books I've recently read.
Prolog: A late night urge for an orange fizzy saved Nixie’s life.
Chapter 1: Murder was always an insult and always had been since the first human hand smashed a stone into the first human head. But the murder, bloody and brutal, of an entire family in their own beds, was a different sort of evil.
-- Survivor in Death by J.D. Robb
It isn’t every day that a headless woman rings my doorbell.
-- Nightmare in Shining Armor, by Tamar Myers
A man is sitting on a bed. He is my father. The body of a woman is beneath the covers. She was my mother.
-- Innocent, By Scott Turow
Death was not taking a holiday. New York may have been decked out in its glitter and glamor, madly festooned in December of 2059, but Santa Claus was dead, and a couple of his elves weren’t looking so good.
-- Memory in Death, by J.D. Robb

## Post 2 by Shepherdwolf (I've now got the bronze prolific poster award! now going for the silver award!) on Monday, 09-Aug-2010 20:32:02

Probably my favourite opening line ever, simply because of what it stands for through an entire seven-book series:
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Stephen King - The Gunslinger
Another good one is the opening line from Nineteen Eighty Four, except that I can't quote it outright at the moment...something about the clocks striking thirteen.

## Post 3 by BryanP22 (Novice theriminist) on Wednesday, 25-Aug-2010 23:28:08

And didn't that same line conclude the seventh book of that series? I read my way through that series over a period of some years and although it was frequently almost too bizarre for my taste I did like it ntil King quite literally inserted himself into his own book. I think that crossed a line for me.

## Post 4 by Elenhiia (Feather'rr'rr'rr'rr'rr'rr'rr'rr'rr'rr for president!) on Friday, 03-Sep-2010 15:46:35

I won't say how my book goes...but at the end you read a letter the survivor, who I believed was fictional, sends to me, where she explains what it means to chronicle, and outlines my fate....
Mind you the letter was fictional but the fictional me believes she is fictional, does that make sense? Read it when I'm done if you want to find out what that cryptic comment meant. anyway.
I'll have to glance through my vast collection of gigs and gigs of books in text files...but I'll tell you when I find some good opening lines! lol

## Post 5 by roxtar (move over school!) on Tuesday, 07-Sep-2010 0:33:39

I was going to put the 1 about the man in black from the gunslinger as well.What a great series. King's best work along with the stand of course.

## Post 6 by Cousin Cap (Zone BBS Addict) on Thursday, 09-Sep-2010 19:05:16

I was almost Born Happy. Literally, Feliz was the Spanish name my mother wanted for me: not a family name, not a local name, just a hope, stated in the farthest-reaching language she knew, a language that once reached aorund the world to the Netherlands, Africa, The Americas, The Filipines. Only music has reached farther, and penetrated more deeply.
This is the first paragraph of The Spanish Bow, by Andromeda Romano Lax.