"*Stately Plump Buck Mulligan. . ."

A compendium of the opening lines of novels.

But it is missing one of my all-time favorites:

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."

The Haunting of Hill House--Shirley Jackson

Comments

  1. TSDecember 10, 2009 at 10:46 AM

    That is an excellent one.

    Excerpt from Dostoevsky's The Adolescent:

    "Unable to restrain myself, I have sat down to record this history of my first steps on life's career, though I could have done as well without it. One thing I know for certain: never again will I sit down to write my autobiography, even if I live to be a hundred. You have to be all too basely in love with yourself to write about yourself without shame. My only excuse is that I'm not writing for the same reason everyone else writes, that is, for the sake of the reader's praises."

    ReplyDelete
  2. TSDecember 10, 2009 at 10:47 AM

    Those were the opening lines fyi.

    ReplyDelete
  3. StevenDecember 10, 2009 at 10:54 AM

    Dear TS,

    There's a link at the site for you to input your own favorite first lines--don't know how they're vetted, but I submitted the one in my post.

    shalom,

    Steven

    ReplyDelete

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