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04-08-07, 07:10 AM
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#1 |
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DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Washington, DC
Posts: 3,071
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Best Opening Lines
So what are your favorite opening lines to your favorite (or possibly your not-so-favorite) novels?
As a supplement to the thread, here's an online "opening lines" quiz: Opening Lines Quiz 10/13 for me, with some correct and incorrect guesses. I actually knew about 7 or 8 of them. -ringding- |
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04-08-07, 10:50 AM
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#2 |
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DVD Talk Gold Edition
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Northern Virginia
Posts: 2,386
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I got 10/13 as well. I was surprised that I knew so many.
Ross Thomas wrote some of my favorite opening lines. From Chinaman's Chance: "It was while jogging along the beach just east of the Paradise Cove pier that Artie Wu tripped over a dead pelican, fell, and met the man with six greyhounds." |
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04-08-07, 03:30 PM
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#3 |
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DVD Talk Legend
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Second Star on the right, and straight on til' morning...
Posts: 14,778
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9/13 - not quite as good, but I knew most of them at least.
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04-08-07, 05:29 PM
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#4 |
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DVD Talk Gold Edition
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Taxachusetts
Posts: 2,316
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My all-time favorite opening line:
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.", taken from Stephen King's The Gunslinger
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XBox Live Gamertag: AngryPanda27 |
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04-08-07, 05:46 PM
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#5 | |
 Administrator
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Outside of the U.S.A.
Posts: 9,966
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9/13. Grrr.
One I've often seen cited is:
Quote:
Spoiler:
Last edited by benedict; 04-08-07 at 06:04 PM. |
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04-08-07, 05:55 PM
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#6 |
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DVD Talk Hero
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: TechNoir
Posts: 36,438
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"A perfect morning in a city of perfect mornings, an artist would have worked a god would have rested." - T. Jefferson Parker's Laguna Heat
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04-08-07, 06:26 PM
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#7 |
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DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Triangle, NC, USA
Posts: 8,081
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"The penis will be obsolete within 5 years."
John Varley's Steel Beach 7/13  I missed #8, which I checked out from the library on Thursday but havent' read yet. |
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04-08-07, 10:03 PM
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#8 |
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Suspended pending providing a working email address
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 461
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
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04-08-07, 10:27 PM
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#9 | |
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DVD Talk Legend
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 11,483
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Quote:
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04-09-07, 04:30 AM
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#10 | |
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DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Washington, DC
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Quote:
 -ringding- |
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04-09-07, 05:44 AM
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#11 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Canal Winchester, OH
Posts: 447
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Howard Roark laughed.
For some reason, this one has always stuck with me. No clue why.
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"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." - H.L. Mencken |
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04-09-07, 07:48 AM
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#12 |
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DVD Talk Reviewer
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Harrisburg, PA
Posts: 4,309
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8/13.
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Profile and most recent reviews |
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04-09-07, 11:20 AM
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#13 |
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DVD Talk Special Edition
Join Date: Jun 2001
Posts: 1,057
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We were just outside of Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...
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04-09-07, 01:07 PM
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#14 | |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Todash
Posts: 808
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Quote:
 Mine as well.
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Never judge a movie by it's box-office totals. |
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04-09-07, 01:26 PM
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#15 | |
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DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 3,128
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Quote:
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Be normal and the crowd will accept you... Be deranged and they will make you their leader. **Fnord** **MINE ALL MINE** Silence is golden; duct tape is silver. -Kittydreamer |
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04-12-07, 04:59 AM
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#16 |
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DVD Talk Legend
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Albuquerque
Posts: 14,436
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11/13
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." It really jumped out at me when I first read the book. I'm also fond of "In a hole in the ground lived a Hobbit."
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Originally Posted by TallGuyMe: hoorah for Nick! |
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04-12-07, 10:03 PM
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#17 |
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DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Oklahoma, USA. Blu-Ray Total: 390
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7/13
How about: "It was the year when they finally immanentized the Eschaton." Spoiler:
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Winner of the DVDTalk 2010 College Basketball Bracket Pool Last edited by Joe Molotov; 04-17-07 at 11:15 PM. |
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04-13-07, 09:57 AM
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#18 |
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Moderator
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Where homophobes don't get slut sauce
Posts: 28,259
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I got 10/13.
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"Fifth Element may be as dumb and artless as Johnny Mnemonic, but since a frenchman made it it must be ART!" -Pants "...I think it's a low blow to draw attention to wendersfan's drunken state.  " - dork"Just because their victims are still alive doesn't mean they didn't commit murder." - grundle "You concentrate on the sad wanna be hooliganism and let us worry about the actual soccer." - rocketsauce (final score: Columbus 2-Chicago 1) |
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04-13-07, 04:55 PM
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#19 |
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DVD Talk Ultimate Edition
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: the North
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10/13 for me.
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04-13-07, 05:19 PM
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#20 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 499
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Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.
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From the day of his birth, Gilgamesh was called by name. |
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04-13-07, 08:58 PM
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#21 |
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DVD Talk Gold Edition
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Taxachusetts
Posts: 2,316
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6/13
Another great opening line: "A screaming comes across the sky." - Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
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XBox Live Gamertag: AngryPanda27 |
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04-13-07, 09:43 PM
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#22 | |
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DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Valley of Megiddo
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Quote:
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(Lat's book lists) |
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04-15-07, 09:34 AM
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#23 | |
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DVD Talk Limited Edition
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Diego, CA
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Quote:
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"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." -nodeerforamonth |
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04-15-07, 09:52 AM
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#24 |
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DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Join Date: Aug 1999
Location: Sub-basement 3b
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"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
...5/13...I think I need to read more...
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Heathen pride. 
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04-15-07, 10:59 AM
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#25 |
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DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 3,193
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9/13 - I should have gotten "The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended." right, but I couldn't place it out of context. Felt like kicking myself when I read the right answer.
Here's one that always haunts me: "The angel lay in a little thicket. It had no need of love; there was nothing anywhere in the world could startle it- we can lie here with the angel if we like; it couldn't have hurt much when they slit its throat." -'The Journal of Albion Moonlight' by Kenneth Patchen
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I won't say anything because no one ever listens to me anyway. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record. -Neil, The Young Ones |
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