more first lines
Jan. 29th, 2003 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennybecause ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melymbrosia likes them. Again, mysteries, fantasies, children's lit, and whatever you call P. G. Wodehouse.
Martha Abbott woke up on the seventh day of April and sat straight up in bed with her eyes wide open.
--Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Changeling
3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8.25 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late.
--Bram Stoker, Dracula
The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage, and forgotten with haste.
--Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs
Rising up into the air, they took to the sky and flew.
--Pat O'Shea, The Hounds of the Morrigan
After the thing was all over, when peril had ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tyres, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair.
--P. G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning
[I can't keep Wodehouse novels straight; I just picked the one off the shelf with the best opening line. By some catastrophic oversight, I don't own my favorite (the title of which I cannot, of course, recall, because, as I said, I can't keep Wodehouse novels straight). It's the one featuring the banjolele, and is, I think, bar none, the funniest thing I've ever read.]
From between two trees at the crest of the hill a very old man watched, with a nostalgic longing he thought he'd lost all capacity for, as the last group of picnickers packed up their baskets, mounted their horses, and rode away south--they moved a little hastily, for it was a good six miles back to London, and the red sun was already silhouetting the branches of the trees along the River Brent, two miles to the west.
--Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates
The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen.
--Diana Wynne Jones, Archer's Goon
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
--Donna Tartt, The Secret History
This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
--William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast-table.
--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
melymbrosia likes them. Again, mysteries, fantasies, children's lit, and whatever you call P. G. Wodehouse.Martha Abbott woke up on the seventh day of April and sat straight up in bed with her eyes wide open.
--Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Changeling
3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8.25 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46, but train was an hour late.
--Bram Stoker, Dracula
The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day to be awaited with dread, endured with courage, and forgotten with haste.
--Jean Webster, Daddy-Long-Legs
Rising up into the air, they took to the sky and flew.
--Pat O'Shea, The Hounds of the Morrigan
After the thing was all over, when peril had ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tyres, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair.
--P. G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning
[I can't keep Wodehouse novels straight; I just picked the one off the shelf with the best opening line. By some catastrophic oversight, I don't own my favorite (the title of which I cannot, of course, recall, because, as I said, I can't keep Wodehouse novels straight). It's the one featuring the banjolele, and is, I think, bar none, the funniest thing I've ever read.]
From between two trees at the crest of the hill a very old man watched, with a nostalgic longing he thought he'd lost all capacity for, as the last group of picnickers packed up their baskets, mounted their horses, and rode away south--they moved a little hastily, for it was a good six miles back to London, and the red sun was already silhouetting the branches of the trees along the River Brent, two miles to the west.
--Tim Powers, The Anubis Gates
The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen.
--Diana Wynne Jones, Archer's Goon
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
--Donna Tartt, The Secret History
This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
--William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast-table.
--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
