There was a poll that stated—Rowling’s opening line in the HP series is one of best in the world. Someone posted about how there are a bunch of other opening statements that are better.
Here’s one of my personal favorites, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in English):
“It is inevitable — the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
@DocCarms All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned In Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. He's one of my favorite authors. Other books he's written (that I also love) include Uh-Oh and The Bed Was Already On Fire When I Laid Down On It. 😀
@DocCarms@bookstodon "I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination." Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin
"When, suddenly, on an ordinary Wednesday, it seemed to Barney that the world tilted and ran downhill in all directions, he knew he was about to be haunted again." The Haunting, Margaret Mahy
@DocCarms@bookstodon "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." from Anna Karenina, of course.
And the one from The restaurant at the end of the universe: "In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." :blobcatcoffee:
@arisu_m@DocCarms@bookstodon I love that the Restaurant line evokes the intro to the Book of Genesis but without mentioning God.
A side thought: it would be totally on-brand for the Douglas Adams universe to have God be a cranky old immortal who lives on an isolated planet and had nothing to do with creating the universe, but took credit for it one time like 3 billion years ago and now can't shake the reputation
@DocCarms@bookstodon "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way– in short, the period was so far like the present period..."
@DocCarms@bookstodon "It was raining real hard the day we buried my daddy. Mama said it was because the angels were crying; but after hours of drenching downpour I doubted the angels were crying tears of joy about seeing Daddy in heaven but instead were downright upset about him there."
– "The Angels of Morgan Hill" by Donna VanLiere
@DocCarms@bookstodon You get what you vote for. My favourite is "Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there lived a...." because so many great stories from my childhood started like that.
“the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” comes from using a analog television with an antenna and receiving broadcast channels. Turned to a “dead channel” produces a gray, undulating, pixelated-like screen, a screen that no longer exists in the digital world of cable and streaming. It’s not about the business model of streaming, it’s about the technology. Gibson was writing in 1984, years before our contemporary digital world.
"When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing."
@DocCarms@bookstodon The year is 50 B.C. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well not entirely! One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders.
@DocCarms@bookstodon ""It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." - Sylvia Plath.
@DocCarms “The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.” The line on its own isn’t super strong but it sets up the whole first page of ‘Snow Crash’ which is just… delightfully and absurdly bonkers.
There's a short story by Richard Cowper that compresses an amazing amount of world-building into "He reached up to the buttons in his forehead, and changed his mind with an audible click".
Honourable mention to John Scalzi's "Shadow War of the Night Dragons", the opening sentence of which is a ~250 word masterpiece of deliberate urple. (As is the second; the third caps the joke with an eight word punchline.)
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