Thursday, July 24, 2008

Beginnings

btt button

Here’s another idea about memorable first lines from books.

What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?


My all-time favorite first line (I guess it's two lines, actually) is from Grace Paley's story The Loudest Voice from her collection The Little Disturbances of Man:

There is a certain place where dumb-waiters boom, doors slam, dishes crash; every window is a mother's mouth bidding the street shut up, go skate somewhere else, come home. My voice is the loudest.

10 comments:

gautami tripathy said...

This is good. Now I must get hold of the book!

:D

Here is my BTT post

Anonymous said...

That's a rather interesting first couple of lines... very visual and auditory.

Chrisbookarama said...

That's a great one.

SmilingSally said...

That's an interesting one.

Karen Harrington said...

Nice!

Unknown said...

Love it. It really sets the scene very well.

Here's mine.

http://readywhenyouarecb.blogspot.com/2008/07/btt-favorite-first-lines.html

Confuzzled Shannon said...

I like how the first line ends. My voice is the loudest. Cool

smariek said...

That's a good one!

Here's my BTT post, my comments on the BTT site don't appear for some reason. :-(

Ted said...

I'm really glad you all liked the first line - hope you get to read the rest of the story!

Anonymous said...

That's a very interesting first line. :) Here's my list of favourite first lines.