First Lines by smdhome - Group

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Join Group Recommend book First Lines Administrator: smdhome Category: Fiction Total members: 10 (0 friends) Numbers of posts: 13 The first line of a novel is said to be the hardest to write. "Call me Ishmael." from Moby-Dick, is arguably the most famous first line in American literature. What are your favorite novel's first line?

First Lines's Message Board 13

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smdhome
9 hours ago

The first sentence is also the first paragraph:
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.
"Oliver Twist", Charles Dickens

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Flossy
3 days ago

Great idea for a group by the way. We need to try and get a few more people interested.

smdhome said @ 2009-11-1613:21:25.170+00:00Reply

Interesting lines Flossy. I have read neither of these. Thanks.

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Flossy
4 days ago

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley

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smdhome
4 days ago

Interesting lines Flossy. I have read neither of these. Thanks.

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Flossy
5 days ago

"This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak--the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of breadwinning."

Youth-A Narrative, By Joseph Conrad

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Flossy
5 days ago

"Have you ever known a famous man before he became famous?"

Youngblood Hawke, By Herman Wouk

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smdhome
9 days ago

There was a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself - not just sometimes, but always. - "The Phantom Tollbooth," Norton Juster

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smdhome
9 days ago

While more than just the first line, my favorite quote is:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

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smdhome
9 days ago

“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.” The Wind In The Willows - Kenneth Grahame

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smdhome
9 days ago

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." - The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien