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Post by Continuing Legend on Mar 31, 2010 6:12:36 GMT -5
You guys already got my favorites:
"All this happened, more or less" (Slaughterhouse Five)
and
"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen." (1984)
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Post by Captain Hygiene on Mar 31, 2010 8:44:05 GMT -5
No love for Fahrenheit 451?
"It was a pleasure to burn." Simple and evocative, but subtly horrifying, going back and giving it the context of the novel itself.
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Post by callipygias on Oct 25, 2010 1:54:54 GMT -5
Speaking of evocative... "Many years ago, on my way from Hong Kong to New York, I assed a week in San Francisco."
Beyond the Wall, Ambrose Bierce. (I suppose that's supposed to be "passed," but in my copy it isn't.)
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Oct 25, 2010 10:47:27 GMT -5
"The city sprawled like roadkill, spreading more with each new pressure."
-- Atom, Steve Aylett.
Actually, almost any of Aylett's first lines are awesome. From short stories in "The Crime Studio":
"Brute Parker ran the all-night gun shop on the corner of Dive and Ride, and it was a valuable service he offered."
"There's nothing so degrading as being killed by a stranger."
"It was a joke downtown that Eddie Slam's desire to kill everyone was buried so deep in his subconscious as to be hardly relevant."
"In a town where bulletproof underwear is openly on sale, paranoia is regarded not as a mental aberration but as a way of staying ahead of the game."
"Nature hates a vacuum and tends to fill it with the standing idle."
"Billy Panacea, burglar extraordinaire, broke out of prison disguised as his mother."
"Louie the Garb was the most disconcerting man alive."
"More murders are committed at 92 degree Fahrenheit than at any other temperature."
Seriously, I think Aylett is the funniest writer I've ever read. If you've never heard of him, I strongly suggest his book _Lint_, which is a faux biography of an obscure pulp writer. My wife hates it when I read the book because I laugh at things she just doesn't understand, and I don't stop laughing.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Oct 25, 2010 14:02:26 GMT -5
I just stumbled across this one again recently:
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
And another old favorite:
"Five friends I had, and two of them snakes."
Godric by Frederick Buechner
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Post by callipygias on Oct 28, 2010 22:48:10 GMT -5
almost any of Aylett's first lines are awesome. From short stories in "The Crime Studio I loved those opening lines so I picked this up the other day, and so far it's not disappointing. Love the psycho-noir feel.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Oct 28, 2010 22:59:28 GMT -5
almost any of Aylett's first lines are awesome. From short stories in "The Crime Studio I loved those opening lines so I picked this up the other day, and so far it's not disappointing. Love the psycho-noir feel. That's great! I hope the rest keeps up with expectations. His "Beerlight" novels (all the psycho-noir stuff) are really good, imo. But he's got plenty of other stuff as well.
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Post by callipygias on Dec 16, 2010 0:18:57 GMT -5
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
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Post by jkazoolien on Dec 16, 2010 13:15:38 GMT -5
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
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Post by callipygias on Feb 21, 2011 0:05:45 GMT -5
Pa's nose fell off at breakfast.
Tis the Season to Be Jelly, Richard Matheson
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Post by jkazoolien on Mar 3, 2011 13:16:48 GMT -5
Non-smoking is not allowed in my home. That’s right. All visitors are required to smoke. If you are a non-smoker, please leave your nasty habit at home, because I do not want to be exposed to your second-hand non-smoking. My house, my rules, get it?
Light That Cigarette Now!, Crad Kilodney
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Post by caucasoididiot on Jul 4, 2011 20:23:11 GMT -5
FOR MADMEN ONLY
The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life. I had worked for an hour or two and perused the pages of old books. I had had pains for two hours, as elderly people do. I had taken a powder and been very glad when the pains consented to disappear. I had lain in a hot bath and absorbed its kindly warmth. Three times the mail had come with undesired letters and circulars to look through. I had done my breathing exercises, but found it convenient today to omit the thought exercises. I had been for an hour's walk and and seen the loveliest cloud patterns pencilled against the sky. That was very delightful. So was the reading of the old books. So was the lying in the warm bath. But, taken all in all, it had not been exactly a day of rapture. No, it had not even been a day brightened with happiness and joy. Rather, it had been just one of those days which for a long while now had fallen my lot; the moderately pleasant, the wholly bearable and tolerable, lukewarm days of a discontented middle-aged man, days without special pains, without special cares, without particular worry, without despair; days when I calmly wonder, objective and fearless, whether it isn't time to follow the example of Adalbert Stifter and have an accident while shaving.
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf, 1929
OK, more'n a line. So sue us.
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