-I had fun reading the list of
100 best first lines from novels and
100 best last lines from novels, at
American Book Review. Made me want to write a novel, just to start and end it. Here are a few good ones from each list, from books I haven't read.
I never knew where this first line came from:It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." —Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)
For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)
The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)
Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. —Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)
We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. —Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)
Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. —Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)
Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)
This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere. –J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. –Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Matthew Ward)
It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow. –Toni Morrison, Sula (1973)
“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.” –Voltaire, Candide (1759; trans. Robert M. Adams)
Everything had gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry. – Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1956)
“Maybe I will go to Paris. Who knows? But I’ll sure as hell never go back to Texas again." –James Crumley, The Final Country (2001)
