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The Library Reviews and opinions on published writing: prose and poetry. |
Favorite opening paragraph in fiction

04-07-2015, 11:54 AM
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Noteworthy
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Favorite opening paragraph in fiction
What is your favorite opening paragraph in a fiction book?
Legend of Drizzt has to be mine. The author pulls you in straight away and I think it is the best fiction opening I have come across.
Never does a star grace this land with a poet's light of twinkling mysteries, nor does the sun send to here its rays of warmth and life. This is the Underdark, the secret world beneath the bustling surface of the Forgotten Realms, whose sky is a ceiling of heartless stone and whose walls show the gray blandness of death in the torchlight of the foolish surface dwellers that stumble here. This is not their world, not the world of light. Most who come here uninvited do not return.
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04-07-2015, 03:18 PM
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“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”
The Gunslinger, book One of Stephen Kings Dark Tower epic series
Short, but a simple and effective opening line. I love it.
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09-17-2015, 03:58 AM
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"No, no, Henri. Hands off the wheel. Please. It is too late. After all, at one hundred and forty-nine kilometers per hour on a country road in the darkest quarter of the night, surely it is obvious that your slightest effort to wrench away the wheel will pitch us into the toneless world of highway tragedy even more quickly than I have planned. And you will not believe it, but we are still accelerating."
-Travesty, by John Hawkes
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"So you are going to relax, cher ami. You are determined to hide your trembling, achieve a few moments of silence, begin smoking one of your delightful cigarettes, and then after this appropriate expenditure of precious time and in the midst of your composure, then you will attempt to dissuade me, to talk me back to sanity (as you will express the idea), to appeal to my kindness and good sense. I approve. I am listening. The hour is yours. But of course you may use the lighter. Only reach for it slowly and keep in mind my warning. Do not be deceived by my good nature. I am as serious as a sheet of flame."
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12-08-2015, 10:52 PM
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A farewell to arms - Ernest Hemingway
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house
in a village that looked across the river and the plain to
the mountains. In the bed of the river there were peb-
bles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the
water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the
channels. Troops went by the house and down the road
and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the
trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the
leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops march-
ing along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred
by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and
afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
Also
One hundred years of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice
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12-10-2015, 01:08 PM
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In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. -- Douglas Adams.
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English is a strange language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought though.
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12-10-2015, 07:30 PM
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It began as a mistake. - Post Office, Charles Bukowski.
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12-10-2015, 09:09 PM
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"When I was born, I was a baby."
Oh, wait. That was non-fiction.
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Mr. Ed said I should use his signature, since he's not anymore. In honor of his good friend Nok, here it is: "As far as smoking a cigar," she said, "I'd not know where to start or how to start." "It's simple," said I, "You light one end and chew on the other and hope to meet in the middle." To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
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12-10-2015, 10:18 PM
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Originally Posted by Prodigalson
"When I was born, I was a baby."
Oh, wait. That was non-fiction.
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When is that book coming out? And... When will you send me my copy?
I want it signed: with love, to my good friend Brian.😀
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12-10-2015, 11:13 PM
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It's being line-edited as we speak (well, maybe not as we speak -- she may be in bed already). If this step goes as smoothly as the rest it'll be done soon.
The delay so far has been my thinking that it couldn't be ready yet but I finally had to send it on and so far it all looks good.
There will definitely be a signed copy coming your way.
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Mr. Ed said I should use his signature, since he's not anymore. In honor of his good friend Nok, here it is: "As far as smoking a cigar," she said, "I'd not know where to start or how to start." "It's simple," said I, "You light one end and chew on the other and hope to meet in the middle." To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
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12-22-2015, 01:31 PM
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Best opening paragraph.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
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02-05-2016, 09:00 AM
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Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. -The Trial, Franz Kafka
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06-15-2016, 11:49 PM
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A farewell to Arms, indeed
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09-08-2016, 09:45 PM
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Dissertation Writing Service
library is the best education place to read.
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06-14-2017, 01:00 PM
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Typist
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Originally Posted by jessica patel
library is the best education place to read.
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No kidding?
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