Favorite opening lines?

[Malergion]

Songs, books, or movies:

Anthony Burgess Earthly Powers:
"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

 

[El Stormo]

In b4 Max:

"War. War never changes."

 

[WhiteBeastofWotan]

yeh thats a good one.

 

[Malergion]

I had to dig that one up, because I'm probably the only person in the Northern Hemisphere who hasn't played Fallout 3.

 

[Anvil]

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . .' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming, 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'"

Trainspotting:

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday night. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

And my personal favorite, Clive Barker's Weaveworld:

"Nothing ever begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.
Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys.
Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden among them is a filigree that will with time become a world."

 

[Malergion]

Weaveworld!

 

[Swabs]

Probably "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

 

[DarkNoise]

first thing I thought of when I saw the thread title was Fallout. Dammit.

"I wanna tell you about the time I almost died" - Fallen

 

[El Stormo]

"My name is Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question... Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
'No,' says the man in Washington. 'It belongs to the poor.'
'No,' says the man in the Vatican. 'It belongs to God.'
'No,' says the man in Moscow. 'It belongs to everyone.'
I rejected those answers. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture!"

 

[Malergion]

....A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
.....It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No lights anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall--soon--it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light only great invisible crashing.

--Gravity's Rainbow

 

[neal]

"Turning the knife buried in your stomach..."


Acid Bath - Finger Paintings of the Insane

 

[fading]

"Hey Ladies, you need a ride? I'm going that way." Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke

 

[Lunar Still]

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."

-Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

"I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of the Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without doubt Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided - oo-la-la! - to tell all."

-Glen Duncan, I, Lucifer

 

[Chromatose]

....A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
.....It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No lights anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall--soon--it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light only great invisible crashing.

--Gravity's Rainbow

 

[Karmic]

umber whunnnn
yerrrnnn umber whunnnn
fayunnnn
These sounds: even in the haze.

 

[Det Som Engang Var]

Religion changed the face of man now show the jews you're a god.

 

[Brooks]

The first page of the book I just started. I can quote it in it's entirety. (amusingly, it's listed as page 0)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A RADICALLY CONDENSED HISTORY
OF POSTINDUSTRIAL LIFE​

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked.
She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then they each drove home
alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them,
though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations
at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did
one.







-David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

 

[Lordlucid]

"It was the summer of hell and the air smelled of burning children."- Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song.

 

[Malergion]

The begining of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" where Kate Capshaw sings "Anything Goes" in Mandarin:

"Yi wang si-i wa ye kan dao
Xin li bian yao la jing bao jin tian zhi Dao
Anything goes"

 

[vikk]

"I thought I'd take a walk today. It's a mistake I sometimes make", first couple lines from Oh my Lord, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds