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/lit/ - Literature

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3761881 No.3761881 [Reply] [Original]

What are the greatest Opening/Closing lines of a book?

If you actually got around to writing that novel you said you were gonna write, what would be its opening/closing lines as well?

>> No.3761899

>>3761881
Best opening lines that I've read are those of Lolita, Anna Karenina, A Tale of Two Cities, and Gravity's Rainbow.

>> No.3761903

>>3761881
"Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure"

>> No.3761922

>>3761881
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

>> No.3761948

"Who is John Galt?"

>> No.3761974

>"She woke up to the sound of his moms footsteps on the door".

>> No.3761976

Intro
Moby Dick
Lolita

Ending
Not the epilogue but Holdens last words in Blood Merridian are pretty memorable

>> No.3761978

>>3761903

True thing: I was going to post this but in English translation.

>> No.3761988

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes

Trieste-Zurich-Paris
1914 - 1921

It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known..

>> No.3761992

"He walked toward the sheets of flame. They did not bite his flesh, they caressed him and flooded him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him."

>> No.3762001

My favorite closing lines are the last few of 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'

Nothing had spoiled the day and it had been almost happy.
There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like this in his sentence, from reveille to lights out.
The three extra ones were because of the leap years...

>> No.3762581

>>3761988
It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known..

The Dark Knight Rises is not a book. Sheesh.

>> No.3762589
File: 1.06 MB, 1280x800, the best way to start a story.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3762589

>> No.3762621

"I am a sick man."

>> No.3762628

Best closing line: "And then I woke up, and it was all a dream"

>> No.3762629

>>3762589
>tfw my story starts with someone waking up
>both the prologue, and the body of the story

definitely gonna change that now, as at least one of the two can easily be avoided.

>> No.3762665

"I did not have children, I did not pass to any other creature the legacy of our misery."

>> No.3762677

>>3761992
props on borges butthe closing lines of "the south" are so much better, that short story in particular is my jam

>> No.3762688

"This is where the story begins"

>> No.3762764

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.

Perhaps not the best opening, but certainly one of the most memorable.

>> No.3762790
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3762790

>My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue. I was wearing my favorite shirt - sleeveless, white eyelet lace; I was wearing it as a farewell gesture. My carry-on item was a parka.

>> No.3762800
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3762800

Not the best story but I loved the ending.

And when I remember that world, I remember my dead young self, who left me something too, which is her canning jar of poisoned sausage and the ability it confers, of remembering what you can't imagine.
I can't say that I forgive my father, but now I can imagine what he probably chose never to remember-- the goad of an unthinkable urge, pricking him, pressing him, wrapping him in an impenetrable fog of self that must have seemed, when he wandered around the house late at night after working and drinking, like the very darkness.
This is the gleaming obsidian shard I safeguard above all others.

>> No.3762812

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

>> No.3762814

>>3761881
“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”

>> No.3762870

A screaming came across the sky.

>> No.3762883

"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.

>> No.3762935

>>3762883
"O young woman, throw yourself into the water again so that I may a second time have the chance of saving both of us!" A second time, eh, what a risky suggestion! Just suppose, cher maitre, that we should be taken literally? We'd have to go through with it. Brr . . . ! The water's so cold! But let's not worry! It's too late now. It will always be too late. Fortunately!

>> No.3762942

And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.

>> No.3762946

>>3762870
There is a Hand to turn the time,
Through thy Glass today be run,
Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low
Find the last poor Pret'rite one . . .
Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
All through our crippl'd Zone,
With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
And a Soul in ev'ry stone. . . .

Now everybody -

>> No.3762971

>>3762942
Can someone explain to me why people like this ending so much? It really didn't make any kind of impact on me or seem to symbolize anything.

>> No.3763073

Surprised this hasn't been posted:

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?"

Also:
So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.

>> No.3763680

Closing:
>Over many indeed, of those who have gone before, as over the inglorious and ignoble, the waves of oblivion will roll; Agricola, made known to posterity by history and tradition, will live forever.
- Agricola, Tacitus

>> No.3763689

>>3762629
I've done this a lot too, but I try never to start with a waking-up scene now. Ending a chapter/section with the protagonist going to sleep is I feel more difficult to evade, but I'm trying anyway

>> No.3763697

What do you guys think of something melodramatic to start off with such as:

"I am an opulent and pathetic man."

>> No.3764120

>>3762935
"He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city."

>> No.3764138

>>3761881
"In the thirty-fifth year of his reign, the Wanli Emperor turned his feverish and permanently dissatisfied eye on Nippon."

>> No.3764187

Beginning:
All of this happened more or less.

Ending:
Poo-tee-weet.

>> No.3764188

>>3764187
omg catch22

>> No.3764191

Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair. The doctor told him there were no bugs in his hair. After he had taken a shower for eight hours, standing under hot water hour after hour suffering the pain of the bugs, he got out and dried himself, and he still had bugs in his hair; in fact, he had bugs all over him. A month later he had bugs in his lungs.

>> No.3764206

>>3764188
It's Slaughterhouse 5 isn't it?

>> No.3764209

>>3764191
le fin

>> No.3764258

>>3764191
In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.

>> No.3764294

>>3762589
>>3762629
>>3763689
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

>> No.3764888

>>3763073
I was just about to post this, I think the last 20 or so pages of this book was a perfect way of ending it.

>> No.3766023

>>3764138
>>3764138

From?

>> No.3766073

" The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

>> No.3766139

>>3766023
The Years of Rice and Salt according to google.

>> No.3766217

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

>> No.3766272

Where the Air is Clear by Carlos Fuentes had a nice combination of both.

>> No.3766288
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3766288

"...where we came in?"

>> No.3766298

>>3766073
I just finished that book yesterday. Was surprisingly meh..

>> No.3766337

>>3766217
Thanks for reminding me, I need to find a good translation for the rest of the Divine Comedy.

>> No.3766395

"A spectre is haunting Europe-"

>> No.3766396

Best opening lines:
Cat's Cradle
Best closing line:
John Dies at the End

>> No.3766400

>>3764258
Totally forgot about this one.

>> No.3766434

"He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance."
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (ending)

"But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved big brother."
1984 - George Orwell (ending)


"The artist is the creator of beautiful things."
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (opening)

>> No.3766445
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3766445

Closing: It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.