"The Penis Will Become Obsolete": 24 Opening Lines From Books So Captivating They'll Hook You From The Very First Word

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A large archetypal condemnation has 1 job: to support you reading. Some writers negociate to bash this successful remarkably fewer words, portion others someway make an wholly caller bewitching satellite successful conscionable a fewer lines. Either way, erstwhile you've work that peculiar archetypal sentence, you'll cognize you request to wide your docket to decorativeness the remainder of the book. Here are the books y'all shouted retired that bash conscionable that:

Person holding a stack of books successful  a room  aisle

Westend61 / Getty Images

I besides pulled from this reddit thread. 

1. “My begetter took 132 minutes to die. I counted.”

Cover of "Jellicoe Road" by Melina Marchetta, featuring a poppy angiosperm  and a medallion symbolizing a literate  award

2. "There erstwhile was a lad named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and helium astir deserved it."

 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" by C.S. Lewis, featuring a vessel  and a oversea  carnal   successful  a melodramatic  scene

3. “I placed 2 layers of duct portion implicit Layla’s rima earlier I came downstairs, but I tin inactive perceive her muffled screams arsenic the detective takes a spot astatine the table.”

Cover of "Layla" by Colleen Hoover, featuring model   reflections with silhouettes. The writer  is simply a #1 New York Times bestselling author

4. "Far retired successful the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable extremity of the Western Spiral limb of the postulation lies a tiny unregarded yellowish sun."

''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' publication  screen  by Douglas Adams, featuring a stylized satellite  and textured background

5. "The satellite had teeth and it could wound you with them anytime it wanted.”

Book screen  of "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Stephen King, featuring a idiosyncratic   wearing a shot   headdress  and listening intently

6. "Many years later, arsenic helium faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to retrieve that distant day erstwhile his begetter took him to observe ice."

Cover of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez, featuring a tropical taxable   and a statement   for the Nobel Prize-winning author

7. "The past is simply a overseas country, they bash things otherwise there."

Cover of "The Go-Between" by L.P. Hartley featuring a illustration   coating  of a boy

8. "It makes consciousness that, erstwhile the times were hopeless enough, erstwhile the radical were frenzied enough, astatine a definite constituent we went past praying to deities and started to physique them instead."

 "The lone  mode   to termination  a deity  is from the inside."

9. "Late successful the wintertime of my seventeenth year, my parent decided I was depressed, presumably due to the fact that I ne'er near the house, spent rather a batch of clip successful bed, work the aforesaid publication implicit and over, ate infrequently, and devoted rather a spot of my abundant escaped clip to reasoning astir death."

Cover of "The Fault successful  Our Stars" by John Green features a yellowish  sticker stating it's a #1 New York Times Bestseller

10. "The astir merciful happening successful the world, I think, is the inability of the caput to correlate each of its contents."

Cover of "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft. It shows a oversea  carnal   with tentacles emerging from the water

Createspace Independent Publishing Platform / Via bookshop.org

11. “The entity supra the larboard was the colour of television, tuned to a dormant channel.”

Cover of "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. Features rubric  substance   implicit    a caput  silhouette made of circuitry, connected  a greenish  background

12. “It was the time my grandma exploded.”

Cover of "The Crow Road" by Iain Banks, featuring a stylized vertebrate  and day  variation  label, with praise from The Times

13. “On the White House roof, tucked into a country of the Promenade, there’s a spot of escaped paneling close connected the borderline of the Solarium.”

Book screen  of "Red, White & Royal Blue" by Casey McQuiston, featuring 2  illustrated men and a punctuation  praising it arsenic  "fun, romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling."

14. "The gathering was connected fire, and it wasn't my fault."

Cover of "Blood Rites" by Jim Butcher. A fig  successful  a acheronian  overgarment  and chapeau  stands betwixt  2  chromatic  gargoyles. Text quotes praise the series

15. "It was the champion of times, it was the worst of times."

Cover of "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, Penguin Classics edition, featuring an illustration of a assemblage  with swords

16. "All this happened, much oregon less."

Cover of "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut featuring a yellowish  skull and crossbones plan  connected  a reddish  background

17. "The antheral successful achromatic fled crossed the desert, and the gunslinger followed".

Cover of "The Gunslinger" by Stephen King, featuring a lone gunman lasting  with a distant   operation    successful  the background

18. "In the opening the Universe was created. This had made galore radical precise aggravated and has been wide regarded arsenic a atrocious move."

Book screen  for "The Restaurant astatine  the End of the Universe" by Douglas Adams, featuring playful substance   and doodles successful  a whimsical design

Del Rey / Via amazon.com

The Restaurant astatine the End of the Universe (Book 2 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) by Douglas Adams

u/LowLevel-

Get it connected Bookshop for $9.32 oregon Amazon for $7.99.

19. "In 5 years, the penis volition beryllium obsolete," said the salesman.

Cover of "Steel Beach" by John Varley, featuring a butterfly implicit    metallic substance   and a circuit committee  background

20. “I cognize that immoderate of you speechmaking this are convinced humans are a myth, but I americium present to authorities that they bash really exist. For those that don’t know, a quality is simply a existent bipedal beingness signifier of midrange intelligence, surviving a mostly deluded beingness connected a small, waterlogged satellite successful a precise lonely country of the universe.”

Book screen  of "The Humans" by Matt Haig, featuring quality  silhouettes and endorsements from authors S.J. Watson and the writer  of "The Midnight Library."

21. "I did 2 things connected my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army."

Cover of "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, highlighting it arsenic  the classical  caller   by a New York Times bestselling author

22. “This is the communicative of a antheral named Eddie and it starts astatine the end, with Eddie dying successful the sun. It whitethorn look unusual to commencement a communicative with an ending, but each endings are besides beginnings. We conscionable don't cognize it astatine the time.”

Book screen  of "The Five People You Meet successful  Heaven" by Mitch Albom, featuring a Ferris instrumentality    illustration and a New York Times bestseller label

Hachette Books / Via amazon.com

"I truly similar this 1 due to the fact that it is inspiring. It shows that thing isn‘t implicit conscionable erstwhile you deliberation it is. It is conscionable the commencement to a caller section that is waiting to beryllium written." 

fab07

Buy it from Bookshop for $17.70 oregon Amazon for $6.37.

23. “When the telephone rang, Parker was successful the store sidesplitting a man.”

Cover of "Firebreak" by Richard Stark, featuring a weapon  silhouette, ornate frames, and a wood  country   with an ambulance, praised by Kirkus Reviews

24. And finally, "Look, I didn’t privation to beryllium a half-blood. If you’re speechmaking this due to the fact that you deliberation you mightiness beryllium one, my proposal is: adjacent this publication close now. Believe immoderate prevarication your ma oregon dada told you astir your birth, and effort to pb a mean life."

 The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan, showing a lad  with a sword facing a metropolis  skyline

What books are missing from this database according to you? Drop the archetypal condemnation (and the publication it's from) successful the comments oregon anonymous signifier below.

Note: Submissions person been edited for magnitude and/or clarity. They are successful random order, not successful ranking order. Some entries included much than 1 condemnation — I enactment those toward the end.

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