creeping malaise, underlying depression, complex thoughts, everything squeezed through the eye of a needle, entry to heaven is open for the rich and thin but not the poor and fat, messages coming in from angelic realms, complications of the soul, the spirit needs revival. post trip blues, ha not really just a need to get stuck into something profound and stimulating, and i'm getting an urge to write a book, the book, it's the last one any one expects, it's the story every one is waiting for, it's emerging, after i think of the greatest opening lines...

for the writer of a novel the opening line requires the most consideration. two of my fave books have my fave opening lines, is this coincidence? i don't really believe in chance, i think that it makes perfect sense that the opening line will effect the rest of the story, as the first imprint if written with gravity will impress upon the reader for the rest of the novel.
when i was 14 i read the three books that would influence me the most, two paperbacks that to this day made the biggest impression and influenced me in both style and content. they have the best opening lines ever written and i defy anyone to come up with something equally as good or as powerful.
nineteen eighty four by george orwell starts with the surreal and brilliant line, "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
what does that imply, that he sets the scene for a novel in an environment that is not quite the one we are familiar with, with a seasonal atmosphere invoking brisk english springs and then suddenly everything is out of whack, but it's not so sudden is it, it is for us as we just read the words but if we inhabit them it's starts with the first of 12 chimes, and then that extra one, the 13th that sends everything spiralling into the awful future.
the other great opening is hunter s thompsons', "we were somewhere around barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.'
it's a brilliant line, powerful and strong, the spirit of adventure and the landscape of america, and all you want to know are what drugs?
the last book from that period i recall is kafkas metamorphosis which begins, '"as gregor samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
all i could think was imagine that, waking up and finding yourself an insect. what a strange start to a story, shocking, slightly frightening and somewhat disturbing.
yes the opening words to a novel should representative of the novel itself, it should have the totality of the whole book within it, like the seed.