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A comment on On Tolstoy's “War and Peace”. Parent comment

Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by Endy on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @06:38PM (#19324126)
To me, Anna Karenina is really mostly notable for having the second-greatest opening line in all literature.
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by roel_v on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @06:57PM (#19324259)
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", to save others a google.
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by martythemaniak on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @09:31PM (#19325108)
The greatest one being, of course:

"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times."

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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by osullivj on Thursday March 07, 2019 @06:12AM (#19327158)
It is a truth universally acknowledged... Jane Austen, naturally.
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by ravieira on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @07:17PM (#19324406)
What's the first?
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by aidenn0 on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @07:20PM (#19324438)
And the greatest?
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by kazinator on Thursday March 07, 2019 @01:07AM (#19325904)
"Common Lisp is a new dialect of Lisp, a successor to MacLisp, influenced strongly by Zetalisp and to some extent by Scheme and Interlisp."
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by quantumhobbit on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @09:27PM (#19325088)
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by Endy on Saturday March 09, 2019 @07:58PM (#19349566)
Kafka. "One day, Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed into a giant cockroach."
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by rjf72 on Thursday March 07, 2019 @01:05AM (#19325897)
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Definitely the greatest line I've ever read. Such extensive imagery and metaphor (well beyond just the sky), tucked into 15 words.

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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by coldtea on Thursday March 07, 2019 @03:42AM (#19326502)
And teens today (or soon) would not visually know what "television tuned to a dead channel" meant...
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by Endy on Sunday March 17, 2019 @02:34AM (#19412553)
It's almost more profound in some ways - on a lot of modern TVs, a dead channel is displayed as being a solid field of bright blue. So, it changes the way Sprawl's sky appears to each reader, but it makes the change take place in Case's head. If it's bright blue, and a person recognizes that first as related to a TV, what does that say about the way they perceive the world? Especially with how bad Case wants digital access.
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by propertius on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @07:30PM (#19324507)
"Call me Ishmael"?
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by toufiqbarhamov on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @07:34PM (#19324530)
A screaming comes across the sky.
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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by willmhorne on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @09:57PM (#19325230)
Now, Everybody---

It's hard to pinpoint a "best," but I agree that this one (from Gravity's Rainbow) it quite, quite good, one I recall often.

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Re:On Tolstoy's “War and Peace” by nachexnachex on Wednesday March 06, 2019 @09:59PM (#19325234)
¿En un lugar de la Mancha...?
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