Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time

If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1].

On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%) seeing quotes they've already seen before. This is an example of the coupon collector's problem[2].

The way to avoid both these problems is to shuffle the quotes into a random order, just once, and remember that order. The first time a user comes to the page, start at a random index in that shuffled list, and from then on, simply move to the next item in the list. Every user will get a unique set of random quotes, but will see no repeats until the list is exhausted, and will be guaranteed to be able to see all available content in just 60 refreshes.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem

Few can top the opening line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

But there were brave souls who tried, in the now-defunct Bulwer-Lytton Contest [0].

Where else could you find gems like these?

  > The day I lost my tractor was the same day I found out my wife was moonlighting as a hooker when she gave me a wad of cash and told me, “It’s from a John, dear."

May I submit these? Didn't see these after many refreshes:

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French." - Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

"When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow." - Harper Lee. To Kill A Mockingbird

"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."- Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind

Really cool!

> The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

I did not refresh to check if you already have that, but I really find it very strong. Its from Kings "Dark Tower - Black" (edit: its "The Gunslinger", not Black. its named "Schwarz" in the german translations) the first of 8 books in the series.

If you dont know it; its not like the usual King books. It mixes fantasy elements (inspired by LoTR), western, scfi (robots, AI-trains) cyberpunk and horror. Its a great series!

I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how much of it you can quote without looking :)

For me, its: Whann that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem natur in hir courages, and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages.

Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.

For reference, a famous Irish coffee-table (read: bathroom) book in a similar vein:

https://www.abebooks.com/Said-Duchess-First-Lines-Gemma-OCon...

And from a cursory few refreshes I didn't see the obvious one come up:

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Orwell, 1984

Frustrating without a way to get to the list of works, because it's not clear when you've seen them all.

You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before.

A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e.ln(N) times ( iirc, for large N ).

( Or put another way: given N items, you expect the gap between discovering the penultimate one and the last one to be N. )

Really cool idea! Add a possibility to send you tips for other books. Here is mine: "As GREGOR SAMSA awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The minimal style works, the words really do speak for themselves. Have you thought about a movie section? Famous opening lines from films could fit the same format.

Nice. The only opening line I remember offhand is from Neuromancer (which I'm glad to see is included in the site!)

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

I am guessing you are looking for good/inspiring ones and picking and choosing which you want to see? Otherwise, why not just scrape sections of project gutenberg's text versions into a csv so you have more variety?

This is awesome! 9 months ago or so some coworkers and I had the idea to make a Wordle style game where you have to guess the book using some clues from a book including the first sentence. I stopped adding clues myself but your post reminded me to get it open sourced :)

There's a small client-only app here to check out: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle https://loganintech.github.io/bookdle/

Or if you want to see the source code for the "platform" where I added a database and such: https://github.com/loganintech/bookdle-platform

This reminds me how much weight a great opening sentence carries. Some of them are memorable decades later because they establish the tone immediately

Thank you for all the good feedback guys, i've already started implementing some of your suggestions, including some of your favorite quotes!

Whoever likes this will likely also enjoy this clock announcing the time using literary quotes: https://www.amazon.com/Author-Clock-Literary-Quotes-Unique/d...

(What I particularly enjoy is that one can contribute to the database of quotations.)

> "I was born in the City of Bombay… once upon a time." > Midnight's Children > Salman Rushdie · 1981

Ok so I guess it is literally just openings of famous literary works, and not great first lines

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing"

A River Runs Through It

Norman Maclean

I like how "A Wrinkle in Time" starts:"It was a dark and stormy night."

It was a dark and stormy night.

"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know." - The Stranger, Camus

I've always wanted to do this! I've scraped Gutenberg and tried some clever ways to get the first line, but I always got so much noise. Perhaps it's a good time to try again!

This is called incipit, right? In both English and French afaik.

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." > Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez

Love the aesthetics ... the fonts ... sizes ... colors ... nicely done!

It would be fun if you had to guess what book it’s from

After trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English.

Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite:

> Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.

My translation:

"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

English literature heavily overrepresented

I tried to press space, arrow keys, enter, tab, etc to get to next quote. None of those worked

Great idea! I would love a tailored version based on Goodreads or Storygraph

What about making it a daily style game where you have to guess which book the opening is from?

you should add closing line too.

Now please please make for with the first comment of every HN front page posts ever.

edit: added “please”

this is nice, simple idea, but nice. I think the style of the site is also appropriate for what this is :)

wonderful project thanks for making it :)

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Cool beans.

It was a dark and stormy night... /s