# Best first sentences of novels...



## Dancer Preston

I was just reading The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 which has a section called: "Best American First Sentences of Novels of 2005." And I was wondering, what do you think is the best opening line you've ever read in a novel?

My favorite--and the only one I can quote--is from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice:

"It is a universally acknowledged truth, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

I loves it!


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## strangedaze

'Call me Ishmael.'

- Moby Dick, Herman Melville

'When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.'

- The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka


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## Kane

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

The Gunslinger, Stephen King


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## Aera

"Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was coming."
-_Cold Fire,_ Dean Koontz


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## umbramaker

I've got two.

"'He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter.'"
-_The Number of the Beast_, Robert A. Heinlein

This one's actually two sentences, but it's good, anyway.

"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_, Douglass Adams


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## quarterscot

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
- _Fear and Loathing In Los Vegas_, Hunter S Thompson

"My mother is a virgin. (Trust me.)"
- _Emotionally Wierd_, Kate Atkinson


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## riversource

"Hello, ship," Jake Holman said under his breath. - The Sand Pebbles by Richard Mckenna


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## strangedaze

i dig the douglas adams / hst quotes. nice.


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## Loulou

_Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were._


"Gone with the Wind" - Margaret Mitchell.


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## Shawn

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

Nabokov is always most beautiful.


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## Jaspers

"It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers


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## Anarkos

"The sky was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel"
- William Gibson, Neuromancer

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



"I can count my overdoses on one hand:"
- Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook

"If you're going to read this, don't bother."
- Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

"The bells of St Mark's were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlour to get upgrade his skull gun."
- Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

"I was in my room, reading a book"
- Iain Banks, Whit

"It was the day my grandmother exploded"
- Iain Banks, The Crow Road

"Two days ago I decided to kill myself. [...Last night, I changed my mind and decided to stay alive.  Everything that follows is...just try to explain]"
- Iain Banks, Espedair Street

And Iain Banks' 'The Business' has the funniest first three pages.  About teeth.  And the best opening dialogue, from his vicious and brilliant 'Use of Weapons':

"Tell me, what is happiness?"
"Happiness?  Happiness is to wake up on a bright spring morning, after an exhausting first night spent with a beautiful ... passionate ... multi-murderess."
"...Shit, is that all?"

And the very worst:
"Meteorites fell through the night sky like a gentle sleet of icefire, their sharp scintillations slashing ebony overload streaks across the image Gregor Mandel's photon amp was feeding into his optical nerves."
- Peter F Hamilton, Mindstar Rising


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## DesolateValkyrie

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


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## ~Si~

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport."
Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul; By Douglas Adams.


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## Straylight

_It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me. [I attempted to wriggle my toes, succeeded. I was sprawled there in a hospital bed and my legs were done up in plaster casts, but they were still mine.]_
-Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber.


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## VinrAlfakyn

"They say the fearsome things don't always work well. It takes three or four chops to sever the head. Sometimes the poor wretches scream horribly, for a full minute, before their agony is ended with a single massive blow."
-Carolly Erickson, *The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette*.

"I never talk about _her_ except when I'm drinking."
-edited by Denise Little, *Hags, Sirens, & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy*.

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
-C.S. Lewis, *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*


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## TinyMachines

Dancer Preston said:
			
		

> My favorite--and the only one I can quote--is from Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice:
> 
> "It is a universally acknowledged truth, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."



I despise this opening line more than any others.


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## G. Palmer

I always enjoyed the Ian Fleming's openings, especially the blunter ones.

"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning" - Casino Royale, Ian Fleming

"It was one of those Septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end" - On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Ian Fleming

"The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead" - From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming

"Punctually at six o'clock the sun set with a last yellow flash behind the Blue Mountains, a wave of violet shadow poured down Richmond Road, and the crickets and the tree frogs in the fine gardens began to zing and tinkle" - Doctor No, Ian Fleming

"The two eyes behind the wide black rubber goggles were as cold as flint" - From A View To A Kill, Ian Fleming

"I was running away." - The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming

"The two thirty-eights roared simultaneously" - Moonraker, Ian Fleming


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## swimfanatic

I've always liked the opening sentence to J.K. Rowling's 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.' I was never sure why. Call me crazy, but I can even recite it by memory, I was so obsessed (lol). 

'The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it "the Riddle House", even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.'

Ok, I have to admit that after four years since I last read that first sentence, it's kind of lost it's magic (lol). Well, that's my bad example.:roll: Guess I'll have to make up for it with a better one later, but that's going to require a lot of searching. So don't expect this brilliant example anytime soon.


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## Scarecrow

"It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea."

Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve.


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## qwertyman

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt his shoit.

Dashiell Hammett: Red Harvest


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## Banzai

"Sing, O goddess, the rage of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans." - Homer's _Iliad_ (translation by Samuel Butler)

I don't know if it can be counted as a novel, but I've always loved it.


"Lessa woke, cold"- Anne McCaffrey's _Dragonflight_


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## swimfanatic

Allright, here's one.

"The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit."

The Uglies--Scott Westerfeld

And another...

"Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world."

Eragon--Christopher Paolini


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## Banzai

swimfanatic said:
			
		

> "Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world."
> 
> Eragon--Christopher Paolini


 
...is that a joke?


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## swimfanatic

Ummm....it's not supposed to be. Unless you find it funny for some reason. Maybe you meant to copy and paste this one:

 "The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit."

The Uglies--Scott Westerfeld

To be honest, I just thought that this first sentence was interesting. I mean, who in their right mind would compare the sky to cat vomit? It just seemed a little different to me, which is why I pointed it out.


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## Shawn

No, you see, Paolini is a plagiarist in a sense. That sentence has been used over and over for centuries. Not to mention Eragon sucked.


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## swimfanatic

Ok, well, I disagree on the Eragon sucked thing, but whatever...you're entitled to your own opinion.


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## Scott Tuplin

_"Although it stands to reason that a samurai should be mindful of the Way of the Samurai, it would seem that we are all negligent."_
- Tsunetomo Yamamoto, _The Book of the Samurai_


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## salad days

If you are a dreamer, come in. If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer... If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire for we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Shel Silverstein - Where the Sidewalk Ends


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## Krim

> "The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit."
> 
> The Uglies--Scott Westerfeld


 
Pretty stupid attempt at parodying Gibson's opening line in Neuromancer. Doesn't even make sense...vomit is not one color.


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## Kane

Krim said:
			
		

> Pretty stupid attempt at parodying Gibson's opening line in Neuromancer. Doesn't even make sense...vomit is not one color.



Neither is the sky.  :scratch:


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## swimfanatic

Yeah, kind of what I was thinking when I first read it, which is why I found it interesting.  


_Pretty stupid attempt at parodying Gibson's opening line in Neuromancer._:scratch: Never heard of that book. Sorry.


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## Anarkos

Gibson's Neuromancer is a novel that helped to create a genre.  It is, in many ways, groundbreaking.  Like so much of Gibson's work, it has some clear flaws, but, damn, when Gibson writes well, Gibson writes _well_.

Interesting note: When he wrote it, if you tuned your TV to a channel without signal, you'd get static.  So what Gibson was saying was that the sky was like static; black, grey, silver, changing rapidly etc.  Great image.  Now, on most new TVs, dead channels are shown as a revolting blue.   This also works as a comparison to the sky...just a completely different one.


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## Sir Jorah

Aera said:
			
		

> "Even before the events in the supermarket, Jim Ironheart should have known trouble was coming."
> -_Cold Fire,_ Dean Koontz



That was a great one.  And a great book.  That was the first Koontz novel I'd ever read, and got me hooked.

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
-Stephen King, Gunslinger

This one was great too.


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## Neo

People are afraid to merge in Los Angeles.


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## TinyMachines

Neo said:
			
		

> People are afraid to merge in Los Angeles.


I want to say that's from a palahniuk book. I know that line. (invisible monsters?)


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## Der_Parvenu_Meister

its in that book he wont shut up about, less than zero by Ellis


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## CircusFolk

"At times Cley thought that she was, well, a bit too intense. She seemed to have too much personality for one person and yet not enough for two."
_Beyond Inifinity _by Gregory Benford 

"In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisbility actually exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three."
_Howl's Moving Castle _by Diane Wynne Jones

"Not wanting to arouse Vishnu in case he hadn't died yet, Mrs. Asrani tiptoed down to the third step above the landing on which he lived, teakettle in hand."
_The Death of Vishnu _by Manil Suri

"My grandfather spent his life mending fences. So much of his life that it seemed like a religion. _Though shalt not let thy barbed wire sag._"
_All we Know of Love _by Katie Schneider 

"Midway this way of life we're bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone."
_The Divine Comedy: The Inferno _by Dante

This is excluding some of the other wonderful ones that have been mentioned from works such as _Lolita, Moby Dick, The Gunslinger, _and various Douglas Adams' books.


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## swimfanatic

I liked the _All We Know of Love_ one that you posted by Katie Schneider, though I can't say I've ever heard of it.


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## Joe Moore

“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm.”
_Something Wicked This Way Comes_ by Ray Bradbury.


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## Der_Parvenu_Meister

"And even as I stared at his dead body, I STILL couldnt believe it wasnt butter,"

  - The laughing Cow, "behind the laughter".


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## Hobbes

"When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's _The Thieving Magpie_, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta."

Just finished reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. What a book...


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## bob rulz

I'm gonna have to agree with:

"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_, Douglass Adams



			
				Anarkos said:
			
		

> "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
> - Iain Banks, The Crow Road


 
Best one yet. It can't get any more "WTF?" than that. Haha.



			
				Anarkos said:
			
		

> And the very worst:
> "Meteorites fell through the night sky like a gentle sleet of icefire, their sharp scintillations slashing ebony overload streaks across the image Gregor Mandel's photon amp was feeding into his optical nerves."
> - Peter F Hamilton, Mindstar Rising


 
...

What?

Okay, I just read it for the 8th time (no exaggeration, I counted them), and finally got it. But still...

...

What?


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## LadyPenelope

I'd like to second the previous Douglas Adams ones. That man was a genius. I love the Hitchhiker's series. 
I'd also like to add 'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' from I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith. Probably my favourite book, and that line is great. So simple.


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## Lunatic

I was stealing salt shakers again.

Apathy by Paul Neilan
(This book is brilliant and totally, completely, absolutely crazy.)


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## Rahvin

From what I can remember off the top of my head:

"In the darkness, the tower."

_Blind_, by Matthew Farrer.

I'm sure I've read better ones, but I just can't get at the books right now...


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## lisajane

'Under normal circumstances, Faith and I should not be home when my mother calls and invites us to come see her brand-new coffin.'

Keeping Faith, Jodi Picolut. This first line drew me in quickly.


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## speakerphone2

"It was a pleasure to burn."
-Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

"For the weekly docket the court jester wore his standard garb of well-used and deeply-faded maroon pajamas and lavendar terry-cloth shower shoes with no socks."
-The Brethren, John Grisham


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## Scott Tuplin

"I awoke on the morning of my hundred and fifty second birthday with every intention of being born again."
- Quail and Riches, Anonymous


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## raymondstary

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."


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## J.S.S

"ABANDON HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First"
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis


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## Travmire

"It began as a mistake."

_Post Office_  Charles Bukowski


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## strangedaze

bret easton ellis has some doozies. less than zero has one...something about people being afraid to merge on the freeway outside LA...


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## J.S.S

strangedaze said:
			
		

> bret easton ellis has some doozies. less than zero has one...something about people being afraid to merge on the freeway outside LA...



Yeah it's: "Peole are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city."


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## C.C.Benjamin

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

King might think he has a tin ear for language, but this is the third time in this thread he has gotten props for that opener.

Also, the description of Black Thirteen:

"..sat crouched on velvet, like the slick eye of a monster that grew outside of God's shadow."


A-W-E-S-O-M-E.


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## faithslasthope

These are the ones that I could find that I remember really pulling me in. Some of them are actually the opening couple of lines, though.

The Bad Beginning- Lemony Snicket
If you are interested in stories with happy ending, you would be better off reading some other book.

Elsewhere- Gabrielle Zevin
"The end came quickly, and there wasn't any pain." Sometimes, the father whispers it to the mother. Sometimes, the mother to the father. From the top of the stairs, Lucy hears it all and says nothing.

Cobwebs- Karen Romano Young
The first time Nancy saw Dion he was balancing on the rail of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Manhattan shimmered across the river. Annette was telling Nancy again how much she wanted a boyfriend, and Nancy was pretending to listen.

Th Last Dog on Earth- Daniel Ehrenhaft
Before the sickness, the pack had always hunted at night.

Animal Farm- George Orwell
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

Premonitions- Jude Watson
I think I was a nice person before my mom died.

The Last Days- Scott Westerfeld(this is actually kinda the prologue, sorry if it's long, but I love it)

Ever hear this charming little rhyme?
_Ring-around-the-rosy._
_Pocket full of posies._
_Ashes, ashes, we all fall down._

Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100 million people. Here's the theory: "Ring-arond-the-rosy" was an early symptom of the plague: a circular rash of red skin. In medieval tmes, people carried flowers, like posies, with them for protection against the disease. The words "ashes to ashes" appear in the funeral mass, and sometimes plague victims' houses were burned.

And "we all fall down"?

Well, you can figure that one out for yourself.

Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense. A red rash isn't really a plague symptom, they say, and "ashes" was originally some other word. Most important, the rhyme is too new. It didn't appear in print until 1881.

Trust me, though: it's about the plague. The words have changed a little from the original, but so have any words carried on the lips of children for seven hundred years. It's a little reminder that the Black Death will come again.

How can I be so sure about this rhyme, when all experts disagree?

Because I ate the kid who made it up.

*Night Mayor Tapes:*
*102-103*


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## surreal_girl

"High atop the steps of the Great Pyramid of Giza a young woman laughed and called down to him. 'Robert, hurry up! I knew I should of married a younger man!' Her smile was magic."
-Angels and Demons, Dan Brown

"Blood, blood everywhere."
-After Human, Michael Cross

"The word Irish is seldom coupled with the word civilization." 
-How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill

"Many survival case histories show that stubborn, strong willpower can conquer many obstacles."
- US Army Survival Manual, Headquaters, Department of the Army

"This is a true story."
-The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson


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## raymondstary

"Dan Brown is a hack." _Dan Brown Is a Hack, by The Sane World_


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## Akumu

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

-- _Mrs. Dalloway_ by Virginia Woolf

"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong."

-- _The Trial_ by Franz Kafka


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## Savia

Being, like many others, a bit of a sceptic for advertising, I had to check when I saw a cover emblazoned with the line 'GRIPS FROM THE FIRST SENTENCE', and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was, for once, literally true:

"Can you see how the pieces fit together?"
     -_The Towers of the Sunset_, by L.E. Modesitt Jr.


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## huntingtonb

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
     - Anne Tyler, _Back When We were Grownups_


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## Lewa

'I'm the vampire Lestat, remember me?'

Queen of the damned - anne rice


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## Banzai

'_Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know._' -The Outsider, by Albert Camus.

We did it in English, and spent the first three lessons going over the importance of this as a first line. In the English and French translations. And yet I _still _don't hate it as much as I hate The Great Gatsby.


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## ProudestMonkey

"Polly cut off her hair in front of the mirror, feeling slightly guilty about not feeling very guilty about doing so." - Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett


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## Gres

Yall listed some great ones. I couldn't stop laughing at the first sentence to Hitchhiker's Guide. What great stuff that is.
Here are mine:

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again." 
The Eye of the World, Book One of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
That was a great series for me. It was my first venture into fantasy. He is a fantastic writer. And that line is the most appropriate beginning to the series.

And here is one more. I could not resist. :mrgreen: 
"'Who is John Galt?'"
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


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## L.A.Matthews

Shawn said:
			
		

> "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
> 
> "She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."
> 
> Nabokov is always most beautiful.



I'm so glad someone mentioned that! It's probably my favourite opening to all the books I've read.

Here's a good one:

As usual, at five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters. The intermittent sound barely penetrated the window-panes on which the frost lay two fingers thick, and they ended almost as soon as they'd begun.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


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## assassin

Gres said:
			
		

> "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."
> The Eye of the World, Book One of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan


 
Got there before me. Love this one and unless I've remembered wrong, it's in every Wheel of Time book. Okay, so I'ma WoT fan.



			
				Banzai said:
			
		

> "Lessa woke, cold"- Anne McCaffrey's _Dragonflight_


This was the first McCaffrey book I ever read and it certainly got me.

Okay, my turn:

"In defense of Althalus, it should be noted that he was in very tight financial circumstances and more than a little tipsy when he agreed to undertake the theft of the Book." - The Redemption of Althalus by David and Leigh Eddings


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## Johnna

I absolutely love the Wheel of Time openings. (I'm a big fan, too. )

"Once upon a time, there was a prostitute named Maria. [Wait a minute. 'Once upon a time' is how all the best children's stories begin and 'prostitute' is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moments of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning.]"

--Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho

I love Coelho's work in general and Eleven Minutes in particular.


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## ~Kouryuu~

"_Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the pratical side of his education, decided on horseshoes._" - The Book of Three (from the Chronicles of Prydain series) by Lloyd Alexander.

"_Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree._" - The Hogfather - Terry Pratchett.

"_Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it._" - Night Watch - Terry Pratchett.

"_'Once upon a time,' said the big fat farmer, 'it was all fields around here.'
The traveller glanced all around and about.  'It's still all fields,' said he._" - The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse - Robert Rankin

"_Death was hiding in Kaspar's pocket._" - The resurrection casket (Doctor Who series) by Justin Richards.


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## CatchyUsername

"Mommy, do you think daddy wants to die?" Evan Blaylock asked his mother, Jessie.

***First line from the novel I'm currently writing.

Sorry, everyone posted all of the good ones by now.:-x


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## Kyrie

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it-- it was the black kitten's fault entirely. ~ _Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there_, Lewis Carroll


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## Lady_Kristin

*[SIZE=-1]"This is my favourite book in all the world, though I have never read it."[/SIZE]*_[SIZE=-1]
~ The Princess Bride [/SIZE]_[SIZE=-1]by William Goldman[/SIZE]_[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]_


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## cryptika

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge."

- The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood


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## Heid

"I wasn't there when I died." Nobody True - James Herbert


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## Rahvin

"Describe, using diagrams where apropriate, the exact circumstances of your death"

From _Red Dwarf_


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## Johnnyelvis

Here's one of my favourites:

_'If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native country; the narrative would be tedious to him and painful to myself.'_

_*EREWHON by Samuel Butler*_


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## evlddd

"Screams in the dark". Bec by Darren Shan. Simple and to the point.


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## virtugirl333

"Congrts, the fact that you are redng this shows that you've taken 1 gint step closr to survng 'till your next birth day." ~ Maximem Ride, The Angel Exprmnt by James Pattrsen.


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## Dabnorfish

"It was a dark and stormy night"...
Just kidding.

The one that I always seem to remember is "The sky was the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel," from Neuromancer.  It's not one of the best, but it's just stuck.


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## enron1982

"It was a pleasure to burn."
"The sellar of lightning rods arrived just before the storm."

Both Bradbury.


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## Non Serviam

"The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not seem to him to prove that he was dead: he had always been a hard man to convince." -- Ambrose Bierce.


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## mandax

"I was stealing salt shakers again."
-Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan


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## Dancer Preston

virtugirl333 said:


> "Congrts, the fact that you are redng this shows that you've taken 1 gint step closr to survng 'till your next birth day." ~ Maximem Ride, The Angel Exprmnt by James Pattrsen.


 
Is that really how James Patterson writes?


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## SFeigley

As long as it is, I've always loved the way Dickens opened A tale of two cities.

_"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."_


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## ClancyBoy

Banzai said:


> "Sing, O goddess, the rage of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans." - Homer's _Iliad_ (translation by Samuel Butler)



Oh hey, I we can list _those.


_[SIZE=-1]祇園精舎の鐘の声、諸行無常の響有り。沙羅双樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理を顕す。奢れる人も久しからず、只春の夜の夢の如し

[/SIZE] _The sound of the Gion Shôja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind._

-- The Tale of the Heike


[SIZE=-1]天下大势，合久必分，分久必合

[/SIZE]_An empire long united, must divide; an empire long divided, must unite. _

-- Romance of the Three Kingdoms


----------



## Himani

CircusFolk said:


> "In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisbility actually exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three."
> _Howl's Moving Castle _by Diane Wynne Jones
> 
> "Not wanting to arouse Vishnu in case he hadn't died yet, Mrs. Asrani tiptoed down to the third step above the landing on which he lived, teakettle in hand."
> _The Death of Vishnu _by Manil Suri



I love both those books, and their first sentences. 

The only one I can think of comes from my favorite book. Not sure if it's my favorite opening sentence, though, but here goes:

"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone."
- _The Last Unicorn_, Peter S. Beagle


----------



## Nefieslab

"I'm not drunkk....! I can stoopp beeing drunkk whenever.... i waaant to..." - Mort by Terry Pratchet

"The sparrows are flying" - The Dark Half


----------



## obscenehaiku

I may very well be alone on this, but I love the first line of _Catcher in the Rye _by J.D. Salinger, not necessarily because it's entirely riveting prose, but because it does such a great job of setting the tone and introducing the reader to the main character:

_"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
_


----------



## enron1982

\


----------



## enron1982

mandax said:


> "I was stealing salt shakers again."
> -Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan



Hell yeah, that book f'ing rules. (although we may have discussed this in another thread, i may be mistaken)


----------



## VulpineSaxGuy

Two of my favorites would have to be

"It was a Pleasure to burn"
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

And of course, "Call me Ishmael."
- Moby Dick, Herman Melville


----------



## superchase32

Last Night I dreamed I went to Manderlay again

from Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, it's incredible.


----------



## jamesdemann

have always been found of douglas adam's openings, and I find it hard to find an opening line that has not been mentioned already. But going off on a tangent i would have to say that the best opening few lines are the following...

Watch...
This is space. It's somethings called the final froniter. (Except that of course you can't have a FINAL froniter, because there'd be nothing for it to be a froniter to, but as froniters go, it's pretty penultimate...)

Terry Pratchett....Moving Pictures


and the truely all time greatest opening of a novel goes to the the same author, and bear with me on this one, as it's a tad long.

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer to the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creatire of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away.
All power, all control. Lighting death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least take a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling along the bushes down there in the desert. And it will leap...
And a minute later the tortise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and thinks: what a wonderful friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to it's death. Everybody knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There's good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there's much better eating on pratically anything else. It's simply the delight of the eagle to torment tortoises.
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that is is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

Terry Pratchett....Small Gods


----------



## jamesdemann

or...we could consider one my my first lines....

It was a fine mid-summers morning when the plane fell out of the sky.


----------



## The Backward OX

“While still a young man, John Courteney Boot had, as his publisher proclaimed, “achieved an assured and enviable position in contemporary letters.” ”

~ Scoop, Evelyn Waugh

An hilarious view of journalism sixty or so years ago. Boot was gardening correspondent for a small provincial newspaper and to cater to an insipid upper-class readership adopted flowery phraseology such as “_Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole_”, which has since passed into the annals of real journalism as a standing joke.


----------



## The Backward OX

"'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

The Bible. It's a novel, right?


----------



## Jacen

*A few I like*

Once upon a time there was a martian named Michael Valentine Smith. 
Stranger in a strange land - Robert Heinlein

A begining is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. 
Dune - Frank Herbert

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
The hobbit - Tolkien


----------



## Crews

"Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world."

From _Eragon_


----------



## WordWeaver

Crews said:


> "Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world."
> 
> From _Eragon_


 
Oh... my...


----------



## Anarkos

Banzai said:


> '_Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know._' -The Outsider, by Albert Camus.
> 
> We did it in English, and spent the first three lessons going over the importance of this as a first line. In the English and French translations. And yet I _still _don't hate it as much as I hate The Great Gatsby.



Camus is brilliantly grim.


----------



## Athlynne

I doubt it will seem great out of context, but the opening line that has always stuck in my head is from "The Dragon and the Unicorn", by A.A. Attanasio:

"There is only one dragon.  It lives inside the earth and is as huge as the whole planet."

I like the Douglas Adams first lines.  What I wouldn't give for his brilliance!


----------



## RomanticRose

Ken Follet -- _The Eye of the Needle_
*"The last camel collapsed at noon."*

Stephen King -- _The Eyes of the Dragon_
*"Once, in a kingdom called Delain, there was a King with two sons."*

Ayn Rand, _We The Living_
*"Petrograd smelt of carbolic acid."*

Ann Fairbairn, _Five Smooth Stones_
*"There was a ten dollar bill in Joseph Champlin's pocket on an evening in early March in 1933."*


----------



## mdlegend17

'The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.'

Although I prefer the additional bit from the radio series: 'Islington has that effect on people, even 2 million years ago.'


----------



## Patrick

why didn't you make a thread about the best opening of a book and not just the first sentence? Lol. If you had, I would point you in the direction of Ian Mcewan and "enduring love".


----------



## sam_kempton

ok it may of been mentioned already or it may not of but my fav opening line is:

The man in black fled across the desert, the gunslinger followed.
Steven king, the gunslinger


----------



## kidstaple

"I didn't shoot the bitch until she starting eating Alan's face."
-Brian Keene, 'Dead Sea'.

"It was raining on the morning the earthworms invaded my carport."
-Brian Keene, 'The Conqueror Worms'.

"Once upon a time we had a love affair with fire, the president of th United States thought as the match that he had just struck to light his pipe flaired beneath his fingers."
-Robert McCammon, 'Swan Song'.

"His full name was Ronald James Williamson and he killed his first child when he was just a child himself -- not that killing had been his intention; it never was the _intention_."
-Gary A. Braunbeck, 'Mr. Hands'.


----------



## Erik Buchanan

"Call me Ishmael." _Moby Dick_, Herman Melville

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." A_ Tale of Two Cities_, Charles Dickens

"Singing, in the distance." _Small Magics_, Erik Buchanan

Yeah, the last one is the one I wrote.  But I really like it.  That's why I started the book with it.


----------



## Buddy Glass

"None of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents' divorce."
- Richard Yates, _The Easter Parade_

"I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."
- Saul Bellow, _The Adventures of Augie March_

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
- James Joyce, _Finnegan's Wake_


----------



## The Backward OX

*From the "not so recommended" list*

‘Six! Double top!!’ 

And that's all I'm saying.


----------



## Matt3483

The Backward OX said:


> The Bible. It's a novel, right?



It sure is.

Here are two of my favourites:

*"Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him, and it is this first death which we will now witness."*

_Bliss_, Peter Carey

*"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth."*

_The Grapes of Wrath_, John Steinbeck


----------



## Katastrof

*"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." *
~ Stephen King, _The Gunslinger.

_I know its been repeated many times in this thread but I have to mention it again.  :thumbr: 

*"All this happened, more or less."
*~ Kurt Vonnegut _Slaughterhouse-Five 
_(The ending's even better I think)


----------



## Just Me

"What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask."
_Play It as It Lays_ by Joan Didion

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."
_Less Than Zero_ by Bret Easton Ellis

"The whistle isn't jaunty, not Doris Day. It's low and slow and the actor Bob Cummings would remember its hot zing for some time."
_The Song is You_ by Megan Abbott

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."
_Fight Club_ by Chuck Palahniuk

"The first thing is that the audience appear to be confronted by their own reflection in a huge mirror. Impossible. However, back there in the gloom - not at the footlights - a bank of plush seats and pale smudges of faces."
_The Real Inspector Hound_ by Tom Stoppard

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
_The Bell Jar_ by Sylvia Plath

"I can count my overdoses on one hand"
_The Contortionist's Handbook_ by Craig Clevenger

"Yes - Kilgore Trout is back again. He could not make it on the outside. That is no disgrace. A lot of goof people can't make it on the outside."
_Jailbird_ by Kurt Vonnegut

"All of this happened, more or less."
_Slaughterhouse-Five_ by Kurt Vonnegut

"He sat before the mirror of the second-floor bedroom sketching his lean cheeks with their high bone ridges, the flat broad forehead, and ears too far back on the head, the dark hair curling forward in thatches, the amber-colored eyes wide-set but heavy-lidded.
"'I'm not well designed,' thought the thirteen-year-old with serious concentration. 'My head is out of rule, with the forehead overweighing my mouth and chin. Someone should have used a plumb line.'"
_The Agony and the Ecstasy_ by Irving Stone


----------



## Ken

My favorite by far:

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice."  
--John Irving, _A Prayer for Owen Meany_


----------



## ClancyBoy

The Backward OX said:


> "'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
> 
> The Bible. It's a novel, right?



About 140 novels.

That said, Jeremiah really knew how to start a book off with a bang.

Lamentations 

1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

1:2 She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. 

1:3 Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits. 

1:4 The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. 

1:5 Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. 

1:6 And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer. 

And it goes on and on like that.
No one does emo like Jeremiah.


----------



## Dr. Malone

*Author:* Bradbury, Ray 
*Title:* Fahrenheit 451 
It was a pleasure to burn.

*Author: *Palahniuk, Chuck*
Title: *Choke
If you're going to read this, don't bother.*

Author:* Salinger, J.D. 
*Title:* The Catcher in the Rye 
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. 
*
Author:* Camus, Albert 
*Title:* The Stranger 
Mother died today.

*Author:* Dickens, Charles 
*Title:* Tale of Two Cities 
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so. 

*Author:* Tolkien, J.R.R. 
*Title:* The Hobbit 
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
*
Author:* Ellison, Ralph 
*Title:* Invisible Man 
I am an invisible man.

*Author:* Kafka, Franz 
*Title:* Metamorphosis 
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a giant insect. 

*Author:* Vidal, Gore 
*Title:* Myra Breckinridge 
I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. 
*
Author:* King, Stephen 
*Title:* Carrie 
Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not on the subconscious level where savage things grow.

*Author:* O'Connor, Flannery 
*Title:* The Violent Bear It Away 
Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Savior at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

*Author:* Wolfe, Thomas 
*Title:* You Can't Go Home Again 
It was the hour of twilight on a soft spring day toward the end of April in the year of Our Lord 1929, and George Webber leaned his elbows on the sill of his back window and looked out at what he could see of New York. 
*
Author:* Rand, Ayn 
*Title:* Atlas Shrugged 
Who is John Galt?


----------



## Savia

Although I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling this, may I say thanks to all the contributants to this thread thus far- it's really great to get such a variety and strength of opening lines to read and a pleasure to go through them.

Here's an opening passage from _The Book Thief_, by Markus Zusak:

First the colours.
   Then the humans.
   That's usually how I see things.
   Or at least, how I try.

*~Here Is A Small Fact~
You are going to die.*


The book is narrated by Death, and goes on very well from there.


----------



## slayerofangels

"If there's a single piece of truth among all the pious humbug and retrospective arse-covering that passes for my autobiography, it's the last four words of that paragraph."
Sandy Mitchell, Fight or Flight


----------



## ArlenOrobono

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.


----------



## Industrial

I have to say A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens is by far the best opening sentence to date. I am a big fan of structure, and this first sentence sets up a structure and extended metaphor for the entire novel.

It is one of the most famous lines for a reason .


----------



## Dr. Malone

What's that from, Arlen?  Sounds interesting, somewhat familiar.


----------



## ArlenOrobono

It's from Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.


----------



## Dr. Malone

Oh, cool.  I'm reading that right now.
It's not the first sentence, that's what threw me off.


----------



## Dr. Malone

Oh, cool.  I'm reading that right now.
It's not the first sentence, that's what threw me off.


----------



## Ari Mar

Kane said:


> "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
> 
> The Gunslinger, Stephen King


 
I agree with Kane.
I loved The Dark Tower series, although the ending killed me.  Quite literally, it jumped out of the book and smashed my face in with a rock.

Ah, King.  He's a wizard.


----------



## Sam

_The decision to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease. _- John Grisham, _The Chamber. _


----------



## IrishLad

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there'."  
--Truman Capote, _In Cold Blood_ 

Not my all-time favorite (Moby Dick has already been mentioned), but I find it chilling in its drab simplicity, nonetheless.  It sets the tone for what follows with almost sociopathic indifference.


----------



## CodeRed

_Not long after the Christlight of the world's first morning faded, when birds still flew to heaven and back, and even the wickedest things shone like saints, so pure was their portion of evil, there was a village by the name of Hangtown that clung to the back of the dragon Griaule, a vast mile-long beast who had been struck immobile yet not lifeless by a wizard's spell, and who ruled over the Carbonales Valley, controlling in every detail the lives of the inhabitants, making known his will by the infectious radiations emanating from the cold tonnage of his brain. _(Phew!)
*The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter, by Lucius Shepard*


----------



## shraga

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

- A Prayer for Owen Meany by _John Irving_


----------



## Tiamat

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge."

-The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Actually, I'm another one who swears by the famous "Call me Ishmael" but this one's a favorite of mine as well.


----------



## Vegas

"Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice..."

Mario Puzo - The Godfather

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.  Or at least as close as we're going to get."

Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game

(Purely for the WTF of it):

"Louie pulled off his bra and threw it down upon the casket."

Nick Toshes - In the Hand of Dante


----------



## Twistedtree

Vegas said:


> (Purely for the WTF of it):
> 
> "Louie pulled off his bra and threw it down upon the casket."
> 
> Nick Toshes - In the Hand of Dante



I'd deffo read that one ^^


----------



## Dr. Malone

Nick Toshes must be fairly obscure, because I couldn't find anything by him at my library, nor online at most of the sites I usually can find nearly anything on.

I'm sure Amazon has him, but I don't pay for books if I can help it (because I'm poor).  I'd like to check him out, though, that opening line is pretty kick ass.


----------



## SevenWritez

The opening line of my all-time favorite novel.

"We are both busy people, so let's cut the small talk..."

Number9Dream, David Mitchell. That man is a fucking _brilliant _writer. If any of you here happen to be one of those "I like me t3h literary books only cuz mainstream sux lol," then I'd suggest Cloud Atlas. The opening pages suck too hard to explain, but once Mitchell hits his stride, that book is a beat-you-over-the-head Tour De Force.


----------



## Linton Robinson

> Call me Ishmael



I just never saw that a super first line.  (Or Moby Dick as a super novel, actually)

I mean, it's like saying "My name's Jerome"   What's the big deal?


----------



## Vegas

Malone said:


> Nick Toshes must be fairly obscure, because I couldn't find anything by him at my library, nor online at most of the sites I usually can find nearly anything on.
> 
> I'm sure Amazon has him, but I don't pay for books if I can help it (because I'm poor). I'd like to check him out, though, that opening line is pretty kick ass.


 
I picked the book up at the airport about 4 or 5 years ago, read it.  It was pretty good, kind of a more stylish Dan Brown thing, some guy tracking down the manuscript of the inferno and discovering church secrets or something.  The only thing that really stuck out in my mind is that first quote.

Appears I had a typo in there.  its TosChes, maybe that will help, I think the bio said he was an editor for vanity fair, but this was years ago.


----------



## dead_soul

My first line in my fantasy novel is "Mommy, look! It's the purple weirdo! Pleath, pleath, athk him to do thome magic."


----------



## Patrick Beverley

> I mean, it's like saying "My name's Jerome" What's the big deal?


No, it's not. "Call me..." is different from "My name's..." because it introduces uncertainty: is he phrasing it like that because it's the name he's going by, rather than his real name? It introduces doubt into the narrative right at the start.

By the way, if The Canterbury Tales can be called a novel, then here's a nice long opening sentence:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.


----------



## Battlemage

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit..."

Nothing more needs said.


----------



## RebelGoddess

"My father had a face that could stop a clock."

-The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

What I love about it is how this sentance, when read alone, could turn the whole novel upside down. The sentance that follows it is awesome too though, and definitely adds to the absolute greatness of this opening line: 

"I don't mean that he was ugly or anything, it was simply a term used by the Chrono Guard to describe an individual with the abilty to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle."

Racheal


----------



## safara duff

"When you learn how to die, you learn how to live."
- Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom


----------



## lilacstarflower

Dancer Preston said:


> "It is a universally acknowledged truth, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
> 
> I loves it!



Completely agree - I think it is the most powerful of all her opening sentences. Pride and Prejudice is the only one of her works that does not jump straight into a character but gives the reader a philosophy to ponder over. 

I doubt it will ever be beaten


----------



## topper

"The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault."
Jim Butcher, Harry Dresden Files. (I think it was Blood Rites, but don't quote me on that)

That is the only opening line I've ever been able to remember.


----------



## Remedy

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." Samuel Beckett, Murphy

"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Ha Jin, Waiting

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." Jeffery Eugenides, Middlesex

"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up." G.K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill

"Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me." Ralph Manheim, The Tin Drum

"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche


----------



## NightOwl

Okay, so a couple of them are more than one sentence, but they're all good 'openers'...

‘I am ninety. Or ninety three. One or the other.’ Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

‘It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working round the clock.’ The Passion – Jeanette Winterson

‘This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun.’ The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Alborn 

‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess 

‘All children, except one, grow up.’ Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie 

‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’ I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith 

‘Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.’ Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

'They're out there.
Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.'  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey


----------



## VinrAlfakyn

"Now there was little Tuk; as a matter of fact his name was not Tuk at all, but before he could speak properly he called himself Tuk. He meant it for Carl, so it is just as well we should know that." -Little Tuk, Hans Christian Andersen

"It is very extraordinary, but when my feelings are most fervent, and at their best, my tongue and my hands alike seem tied." -What the Moon Saw, Hans Christian Andersen

"Before Fleet-street had reached its present importance, and when George the Third was young, and the two figures who used to strike the chimes at Old St Dunstan's church were in all their glory - being a great impediment to errand-boys on their progress, and a matter of gaping curiosity to country people - there stood close to the sacred edifice a small barber's shop, which was kept by a man of the name of Sweeney Todd." -Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, or, The String of Pearls, credit given to Edward P. Hingston, George Macfarren, Thomas Peckett Prest, James Malcolm Rymer, and Albert Richard Smith

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." -The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time though, Tyler and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durden. The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my throat, Tyler says, 'We won't really die.' " -Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

" 'Begin at the beginning' is the phrase. I cannot do that. I begin at the end - the conclusion of my life on earth. I present it to you as it happened - and what happened afterward." -What Dreams May Come, Richard Matheson

" 'There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden.' " -A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle

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


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## Vanest

raymondstary said:


> "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."



You beat me to it! I also love, from the same author:

"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.


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## Vanest

obscenehaiku said:


> I may very well be alone on this, but I love the first line of _Catcher in the Rye _by J.D. Salinger
> 
> _"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
> _



You are not alone! I love this too! Along the same lines (at least I think so, although no one else sees the similarities...) is the line from _The Tunnel_ by Ernesto Sábato:

"Suffice it to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne; I suppose that the trial is still in everyone’s memory, so I need no further introduction".


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## Dr. Malone

> *ONCE upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names     were
> Flopsy,
> Mopsy,
> Cotton-tail,
> and Peter.*


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## Chirios

_'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.'_


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## SevenWritez

Battlemage said:


> "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit..."
> 
> Nothing more needs said.


 
The Hobbit sucks. It's been said.


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## GodofLiterature

Why not read it, and then, form your own opinion?

I personally enjoyed the Hobbit, but hated all the trilogies.


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## Dr. Malone

Yes, the Hobbit was better than the other three, in my opinion.  I can't wait to see Del Toro's movie.


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