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What's the best opening line of a book (fiction or non)?

"I woke this morning with a stranger in my bed. The head of blonde hair beside me was decidedly not my husband's. I did not know whether to be shocked or amused." - Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier.

I had to know what this book was about after reading that.
 
Most memorable first lines

I started reading 'Choke' today. I was amazed by the opening line of the novel.
The first line of the novel is 'If you're going to read this, don't bother.'
When I read that line, I couldn't read further for two minutes. I couldn't stop myself from posting it here!

Any other opening line/paragraph that you guys found interesting?
 
Halo said:
I agree, it does sound a bit weird, but is it a kind of dialect? I don't know where The Wasp Factory is set (Scotland?), but don't Cockneys say "I did for him" when they mean "I killed him"? Or am I completely wrong?! :)
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"Doing" for someone, as far as I know from my long sojourns on the bleak fens of Lincolnshire, usually means to keep house and do house cleaning, so I think this is a little joke.

My mother-in-law will often say "the girl who does for Marjorie."

(BTW, I'm not trawling old threads. Sanyuja pointed me here.)
 
Love4OneAnother said:
"A country road. A tree. Evening." - Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lolita, the tip of the tounge taking a trip of three steps, to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Le. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing 4 feet 10 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."- Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
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Both great openers! I love Waiting for Godot. Now a couple that I love:

"There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire."
Stardust by Neil Gaiman

"124 was spiteful."
Beloved by Toni Morrison

"There was once a boy named Milo who didn't know what to do with himself-not just sometimes, but always."
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
 
Here are a few I found after a quick scan of my shelf:

"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" - Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

"May 20th - I am afraid. Someone is coming." - O'Brien, Z for Zachariah

"I am the vampire Lestat. I'm immortal. More or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire - these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not." Rice, The Vampire Lestat

and one more...

"This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our world and the land of Narnia first began" - Lewis, The Magicians Nephew
 
Serene said:
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." ---Stephen King.

Portentous opening line in The Gunslinger, Book One of the tantalizing epic Dark Tower series.
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I agree! :D :D
 
"I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated, and never have been, though I respect medicine and doctors. What's more, I'm also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I am sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness." Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground.

I just remembered how much I love Notes and that I must absolutely read it again.
 
Perhaps not my favourite but a good opening line :

"I have two friends. One good and one bad. And then there is my brother. He might not be as likeable as myself but he is ok." Erlend, Loe, Naïve. Super

(I dont have the english translation of the book so i translated it myself. That means its probably not perfect.)
 
The best opening line i've ever read was:

The downside of writing sex scenes is that my mother reads my books.

i though that was kinda cute and i imagined my mother read my (not existing) books and especially the sexscenes. :D
 
There was once a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C. S. Lewis
 
Life, The Universe and Everything; 42!!!!

The best beginning I have ever read is;

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

I like this primarily because it says The Hitchikers Guide all over it, but other than that, it certainly grabs the readers attention. those who have not read the previous book might find themselves thinking; "what is this man screaming about!?" either that or they will put it down and buy a different book.:D
 
Zolipara said:
Perhaps not my favourite but a good opening line :

"I have two friends. One good and one bad. And then there is my brother. He might not be as likeable as myself but he is ok." Erlend, Loe, Naïve. Super
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Have you read "Doppler" by him? It's hilariously funny (if one can say that), but serious too. His other novels I'm not planning on reading quite yet, since I've heard about EVERY and EACH of them about 1000000 times, due to a a "task" back in secondary school where everyone decided to "precent" him and his books (like there's no other Norwegian author out there).
 
It's tough, but one of my favorites is this one:

"If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog."

Herzog by Saul Bellow
 
I'm tempted to cheat and say 'Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age' by Bohumil Hrabal as that's a 100+ page one-sentence story.

If we were going for the best opening to a book I'd go for 'Cry the Beloved Country' by Alan Paton. However, as we're interested in just the opening sentence I'll go for my favourite, rather than necessarily the best:

'And so they've killed our Ferdinand,' said the charwoman to Mr Svejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs - ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged.

from 'The Good Soldier Svejk' by Jaroslav Hasek.

K-S
 
Darren said:
"She only stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream"

From Jeffrey Archer's Kane & Abel

I read this and thought "what the hell is this book going to be about?" It grabbed my attention straight away and I read the whole book in about two days!
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I read about the book and it sounds relaly good! Its on my list of books to read!! thank you!!

Lani
 
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