Over on the Guide to Literary Agents blog, Merry Jones’s looks at How to Write a Great Opening Line. In her analysis, she shares what she considers eight of the best opening lines in fiction. My favorite from her list is “It was a slow Sunday afternoon, the kind Walden loved,” from Ken Follet’s The Man from St. Petersburg. It immediately sets the scene and gives you a glimpse of the main character’s personality.
My favorite opening line of all-time, though, comes from a book that really helped shape my adolescent years (for the better). It hooked me in and I wasn’t able to put it down until I had finished it, which is the No. 1 key to any great opening line. Here the line that pulled me in:
—J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye
If all opening lines were as captivating as Salinger’s, I’m not sure I’d ever get anything accomplished around my house—much to the chagrin of my wife.
Now that you’ve seen mine (and possibly Merry Jones’s), what I want to know is: What’s your favorite opening line to a book? Post it below in the comments section for a chance to win a free copy of Novel Writing, a 128-page magazine packed with advice on how to hook readers from chapter one, create unforgettable characters, get published and more. I’ll pick one commenter at random from my trusty hat. Plus, get an additional chance to win a free issue just by tweeting this:
What’s Your Favorite Opening Line to a Book? (& Win a Free Copy of @WritersDigest’s Novel Writing) - http://bit.ly/QhuJSS (via @BrianKlems)
Deadline to enter for a chance to win: September 24.
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This darkness troubles me. I yearn for the light. This silence is so deep. I long for voices, the drumming of rain, the whistle of wind, music. Why are you being so cruel to me? Let me see. Let me hear. Let me live. I beg of you. I am so lonely in this bottomless darkness. So lonely. Lost.
Dean Koontz, Demon Seed, page 1
“If I had cared to live, I would have died.”
Opening line from John Myers Myers’ fantasy novel, Silverlock.
Main character, A. Clarence Shandon, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. His transformation by misadventure into the title character was a riveting read thirty-five years ago. Of course, now I’ll have to dig up a copy to revisit this old friend.
For the better part of my childhood, my professional aspirations were simple–I wanted to be an intergalactic princess. I didn’t care much about ruling hordes of people. Mostly I wanted to wear the cape and the sexy boots and carry a cool weapon.
Janet Evanovich’s SEVEN UP
Two of my favorites, from Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow and its sequel, Children of God:
“On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit Residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes’ walk across St. Peter’s Square from the Vatican.” (That’s the beginning of Chapter 1 of The Sparrow. I also like the first sentence of the Prologue: “It was predictable, in hindsight.”)
“Sweating and nauseated, Father Emilio Sandoz sat on the edge of his bed with his head in what was left of his hands.” (Prelude, Children of God)
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”
~ Pride & Prejudice & Zombies
Forget Jane Austen. Seth had me at “it”.
“Not every thirteen-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.”
My fav as a teen. From The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi.
When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills.
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry.
He flew into Paris, the city of his birth, on a cold wet November afternoon. He flew in from Equatorial Africa wearing green polyester pants, a white T-shirt that posed the suspect question, “Have You Eaten Your Honey Today?” and a machine-knitted cardigan whose color, he had finally decided, was mauve.
Missionary Stew by Ross Thomas
“What’s it going to be then, eh?”
–A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
My favorite first line from a novel is from Mary Stewart’s Touch Not The Cat:
“My lover came to me on the last night in April, with a message and a warning that sent me home to him.”
“By ten forty-five it was all over.”- The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck. Easily one of my favorite classical books of all time. I was only sixteen when I read it and I remember being so moved by it. This line is an amazing hook, how can you not want to read more of it? It’s one of his shorter ones but it’s so powerful I don’t think it gets enough credit sometimes.
I also have a huge soft spot for “”Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling. I saw someone else had posted that line though. It’s funny, it has a great voice and you start to feel a bit of ‘yuck’ to them straight away. I found Harry Potter when I was fifteen but only because my father was really sick with a rare type of Lymphoma. Teenagers can’t cope with regular life as it is and something like that was a bit much for me. I threw myself into Harry Potter because it was so far from reality and it gave me something to loose myself in. Along the way I learned how to be strong and push through everything that was going on. I owe my sanity to those books.
I have three that absolutely sucked me in:
“TRUE! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”
-Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
“‘Do your neighbors burn one another alive?’” was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with Artisan Flec.
-Neal Stephenson, Anathem
“When it happens, this is what happens: I shoot myself.
Not, you know, my self self. I shoot my future self. He steps out of a time machine, introduces himself as Charles Yu. What else am I supposed to do? I kill him. I kill my own future.”
-Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
https://twitter.com/MJ_Scafati
“Start with a blank surface. It doesn’t have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing.”
- Stephen King, Duma Key.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – The Bible
If the start of a story should depict something happening or just having happened, there is no grander statement than this one.
First, Brian, thanks for the stroll down literary memory lane! There are many favorites already mentioned. Thinking critically and choosing the “best,” however, would be an impossible task. I particularly like the opening to Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Tolkien’s Hobbit, Salinger’s Catcher (which you mentioned), and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Here are another handful I haven’t seen cited, but I could have overlooked them among the many comments.
1. Technically the first is a short story: Faulkner’s “Barn Burning.” –”The store in which the Justice of the Peace’s court was sitting smelled of cheese.”
2. Another is The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel: “The naked child ran out of the hide-covered lean-to toward the rocky beach at the bend in the small river.”
3. Another is Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
4. Another short story, by form-master Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”: “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.”
5. Jonathan Swift’s essay, “A Modest Proposal.” –”It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms.”
I could go on even more longwindedly (for instance, the openings to a couple brilliant poems, plays, or nonfiction pieces), but I’ll leave it at this.
I hope I didn’t miss the deadline. My favorite opening line is simple, yet it struck me funny.
Dan Wells “I am Not a Serial Killer” “Mrs. Anderson was dead.”
Considering the book title it struck me as funny.
From Wally Lamb’s ‘I Know This Much Is True’…
“On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother Thomas entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut Public Library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable.”
With so many unanswered questions, how could one possibly not keep reading? My favorite first line.
“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 far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
- The Secret History, Donna Tartt
“Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature.”
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Perfect thing for a dog to say when starting his story. LOVED this book!
My favorite line has been a difficult thing to consider. I’ve come back to this page about six times, thinking I’d picked The One, and realizing, nope, it really wasn’t my favorite. What it comes down to is the first “grown-up” book I was given when I was in the 8th grade. I’d read every R.L. Stine book available to me. I’d read all the assigned reading. So my teacher gave me her copy of ‘The Talisman’ by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It was the first book that got a truly emotional response out of me. (I cried in class over Wolfie.) Anyway, the first line(s) are:
“On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic. He was twelve years old and tall for his age.”
“During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singular dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
- The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe
My absolute favorite book as a child was Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. I had the first couple of chapters memorized and I loved the beginning:
“That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me; she meant to bestow a gift.”
“Fourteen years old and sentenced to hang.”
from “My Brother, My Enemy” by Madge Harrah
There are so many great lines already posted so I decided to post from one of my favorite books.
“Before time began, before the Creator was born, pregnant Sky Woman fell out of heaven when she got too close to an uprooted tree growing from a cloud.”
Picture Maker by Penina Keen Spinka
I see several others share my favourite first line (which goes to show how great it truly is.)
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
My name was Slamon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. –The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
My favorite opening line is merely this – “Call me Ishmael.” from “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville.
Such a simple line that starts such a wonderful book that is a true American classic.
“Maman died today.” From the Stranger by Albert Camus.
Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end? – “The Notebook” by Nicholas Sparks
“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’”
Direct quote (notice the spelling of ‘any one’) from my copy of THE GREAT GATSBY. Wasn’t more than 15 when I read that line and it sounded like something my father would say as well. That was the draw of the protagonist, the moral compass he threaded throughout the book.
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-concious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb paralled to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt. “To Kill A Mockingbird”—-Harper Lee who actually cheated the world out of much more fantastic literature.
The Eau Claire Leader said they blamed it on the heat.
I’m am finished with the draft, and I will be looking for a historical fiction publisher!
‘Natalie Woodright, aged thirty-four, wife of Theadore Woodright, has been arrested after throwing her children, Lewis – aged 6, Nathaniel – aged 5, and infant Lucy, over the Lake Street Bridge and into the Chippewa River. ~ These are the first lines of MY new novel: Baby Road.
“The night that Max wore his wolf-suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his Mother called him “WILD THING!” and Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” so he was sent to bed without eating anything.”
Where the Wild things are – Maurice Sendak (my favourite children’s book of all time)
One of the very catching opening line, which glued me with the novel till last word, is the one from Memoirs of Geisha by Arthur Golden. The line is cleverly written, which in the beginning engage readers establishing fictional relationship between the protagonist and the readers. Also, it gives the clear notion to proceed further.
The line goes as… Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we walked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, “That afternoon when I met so-and so… was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.”
error- its talked not walked… typing mistake!
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 far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
An oldie but still my favorite first line.
“The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-burried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compunded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber.”
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell
Completely captures the dreadfull and morose atmostphere of the paranoia that is to come. Also expertly executed in one of my favorite movies of all time, John Carpenter’s The Thing.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
“Camelot – Camelot,” said i to myself. “I don’t seem to remember hearing it before.
Name of an asylum most likely.”
- A Connecticut Yankee In King Aurthors Court, Mark Twain
In a vast and sparkling city, a city at the centre of the universe, one little man remembered something big.
-The Wall and the Wing by Laura Ruby (My favorite book of all time. This book made me realize I wanted to become a writer)
“As a boy, I wanted to be a train.”
Man Machine, Max Barry
Someone has already listed The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton. One of my all-time favorites. A more current favorite would have to be Vampire Academy by Richell Mead.
I felt her fear before I heard her screams.
“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 by Douglas Adams.
“Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.” The Shining by Stephen King
Throughout the years, that one line has stayed with me. I believe it was out of shock that it stuck, but when I read it I thought, “Now, when I write a book, I want to have an opening line like that.”
Another great first line… well, more so a “dedication” than an opening line, but I thought I would include it anyhow:
“Not for you.” House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
“Cops before breakfast. Before coffee even. As if Mondays weren’t bad enough.”
-Josh Lanyon, Fatal Shadows (Book 1 Adrien Enlish Series)
“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anythign he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.” – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Now I’m going to get a cup of hot cocoa. Nevermind that it’s 90 degrees outside.
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
–Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
FROM: Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it: — it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn’t have had any hand in the mischief.”
I got the Book & 4-Record Set (the audio of the book being read) for Christmas when I was 10 years old and LOVED it so much! (and I wasn’t big on reading because I had such a hard time with it, so for me to find a book that really got me cought up in it, was a rarity!) The really ODD thing was, I didn’t like Alice in Wonderland A T A L L ! I don’t know why exactly – not that it wasn’t well-written, it most certainly was, and it was just as quirky as A.T.L.G., … Maybe because it just didn’t have the same feeling? I didn’t like the story line & charachters as much, and even weirder, It just didn’t feel like “MY” book for some reason ~ (i.e., like the story wasn’t written for me specifically.) But I like(d) Carroll’s writing style – his vivid description of the scenes, charaters, wacky things they do – seemingly just as you’d witness all of the same in a dream or nightmare…and at that age, (10), those things are COOL ~ a lil weird, a lil spooky, and SO adventurous.. you just craved to know what was going to happen next and enjoyed being entertained that way ~
My favorite opening line is from This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.”
“1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.”
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
“My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni and cheese, some white rice, and two tomatoes and I came back with a dog.”
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” The Gunslinger by Stephen King.
I love Jonathan Maberry’s opening line to Patient Zero:
“When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world… and there’s nothing wrong with my skills.”
It’s so awesome… it’s also the entire first chapter.
“I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves.” Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. With a line like that how could I not keep reading?
“Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.”
–The Call of the Wild, Jack London
With frustration and some regret, she studied murder. The opening line to J.D. Robb’s Celebrity in Death. Nora Robert’s, J.D. Robb novels are never a disappointment your captivated until The End.
“The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer.” – A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
(Shared on Google+)
When you read this line, you think it’s a weather report…but as you continue to read, it’s so much more.
From WILDWOOD by Colin Meloy
“How five crows managed to lift a twenty-pound baby boy into the air was beyond Prue, but that was certainly the least of her worries.”
This book captured me from this first line and it held me through the rest of the 541 pages!
Salinger’s first line is classic, isn’t it? My favorite is from Flannery O’Conner’s 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 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 Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”
This is great fun Brian and, (probably unfortunately), adds to my already huge reading list. Thanks!
Jessie could hear the back door banging lightly, randomly, in the October breeze blowing around the house. The jamb always swelled in the fall and you really had to give the door a yank to shut it. This time they had forgotten. She thought of telling Gerald to go back and shut the door before they got too involved or that banging would drive her nuts. Then she thought how ridiculous that would be, given the current circumstances. It would ruin the whole mood.
(GERALD’S GAME by Stephen King)
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.
From Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. The second line summarises the book, lies and imaginings.
I think my favorite opening line will always be Orwell’s 1984.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
I love thee entire opening….it’s soooo true! We all must grow up
“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
“Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night.” -Theodore Taylor’s The Cay
“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.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
“From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and the air to fill them with—given circumstances, you might presume, for an American baby of the twentieth century.”
-Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
From the great Bill Manville in ‘Breaking Up’:
I don’t know how other men feel about their wives walking out on them, but I helped mine pack.
haha, good one
Lowcountry Bribe by C. Hope Clark: “O-positive primer wasn’t quite the color I had in mind for the small office, but Lucas Sherwood hadn’t given the decor a second thought when he blew out the left side of his head with a .45.”
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
from “The Trial”
by Franz Kafka
“It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its themes, there was only ever room for three players.”
Clive Barker, Imajica
(What a mesmerizing imagination this man possesses, yes?)
“Call me Ishmael.”
Moby Dick
“A perfect day in the city always starts like this: My friend Leo picks me up and we go to a breakfast place called Rick and Ann’s where they make red flannel hash out of beets and bacon, and then we cross the Bay Bridge to the gardens of the Palace of the Fine Arts to sit in the wet grass and read poems out loud and talk about love.”
Pam Houston, Waltzing the Cat
The short story is called The Best Girlfriend You Never Had and it’s my favorite short story. She’s an amazing author.
Ok, so I am going against the rules here… This is technically the Prologue first line (which happens to be two lines)… I find this my favorite.
“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms.”
-Ralph Ellison “Invisible Man”
There is another opening that I like quite well…
“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge” – Edgar Allen Poe, The Cask of Amontillado.
I think this sentence draws the reader in to see what exact revenge is being planned and how severe would it be.
I know this is just a short story but it is pretty intense!
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. (!)
I’m already partial to modernizations of the King Arthur tales, but here’s my favorite opening to one:
“The apartment was dark, illuminated only by the dim flickering of the twelve-inch, black-and-white Sony that sat atop a scratched coffee table.” ~KNIGHT LIFE by Peter David
The Power of One
Bryce Courtenay
Chapter One
This is what happened.
Before my life started properly, I was doing the usual mewling and sucking, which in my case occurred on a pair of huge, soft black breasts.
Tough one. Ayn Rand’s beginning to Atlas Shrugged is my favorite:
“Who is John Galt?”
But the first line of Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a close second:
“In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.”
They both summarize their respective stories in expansive yet highly specific (and revealing) ways.
I love Howl’s Moving Castle
“His soldiers weren’t calling him the lost Kauz behind his back, not when this began”.
The Good Soldiers
My all-time favorite opening line:
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Stephen King, The Gunslinger
It kept me going through the entire series.
“I stopped shooting people six months ago, just after I won the Pulitzer Prize.” Dead Sleep by Greg Iles
“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”
–H. G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”
I was caught up by the drama and sentence structure of this line. That someone writing science fiction could write like this. This book was one I could not put down. I just had to read this and other H. G. Wells works.
Call me Ishmael.
It’s so recognizable, I shouldn’t even have to mention the book N\(Moby-Dick), and it’s how I chose my screen name. A simple and succinct introduction to the character and the book.
Bradbury’s “It was a pleasure to burn.” from Fahrenheit 451.
Call me Ishmael. ~Moby Dick: or, the White Whale ~ Melville
Sing O Goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.
Homer The Iliad
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” — Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
“It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed.”
- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
“The world as we knew it ended for us on a Tuesday afternoon in May.”
Don’t Look Behind You by Lois Duncan
Believe it or not, my favorite opening line was “It was a dark and stormy night.” The author worked it in so beautifully in the opening paragraph, and it was so pertinant to setting the stage for the first chapter that I had to laugh and appreciate his ingenuity. I am sure he used the line simply because that is one of the first lines we writers are taught not to use. This was in a sci fi fantasy, and since I read at least eight of those per month, I wish I could remember which book.
At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch’s Ponds.” from Mikhail Bulgakov’s ‘The Master and Margarita’. Evokative, mysterious and then Bulgakov sends the Devil to 1940′s Moscow.
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” — C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Who is John Galt? – Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. This book was intriguing and I must have read it 5 times already.
I just have to say that some of the books mentioned I haven’t heard of and I’m glad that I read this article because now I have new books to read that sound absolutely delicious.
One of my favorite books, The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason has a prologue, but the first line there and at the first chapter intrigued me:
Prologue: ‘Like many of us, I think, my father spent the measure of his life piecing together a story he would never understand.’
First Chapter: ‘Strange thing, time.’
And when I had to read it and didn’t think I would enjoy it: ‘ “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 are going to get.” ‘ Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
-Stephen King, ‘The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger’
What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?
Love Story
Erich Segal
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
-Hunter S Thompson
Gonzo
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“Call me Ishmael.” Moby Dick.
“Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case.” The Sign of the Four (1890) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I agree with Treasure Island, and The Stephen King refs. One of my favourites is “It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.” Diana Gabaldon, ‘Outlander’.
not fiction but the best read I’ve had in a long while by Liz Curtis Higgs…
”Naomi knows she must quit this town before it kills her. In the same way and for the same reason, you and I need to leave the Moabs of our own making. Whether it’s a place we don’t belong or a relationship going in the wrong direction or an activity we’re ashamed of or a habit that’s strangling us, we need to get out of Moab. Never mind how we got here. The bus is leaving, sister. Grab your purse.” ~ from The Girl’s Still Got It
“Who is John Galt?”
Hard to pick an all time favorite, I like the opening of “Call of the Wild” very much, too. But this one puts you smack into the middle of that stormy water.
The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp.
The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum
“Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
- E.B. White from Charlotte’s Web. It made my little heart go pitter patter when I was a kid and now gives it a good ker-thump now.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This is a top 5 favorite, if not my favorite of all time. You can’t really beat this ironic nugget of domestic insight.
Mi favorite has to be:
“On the day he is eventuaally killed, Santiago Nasar wakes up at 5:30 a.m. To wait for the boat which is bringing the bishop. The night before he had dreamt about trees”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Chronicle of a death foretold.
My! Perdon! That was my spanglish writing
” BALLOON TYING FOR CHRIST WAS THE CHEAPEST BALLOON manual I could find. The day I bought it, it was hidden on the lowest rung of a dusty spinner rack down at Callan’s Novelties, snuggled along side shopworn how-to guides: Travel Europe by Clown Circuit! Rubber vomit skits for beginners and Latex: The Beauty of Cuts, Bruises, Scars, and Contusions.
-Clown Girl, Monica Drake
It’s such an “off the wall” opening!
“Amerrigo Bonasera sat in New York Central Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who tried to dishonor her.”
-The Godfather: Mario Puzo
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
- Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
I know its not a novel or book, but it is one of my two favorite opening line of anything I have ever read.
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…” – Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven
My next one is the opening line of the Tell tale heart.
“When he was nearly 13, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. While, as an editor, the verb test makes me want to take a pencil to it, the line is sublime — Jem broke his arm. But the events leading up to it end up being world-shattering. At the end of the book, Jem does, indeed, break his arm in one of the most poignant final few pages written. So the opener works not only to draw in the reader — how did Jem break his arm? — but also as a counterpoint understatement to one of the best books of the last century and one that had a huge influence on me as a writer.
“Who is John Galt?”
–Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
So many good lines. I think one of my favorites is still from Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, “The world had teeth, and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.”
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – Susan E. Hinton – The Outsider
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
–Stephen King, The Gunslinger, book 1 of the Dark Tower series.
“The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the rein of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight.” From 2001 A Space Odessey by Authur C. Clarke
Hope it’s okay to use one that’s already been used as this one from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities has been my favorite since high school.
“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.”
From “Sacred Games” by VIkram Chandra:
“A white Pomeranian nameed Fluffy flew out of the a fifth-floor window in Panna, which was a grand-new building witha the painter’s scafflolding still around it. Fluffy screamed.”
We lived like vampires that year, avoiding the sun and its penetrating light as if we would shrivel beneath it and die, perhaps forever.
“Unblinking at the Sun” by Robert W. Mason
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
One of my favorite first lines:
“It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel.”
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
I also love the first sentence of The Catcher in the Rye.
“You better not never tell nobody but God.”
-The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
This is one of my favorite lines because no matter how many times I re-read this book, I can never seem to stop myself from wanting to know what happened. It’s like I’m reading it for the first time.
“The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.”
-The Gunslinger, Stephen King
short sweet and providing all the details necessary for where the story is.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” That’s from Nabokov’s Lolita, of course, the beginning of an extraordinary paragraph. For me, it recalls Humbert’s self-characterization, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
Less well-known is the opening of The Jump-Off Creek, by Molly Gloss, which accomplishes a lot: It gives an idea of the character’s independence and knowledge of animals and suggests an earlier time in the American wilderness. “6 April Bought the black hinny Mule today, $18, also the spavint gray as my money is so short and I have hope he will put on wt, his eyes are clear w a smart look in them and his feet not tender.”
One more: “On the cool October morning when Cayetana Chavez brought her baby to light, it was the start of that season in Sinaloa when the humid torments of summer finally gave way to breezes and falling leaves, and small red birds skittered through the corrals, and the dogs grew new coats.” Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Hummingbird’s Daughter
“When I left my office that beautiful spring day, I had no idea what was in store for me.”
–WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS, Wilson Rawls.
One of my favorite books of all time.
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home.- The wind In The willows, Kenneth Grahame
Greeks Bearing Gifts:
A scream, coiled somewhere deep inside Bridget Gallagher, gained strength and surged upward as consciousness returned.
From Timothy Findley’s, “The Piano Man’s Daughter”
I had seen her just the day before – a day of pale blue skies and summer breezes. We stood on the lawns beneath the chestnut trees and she had said: the leaves are talking to me, Charlie.
One of my favorites
” The Christmas of 182- in Guernsey was unusual. On Christmas Day it snowed. In the Channel Islands a winter in which it freezes is memorable, and snow is an event.”
Victor Hugo
The Toilers of the Sea
translation by James Hogarth
2002 Modern Library Edition
“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.”
“There was a hand in the darkness and it held a knife.”
~ from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
My all time favorite: “It was a dark and stormy night.” ~ Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
It’s hard to choose one, but very fond of:
“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”
The Outsiders -SE Hinton
Also love the one mentioned by another poster from Deanna Raybourn’s Silent in the Grave
A favorite as a child:
“I shall never forget the first time I laid these now tired old eyes on our visitor.”
Bunnicula Deborah Howe, James Howe
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…
-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities..
Rick Riordan’s novels in general have some of my recent favorite opening lines, but this one from The Titan’s Curse struck as particularly funny and pulled me right in to the story: “The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school.”
“The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’ clock.” –Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
It’s so…simple, almost like something you would see in a newspaper article, not a novel with elements of magic realism. But having read read several books by Morrison, the understated tone of this first sentence let me know I was in for a twist.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
It’s not my favourite, but it must be memorable because I remembered it when no others came to mind:
“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours. That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.” (The Stranger, by Albert Camus).
But the best opening line must be, always has been, and will forever be, “Once upon a time.”
“Call me Zits.”
Flight by Sherman Alexie
“I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods. I have no husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.”
-Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” ~Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
I love Austen’s irony and societal critique and Mrs. Bennet’s free indirect discourse represented here. Jane Austen is using Mrs. Bennet’s (and society’s view of marriage) to make fun of them.
“Call me Ishmael.” – Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
That one is probably my favorite.
“It was bitter cold, the air electric with all that had not happened yet.”
- A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
“Where’s papa going with that axe?”
- opening line of Charlotte’s Web by EB White.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” -Pride and Prejudice
Maybe not the BEST, but I’ve been rereading the novel lately and it’s been sticking with me lately.
I love that first line! It cracks me up and sets the stage for the story so hilariously!
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
This statement is true. It rings like a clear bell of the truth. If every family was perfectly happy, which is impossible, writers would have no stories to share with the world.
“If II’d blinked, I would have missed it.”. Learning to Swim
“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”
- John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
‘On those cloudy days , Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.’ –Robert Matheson’s ‘I am Legend’.
Also one of the great finishing lines as well.
Agreed, loved that book! For those that enjoyed the movie, the book was far better, and almost a completely different story… well worth the read.
Where do you think you’re going?
From this book: http://amzn.to/Qi3DuH
My favorite opening line:
“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.
“The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”
- Blood Rites by Jim Butcher, A Novel of the Dresden Files
“I didn’t want to get involved, but I couldn’t refuse an all-expense-paid two weeks in Paris. I didn’t know Paris would change my whole life.”
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 ~ Sylvia Plath
Elizabeth Fitch’s short-lived teenage rebellion began with L’Oreal Pure Black, a pair of scissors and a fake ID. It ended in blood.
–The Witness by Nora Roberts
“To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.”
– Silent in the Grave, Deanna Raybourn
It does catch the eye.
Very nice! Not familiar with that one, but makes me want to find and read it!
“It was as black in the closet as old blood.”
From Alan Bradley’s “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.” He’s one of my favorite writers with his wit, evocative descriptions, and one of the freshest main characters you’ll ever find.
“The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.” Blood Rites, by Jim Butcher.
Makes me giggle every time.
Came here to say THIS. Love Dresden. Woot!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
(Of course, like so many, the second lines seals it: Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú—generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World.)
“I am a very old man; how old I do not know.”
– A Princess of Mars
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it
was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. . . .
~Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
Every time Daddy leaves for another revival meeting, he has to remind Mama to keep her mouth clean for Jesus, but that never happens.
“Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.”
“The Sun Also Rises” Ernest Hemingway
“Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.”
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I love this (rather long) first line. It nails the tone and hooked me on reading when I was about eight years old. My other favorites include the first Harry Potter (Sorcerer’s Stone) mentioned above. I just realised how similar in tone these two are and they both open from the POV of nosy neighbor characters who are not exactly likable to begin with (arguably, the Dursleys never are whereas Mrs Lynde…I shan’t spoil it…).
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The Book of Genesis by Moses and God’s inspiration
Amen to that!
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
This is from my favorite of Jane Austen’s works, Pride and Prejudice. It says in that simple, first sentence that not only is the book going to be about women and men, and marriage, but that the story will be told in the same witty, sarcastic way that the line is delivered. Timeless!
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport.’” – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley:
It wasn’t chance.
It’s not fiction, but from Tracy Kidder’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains”:
Six years after the fact, Dr. Paul Edward Farmer reminded me, “We met because of a beheading, of all things.”
The rest of the book did not disappoint.
Yes, that’s an amazing book (as are all of Kidder’s).
“I inherited my brother’s life. Inherited his desk, his business, his gadgets, his enemies, his horses and his mistress. I inherited my brother’s life, and it nearly killed me.”
Straight, by Dick Francis
“Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
I have so many favorites – I could never pick just one! – but the first line of Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” is one of them:
“Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.”
Yep! That’s a good one!
From Steven Brust’s Dragon.
It was the first time I’d seen something so simply put and draw us in. I remember it fondly.
“No $#!#. There I was.”
“Parker spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle, but he was restless, and one day without thinking about it he checked out and sent a forwarding address to Handy McKay and moved on to New Orleans.”
Don Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, from The Rare Coin Score.
I was sitting in a taxi wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster.
First line from The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
“If this typewriter can’t do it, then f*** it, it can’t be done.”
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
What can I say – an opening line with cursing always gets me!
Still a favorite of mine (the whole opening paragraph really):
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – From 1984 by Orwell
It’s hard to beat the lines already listed from so many wonderful authors, but how about John D. MacDonald’s openers for the Travis McGee novels? A case in point: “After seven years of bickering and fussing, the Fort Lauderdamndale city fathers, on a hot Tuesday in late August, killed off a life style and turned me into a vagrant.” (The Scarlet Ruse, 1973)
“When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
First line in Fellowship of The Ring – my favorite series of all time.
I have two:
The first sets up the folly of the entire story beautifully:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
-Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The second conveys what the movie never could:
“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
“Quentin did a magic trick.”
From Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Short and sweet.
Already posted but my favorite line is:
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Stephen King ~ The Gunslinger
This is a tough one. I like so many novels that don’t have first lines that thrill me. Weird. But I I love the first line of Neuromancer, which was already mentioned: the deadness of the sky vs. the AI coming alive, the blurring of the line between meat/flesh vs. the world of cyberspace, all in one line is brilliant.
I”m also fond of C.S. Lewis’ wry tone in Voyage of the Dawn Treader: “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
And finally, Stepheen King’s pithy but mysterious start to The Gunslinger: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
All three of these lines really made me want to keep reading the first time I picked those books up.
Of course, Dickens’ start to A Tale of Two Cities is the penultimate first line, but my favorite is this: “When does one first begin to remember?” This is the first line of Winston Spencer Churchill’s biography – My Early Life.
“Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.” –The Book of Three
And so begins one of my favorite series, the Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. I have many favorite opening lines, but I think this one takes top prize.
I love this series.
My favorite book, and my favorite first line:
“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.” –John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
That would have been my post, too. After many years, I have just finished reading that book for the third time. Just fell in love all over again with little Owen Meany.
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
– J. J. R. Tolkien The Hobbit
I actual like the first two lines.
I love that one Too!
My favorite is the opening line from Stephen King’s THE GUNSLINGER: “The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.” No other sentence has filled me with so many immediate questions I wanted to answer. In 12 words, he made me ask: Who is the Man in Black? Why is he fleeing? Who is the Gunslinger? Why is he following?
I have a very close second favorite, from a very significant book in my childhood and the formation of many of my values, but Robert Cormier’s I AM THE CHEESE has more of a short opening paragraph than a line, so I have not quoted it here.
The Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
“All this happened, more or less.”
It’s great. He comes right out and tells the reader that Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, is unreliable.
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. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
That was my fav, guess I’ll have to go with my second favorite now!
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” — The Hobbit
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. – David Copperfield
It is a classic, oft quoted first line and for good reason. I did not care for the rest of the book, but this line is still my favorite, It made me continue reading long after I would have given up on any other novel. This line often pops in my head as I sit down to write.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Stephen King ~ The Gunslinger
The entire book is paraphrased in this line.
You stole mine.
From Norman MacLean’s, “A River Runs Through It.”
In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
From William Gibson’s Neuromancer:
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
It conveys immediately, in a few words, that we are in a city with a port, now or in a close future, and suggests a somewhat cynical frame of mind: a sense of tension or static, a sense of waiting or life being turned off.
“Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderlay again.”
This is the opening line of Rebecca. First of all, it adds suspense. You know there’s a reason for a dream. And it could be good or bad. And that it was a recurring dream makes it doubly important. And that the dreamer had actually been to the place dreamt of and might actually want to go again. It’s a delicious opening no matter how you parse it. Because anything could happen and you end up wanting it to.
Listen.
That’s the first line in every Kurt Vonnegut novel.
Hi, Pat123–
I’m not so sure about that.
“This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.” Breakfast of Champions
“Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.” The Sirens of Titan
“All this happened, more or less.” Slaughterhouse-Five
While I agree with the person above who mentioned Peter Pan, another of my favorite first lines comes from Lois Lowry’s The Giver:
“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.”
(Interestingly, I just realized that in some ways this opening echoes the opening of another dystopian favorite of mine, 1984.)
“Something moved beneath the kitchen wallpaper.”
Rhodi Hawk, A Twisted Ladder
“Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl.”
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
“to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out for the world to give him a name.
The in-dark answered with wind.”
That’s from Samuel R. Delaney’s “Dhalgren”. Why do I like this? The last line of the novel is: “I have come to”. The author’s seeming intention was to create a circular text, where the last line of the novel wraps around to the first line.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Adams, Douglas. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Kindle Locations 287-290). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
vorite first line: 124 is spiteful.Full of a baby’s venom.
—Beloved by Toni Morrison
“The young boys came early to the hanging” – Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth.
Whoops – it should be “small boys”, not “young boys”. There goes my memory.
A screaming comes across the sky. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
(Sorry about the dual post—the first one disappeared after I hit “post comment” and didn’t show up until I hit “post comment” for the second post…then they BOTH turned up!)
I think enough of us have done the same thing to recognize what happened immediately. Either that, or you wanted to prove deja vu is literal. lol (In case the intent didn’t come through, I’m laughing with you.)
Oh that, and I so wish I could thumbs up some of these answers. I keep thinking, “Oooo, good one!” and then more and more of those keep showing up. Your choice? Great opening with just the first line, but the second does top it off. lol
I’m playing loose with the rules, I know, but my favorite first line goes from good to great when paired with the second:
“Somewhere fifty miles off the coast of Oregon I realize the skipper of this very small ship is an asshole.
He also happens to be my husband.”
From The “Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman’s Search for the Meaning of Wife” by Janna Cawrse Esarey
I’m stepping over the bounds here. My favorite first line goes from good to great only with the second:
“Somewhere fifty miles off the coast of Oregon I realize the skipper of this very small ship is an asshole.
He also happens to be my husband.:
From The “Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman’s Search for the Meaning of Wife” by Janna Cawrse Esarey
J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy begins, quite famously, “All children, except one, grow up.” An iconic line, and an intriguing one, especially considering it may refer not only to Peter Pan, but to Barrie himself, as Maria Tatar suggests in her recent annotated version of the novel.
My favorite line is: Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
I’m sure there are better first lines in the other books of the series, but this is the beginning of it all…and I love this series.
I’m looking for favorites and you delivered quite nicely. Thanks!
Brian
Online Editor
One of my favorite lines of a book is a simple one, but it got to the heart of it.
“They murdered him.”
From Robert Cormier’s—- The Chocolate War.
From “Tropic of Cancer” by Henry Miller. Can’t think of a more powerful opening:
“I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”
A screaming comes across the sky.
“Morgan of Hed met the High One’s harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season’s exchange of goods.” ~ The Riddle Master of Hed, by Patricia McKillip
Viviannimue Sorry to break in. I’m new here. Where do I click to post an opening line? I’ve looked everywhere–no can find. Thanks for the help.
Duh!! So sorry to all you posters. I finally found it…a mile down the screen. :-0