Best Opening Line

[Lost Dreamer]

Wow. Some of these are so good. my favorites are the one about Eustace, the one from The Hobbit, and this one --

"I was born while my mother was tied to the railroad tracks two miles out of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, with a milk train only half a mile away and my father doing a lot of screaming and yelling."

From Sweet Agony: A writing manual of sorts by Gene Olson

That is just waaaay too intense. Some other good ones:

"There is no lake at Camp Green Lake" - Holes

"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

I can't think of my favorites, though. I know I have them. Just can't remember.

 

[inkspot]

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws 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 directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

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-

Love these!

Can't believe no one has used:

"Call me Ishmael."
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

And from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, which no one ought ever to read unless they are sort of devoid of artistic angst ...
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

 

[Mozart the Meerkitten]

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His sevants--things which must shortly take place."-The book of Revelation, the Last book of the Bible, which tells of things to come.

 

[BarbarianKing]

On the day that he died, the little mouse woke up earlier than usual, came out of his hole almost at once, and began sniffing here and there in the grass for any signs of food.


That isn't really a great opening line.... but it's an excellent shameless plug to attract more readers to my short story Just clicky on the link in my siggy!!!!!

Don't forget to comment!!!!

 

[EveningStar]

Smoke curled from the chimneys of a dozen scattered dwellings, an archipelago of warm islands in a vast sea of cold.

"The Journey" - by Yours Truly (Shameless plug lobbed back atcha)​

 

[Zella]

I've always liked the one from Survival by Gordan Korman. I can't remember exactly how it goes but it's something like, "They had survived a storm at sea, an explosion, a week afloat in the ocean, and now they faced the greatest challenge of all. A coconut."

 

[Mozart the Meerkitten]

"In the last days of Narnia...." - Chronicles of Narnia The Last Battle.

 

[Glenburne]

I've always liked the one from Survival by Gordan Korman. I can't remember exactly how it goes but it's something like, "They had survived a storm at sea, an explosion, a week afloat in the ocean, and now they faced the greatest challenge of all. A coconut."

*chuckles*

 

[GondorGirl]

Just voting on the opening lines and not the books that follow them Jane Eyre is the best there. I also like

"In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit"

and the opening line of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of my favorites ever

 

[Copperfox]

It can't easily be rendered here, but the opening which Lev (not "Leo") Tolstoy wrote for his "Tales of Sevastopol" has a remarkably cinema-like effect, even though movies had not yet been invented when he wrote this.