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

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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

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I write these words, not for future history, not so that future generations can judge my actions, but for myself.

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.

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I write these words, not for future history, not so that future generations can judge my actions, but for myself.

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.

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How Beautiful it is to Do Nothing, and then Rest Afterwards . . . . . Spanish proverb

The Backward OX

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

The Bible. It's a novel, right?

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How Beautiful it is to Do Nothing, and then Rest Afterwards . . . . . Spanish proverb

Jacen

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

Anarkos

Camus is brilliantly grim.

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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.'

Mermaid on the breakwater

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

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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'.