Like the title says. I have two that stand out as brilliant first lines -

''Last night I dreamt i was at Manderley again'' - From Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca

''It was the day my Grandmother exploded'' - Iain Banks's The Crow Road


What are yours?

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."

At least, I think that's how A Tale of Two Cities opens...

"See Spot" seems to have had a pivotal effect on my life.

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the ninetenth century, that human affairs...."

The opening lines of H.G. Wells The war of the worlds. I read that book for the first time when I was a nipper and since then Ive read thousands of books but none of them have had the same impact on me as that one.

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the ninetenth century, that human affairs...."

The opening lines of H.G. Wells The war of the worlds. I read that book for the first time when I was a nipper and since then Ive read thousands of books but none of them have had the same impact on me as that one.

Good one Jabber; I confess I've not read the book, but Richard Burton narrates these lines at the beginning of Jeff Wayne's musical version of the story - very classy indeed.

"Twas a dark and stormy night..." :hihi: :)

I'll think of a proper one...

EDIT: ok, here goes:

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

StarSparkle

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

'Emma' - "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

LP Hartley, The Go-Between

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below. "

Thornton Wilder - The Bridge at San Luis Rey

I did not kill my father, but I sometimes felt I had helped him on his way

Cement Garden - Ian McEwan

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

I'm going with that one too!

'THUD.'

the first sentence of the terry pratchett book by the same name.

fab book, recommended to me by my little bro who also ended up buying for my mum for christmas. i had to buy my own copy. :|


x

There are numerous opening lines to books but i like all different types of opening lines. I think the ones where books start off with a beginning like:

"She sat by her window staring out at the snow covered street..."
If you get my drift lol.

I think the worst one i read was a sci fi book where the first three pages were formulas and caluclations about the exact places and spots that this space ship was going it was like

"g-14 to f6 g k buzz" and i just couldnt cope lol... I'll try and find out what its called.

Terry Pratchetts books always crack me up but i can never finish reading them or get half way for that matter.

From fallen

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.

Sorry a very predictable answer.

I'm sorry to lower the tone here somewhat...

My favourite opening line is " I can't believe I lost my f*****g ear; bang bang!"

It's from Mick Foleys first autobiography 'Have a Nice Day! A tale of blood and sweatsocks'. I’m not ashamed to admit my favourite opening line is written by a wrestler. Mick is funny, intelligent and a comedic genius. You genuinely don’t have to have seen a wrestling match to enjoy the book.

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Neuromancer - William Gibson

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

StarSparkle

Stupendous line! Here goes:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." - The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Wastern Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun." - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams

"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." - The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger

"The door to Dr. Hannibal Lecters memory palace is in the darkest center of his mind and is has a latch that can be found by touch alone." - Hannibal Rising, by Thomas Harris.

OR

"Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree." - The Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett.

The Hannibal series are my four favourite books of all time. I admit that before I read the books I never saw the films. And I felt like I'd seen the films before because I'd imagined it :hihi:

'Coventry are ***** all.'
The Football Factory, John King.

"Once upon a time........................"
Lol!:cool: :rolleyes: :hihi:

I think the worst one i read was a sci fi book where the first three pages were formulas and caluclations about the exact places and spots that this space ship was going it was like

"g-14 to f6 g k buzz" and i just couldnt cope lol... I'll try and find out what its called.


That sounds a bit like Excession by Iain M. Banks. It's a good book otherwise!

Virtually anything written by Flann O'Brien has the power to draw me in with it's opening line. Here are some of my favourites;

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. (The Third Policeman)

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. (At Swim-Two-Birds)

"It is not that I half knew my mother. I knew half of her: the lower half -- her lap, legs, feet, her hands and wrists as she bent forward. (The Poor Mouth)

The Third Policeman is indeed the pig's whiskers.

Others:

Call me Ishmael. (Moby-Dick)

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. (Slaughterhouse Five ... OK not really the 1st line, but kind of)

... and one for the children ...

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

"This is the story of David Beckham, a man who married the wrong Spice Girl" - 'My life, my football, my allotment fascination (David Beckham the Autobiography).

the end :thumbsup:

Like the title says. I have two that stand out as brilliant first lines -

''Last night I dreamt i was at Manderley again'' - From Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca

What are yours?

This is one of my favourites, the other is from Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, which I read as a child. ''The first place I well remember, was a large pleasent meadow with a pond of clear water in it''

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. ... Old Marley was dead as a door-nail.

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

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

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. Robert Graves, I, Claudius