Best opening lines of books EVER

[Justg0ttasing]

I have two favorite openings. One is just because I like how it sounds, and the other... well I don't know. I think it's just because it's the book that was made into my favorite musical.

"Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world."
-Eragon by Christopher Paolini of course. I just like how he describes that. I want to write openings like that for my books. I need to work on that... anyways, here's my other:

"A mile about Oz, the Witch balanced on the wind's forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the land itself, flung up and sent wheeling away by the turbulent air. White and purple summer thunderheads mounded around her. Below, the Yellow Brick Road looped back on itself, like a relaxed noose. Though winter storms and the crowbars of agitators had torn up the road, still it led, relentlessly, to the Emerald City."
- Wicked: The Life And Times Of The Wicked Witch Of The West by Gregory Maguire. This isn't the entire opening paragraph, but I still enjoy this one.

I'm sure there's about a million others I could post, but I think these two are my favorites.

[cassingtonscholar]

"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." --J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

I have yet to read the book, but I love the opening line.

[highandrandom]

I have yet to read the book, but I love the opening line.

It's a fabulous book, though I suspect that if you didn't read it when you were an angsty teenager, you probably will never appreciate it.

It's got what is probably my favourite piece of novel text ever in it:

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it."

*sigh*

[aklebury]

The ending of Catcher in the Rye is really good as well - can't remember it off the top of my head though...

A great opening:

"What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow Submarine," which is a song by The Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know. ..."
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer.

[Somewhat]

"Let me tell you why I wished to buy a meerkat at Quin's Shanghai Circus. Let me tell you about the city: The city is sharp, the city is a cliche performed with cardboard and painted sparkly colours to disguise the empty center - the hole.
(That's mine - the words. I specialise in holo art, but every once in a chemical moon I'll do the slang jockey thing on paper."
-Veniss Underground, Jeff VanderMeer. One of the grittiest, most disturbing, richest sci-fi books I've read. It's like reading a fever.

[furbaby]

Ooh no, sorry. That opening would make me put the book back immediately.

[DarkKnightJRK]

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger -- Stephen King

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . . ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas -- Hunter S. Thompson

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 -- Albert Camus

[Mockingbird]

Hmm, I don't know about bests, but I've always liked the cheekiness of this one:

"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.

[cassingtonscholar]

This isn't really an opening line. It's the miniature introduction/preface/forward thing the author wrote. It's still really good, though.

"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war."
---All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

To read the closing line and my praise of this wonderful book, visit the closing line thread.

[Somewhat]

Ooh no, sorry. That opening would make me put the book back immediately.

Oh, why is that? It's certainly a very weird book. I like it for its grittiness, and it's filled with extremely clever metaphors and smilies:
"Nick sits at the kitchen table, his bioneer kit splayed out like the autopsy of a steel insect." It's not a friendly book.

[Lyra&Pan]

"First, it was Silkytail. Then Jumper, Jusepe, Ramses, Blacky and Jewels. All these cats had nothing in common, exept their colour: black."

The Last Black Cat (it's Greek, so I don't think that you know it).

[Somewhat]

A new one, from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath:

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

It's a fizzly line. And a bit further down the page is my favourite quote from the book:

By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-grey at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun ...

The rest of the book is great, too.

Oh, and I just realised, why oh why has nobody mentioned the opening of Catcher In The Rye?

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.

A book like no other.

[Qu Klaani]

Bit of a cheat this, as its not actually the first line of the book (first line of the second page actually) but it should be:

It wasn't a Dark and Stormy night. It should have been, but thats the weather for you
-Good Omens.

[monster8532]

I have two favorite openings. One is just because I like how it sounds, and the other... well I don't know. I think it's just because it's the book that was made into my favorite musical.

"Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world."
-Eragon by Christopher Paolini of course. I just like how he describes that. I want to write openings like that for my books.

I wondered if anyone on here ever read Eragon. My favorite first line however is from the sequel Eldest
"The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living"

[AncientOfDays]

The most classical of all book openings that ever were, are and will be. Not really books, in a sense.

"Once upon a time..."

Those four magical words must surely be among the classics.

[boojumlol]

The most classical of all book openings that ever were, are and will be. Not really books, in a sense.

"Once upon a time..."

Those four magical words must surely be among the classics.

Oh, I totally agree. They can still make my heart quicken with anticipation.

So, some of my favourites...

But, you may say, we asked you speak about women and fiction - what has that got to do with a rom of one's own?

Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own


You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.

Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn


Saunders had been dead for almost two weeks now and, so far, he hadn't enjoyed a minute of it.

Garth Nix - Red Dwarf

[Mockingbird]

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."-- I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith.

Perhaps a bit too precious (much like the book) but charming nonetheless. In the same vein, the last line of the same book, which only charms if you know the narrator: "I love you, I love you, I love you."

Edit: Eep, I have just seen this is the same first line Ronni opened this thread with last year (two? three? years ago). Apologies, Ronni. I've discovered this odd, luminous little book late.

[~Lirael]

"After killing the red-haired man, I took myself to Quinn's for an Oyster Supper."
The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox

Oh, and A Christmas Carol has a pretty great opening line! =D

[Palagrin]

"It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea."

Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve. It's also nearly the last line of his last book in the series. Anyway, this line is so picturesque and awesome it's inchomprehensible...