the best first line of a novel is?

Answer 1

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

Their eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Answer 2

The best is a bit hard to tell, but some of my favorite are:

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, The Catcher in the Rye

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'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. -Ursula LeGuin, Left Hand of Darkness

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

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

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying... but nobody thought so. -Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

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

The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. -Ursula LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. —L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler

Answer 3

I’ve always been a fan of:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
--Stephen King in “The Gunslinger” (1978)

For a more humorous twist:
“Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.”
--Terry Pratchett in “Hogfather” (1996)

Or, how about the one that started it all:
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton in “Paul Clifford” (1830)

Answer 4

"The dull, grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive."
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

and of course...

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.
Charles Dickens David Copperfield

or maybe

Call me Ishmael.
Melville's Moby Dick

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

Answer 5

A couple of good ones:

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."
Samuel Beckett - Murphy

"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 - The Catcher in the Rye

Answer 6

That's a wonderful question and bloody hard to answer too! I don't know about the 'best' one but there is one line that has somehow never managed to leave my mind:

"He was soft as rainwater." - fom Jeanette Winterson's The World and Other Places

Answer 7

Ooooh! nice question!
And one that I cant answer!



Actually I've thought of one...

' What a lot of hairy faced men there are around nowadays!'
The Twits By Roald Dahl

Answer 8

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book."
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

Answer 9

"It was the day my grandmother exploded" - The crow road by Iain Banks. Great way to grab the readers attention. Funny yet bizarre!

Answer 10

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again...

Rebecca - Daphne De Murier

My favorite, anyway.