What's your favorite first line of a book?

Question

mine is by the book Night.
" They called him Moshe the Beadle as though he had never had a surname in his life."



* any ideas how I should start my first line of a story?

Answer 1

-"Roy would not have noticed the strange boy if it weren't for Dana Matherson, Because Roy didn't ordinarily look out the window of a school bus." Hoot By: Carl Hiaasen

Answer 2

I have to agree with James N that the Gunslinger opening is great.
I also like the opening from Cell, also by Stephen King. It is the first sentence of the little ditty that precedes the beginning of Chapter 1.
Civilization slipped into it's second dark age on an unsurprising track of blood, but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist.
You know your in for a good read when you see that.

Answer 3

Howard Roark laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff... The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Where's Pa going with that axe? Charlotte's Web by EB White

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Answer 4

The corpse without hands lay in the bottom of a small sailing dinghy drifting just within sight of the Suffolk coast. It was the body of a middle-aged man, a dapper little cadaver, its shroud a dark pin-striped suit which fitted the narrow body as elegantly in death as it had in life.

P. D. James Unnatural Causes

Answer 5

Here are 2 I like
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 was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen -George Orwell, 1984

Answer 6

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." ~ Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

OR

"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 by Jane Austen

Answer 7

the 2d worst poets interior the universe are the Asgoths of Krea. throughout his recital to the humanities Nobbling Council of his poem, Oad to a Lump of green Putty i got here upon under My Armpit One Midsummer Morning, with the aid of their poet grasp Grunthos the Flatulent, a impressive style of the objective audience died from inner hemorrhaging. One member basically survived with the aid of gnoring off his own leg. Grunthos became stated to have been disappointed with the aid of the reaction and became approximately to embark on his twelve e book epic, Zen and the artwork of Going to the bathroom, while his own substantial gut, in a desperate bid to keep all existence variety, jumped up with the aid of his throat and throttled his concepts. Douglas Adams. luck

Answer 8

"Twas the best of times, twas the worst of times."
I think the book was "Tale of Two Cities " by Charles Dickens.

Because although that book was written long long ago, for me it is a microcosm of all times that have ever been. Comforting when things go wrong.

Answer 9

I'm totally with James N on this - "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

Another fave is the old classic "Last night I dreamt of Manderlay again"

Answer 10

It's not that I'm a huge fan of Christianity, but is there any better opening than "In the beggining, God created the Heavens and the Earth."