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What's the best opening line of a book (fiction or non)?

staceass said:
what i was wondering is-- how do you guys approach the beginnng of a work? to you aim for a compelling set of words as i do?
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So far I've rewritten the first line of my current book sixteen times. That's sixteen distinct versions of what is essentially the same sentence. I thought I had it down pat, but having reread it recently... It's overwritten. :rolleyes: ;) I'm resisting the temptation to meddle with it again, at least for a while, but yes: I think that good first and last lines are essential.
 
(Albert Camus - The Outsider) has a masterpiece of a first line and quintessentially sets the tone for the whole book

'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have been yesterday.'

Masterpiece :D
 
I quite liked Iain Bank's opening line for The Crow Road

'It was the day my grandmother exploded.'

Certainly grabs your attention. :p
 
One of my favorites is the first line of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, especially when read out loud:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy...

To me, the beauty of it is that the first line can be reduced to this: ''Far out." That, after all, is exactly what the story is going to be.



As for my writing, discovering the first line is essential for realizing the tone of the whole story, and the character of the narrator. When I have the first line, the sound of the story opens before me. It's like destiny from that point on.
 
"Because i am an oficer and a gentleman they have not taken away my bootlaces or my pen, so i sit and wait and write." How many miles to babylon - jennifer johnston. that is the last line.

the fact its also the first is no concidence! it starts at the end, tells the story in diary/narritive format. and ends with that line.
 
staceass said:
... we all know "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,"
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Sorry, not all. Could you please embarrass me and spell it out? (Thank you :) )

Edit - okay, I've googled. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. I must admit I feared worse.
 
Halo said:
Like others, I think a good opening line is pretty much essential if you want to grab the reader's interest.
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Absolutely. WHen I buy a book, I look at the cover, I read the back and then I read the first sentences. If they're not good I'll just put the book back on the shelf.
 
Hmm. I don't really have a specific way of getting to a first line, but I like nontraditional openings that shock me. I am sadly unable to write them, but reading them is such great fun...
 
Fieldy said:
(Albert Camus - The Outsider) has a masterpiece of a first line and quintessentially sets the tone for the whole book

'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have been yesterday.'

Masterpiece :D
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Then there is Grand in Camus' The Plague who keeps reworking the opening sentence to his novel, but hasn't written anything beyond that.
 
"Oh great. I've pissed of the faerys."

Although it's actually the start of a short story, I've always loved this beginning :) ...and the first sentence of Lolita!!!!!!
xxx:p
lenessa
 
Congratulations. The fact that you're reading this means you've taken one giant step to surviving till your next birthday.
Maximun Ride by James Patterson
 
Fav first sentence.

What is your favourite first sentence to a book? mine is the one from Pride and Prejudice, that you can read just below in my signiture as I cant be bothered to write it out again!

WB!
 
In Halo: Fall of Reach, I teared up a little. When they had gone through the physical augmentation a lot of the humans were either paralyzed from the neckdown or other such things and one of the well-known characters didn't make it, he was in a wheel chair and one of the nurse's were wheeling him away and he couldn't speak or anything... John, the main protagonist, yells to the nurse "where are you taking my soldier?" And that was just... haha, it rang well with me I suppose.
 
What do you consider the best opening sentence from a book?

Whether it's fiction or non-fiction?

Here's mine:


God created the Heavens and the Earth.


Another great opening sentence would be the very first book of the Gunslinger, which I don't have at this time. So the question remains: which book is actually non-fiction and which book is fiction. Some would say the Bible is fiction and the Gunslinger non-fiction; others vice-versa.

I'm digressing. :D

What do you consider the best opening sentence from a book?
 
With possibly one of the best openings ever written, 'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue takin a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.' This novel will remain one of my absolute favourite books. The sheer impact of realising that you can follow one man's sordid obsession to the point of almost understanding it is an exhilarating experience.
 
I like the opening lines of Dickens' Great Expectations .Their simplicity and naturalness make it a very convincing and impressive start setting the apt narrative tone.Second, I like the typical Dickensian play on words.

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
 
"Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--an act which made a deep impression on me at the time."

-Ambrose Bierce
 
Book of John (don't think this one's been done before)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

I like this because it gets the point accross in the first sentence.
 
Here are a few of my favorites:

"It is cold at 6:40 in the morning of a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad." Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

"The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no one in the room but the corpse." Charles Williams, War in Heaven

"Brother Francis of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert." Walter Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

"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
 
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