Favourite opening sentence of a book

[elevendayempire]

"There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency."

SG

 

[Pseudopsycho]

"Everything in this book is a lie"
or could be
"Nothing in this book is true"

but am out and about and can't check it.

 

[sojourner]

"Everything in this book is a lie"
or could be
"Nothing in this book is true"

but am out and about and can't check it.

Jeanette Winterson?

Trust me I'm telling you stories....?

 

[undercover]

"The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood's at all."

&

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

 

[trashpony]

"There were four of us - George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency."

SG

3 men in a boat

 

[purves grundy]

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Le-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

 

[Santino]

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Le-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

The Luzhin Defence?

 

[Santino]

This is good:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

 

[Ranu]

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

 

[elevendayempire]

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

War of the Worlds.

SG

 

[bus]

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

+1

only time I've evr laughed out loud at the first line

 

[purves grundy]

The Luzhin Defence?

ooohhh, nearly, nearly! you're close!!! keep guessing!!!

 

[glaucon]

For a long time I went to bed early

 

[undercover]

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

What's that from?

 

[butterfly child]

When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.

Ooh, just saw that at the theatre!

 

[brixtonvilla]

"As he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months"

Not the best novel by any means, but one of the best opening lines.

 

[lang rabbie]

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were
in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they
begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were
then doing;--that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned
in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body,
perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;--and, for aught they knew
to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn
from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;

--Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,--
I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world,
from that in which the reader is likely to see me.”

 

[lighterthief]

"They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them."



Okay, it's two sentences rather than one, but it's a brilliant opening to a stunning book - better even than the (fantastic) film version.