best opening sentence

Simple enough, just post your favourite opening sentence of any prose work, short story or novel. One per post please! Here's my suggestion:

"When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect."
(Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis)

 

My favourite at the moment:

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish.”
(Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man And The Sea)

~lovetulip.

 

"You see I had this spacesuit; how it happened was like this."

have spacesuit, will travel/robert a heinlein

 

"It was love at first sight."

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller


Holly

 

"I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man."


--Notes from the Underground

Also the opening line in Catcher in the Rye is great, but I can't remember it.

 

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.
the gunslinger- stephen king

 

"Life is difficult."


It's from "The Road Less Travelled," by Scott Peck.

 

'it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife....'


i never understood why that opening line is such a big deal.....i really dont like austen.

 

"I Believe in America..." The Godfather.
"Call Me Ishmael." Moby-Dick

 

wow im reading that and i was lookin at the first page to check what the first sentence was and then i saw that post. weird moment

 

"It was a Dark and Stormy Night."

Pretty much EVERYBODY.
But it works so well for either a "Who Dunnit" or a "Sci-Fi" or a Sea tale.

 

"Space, the final frontier.....", Oh wait, nevermind!

 

ack! so many

the best book of all time of course..the iliad

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought
countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send
hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs
and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the
day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first
fell out with one another."

its only one sentence in greek..but english sucks, so its two.

 

canterbury tales:

Whan that Aprille with his shouwers sote The droughte of Marche hath pierced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendered is the flour; When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The terdre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hat in the Ram his halfe course y-ronne.

 

I absolutely agree with Megara on all accounts. The Iliad was written at a time when stories where orated in the courts of kings who ruled esteemed civilizations ergo had more depth than any movie we might see today.
My second favorite opening line in a book is actually part a poem:
From the stone parapets I gazed
Across a myriad of darkness
And as the enemy drew near
All our hearts were filled with fear
I never lost for once my faith.
We had a gate
A great big gate.

It's from 'Kiss of the White Scorpion' written by <ahem> me in honor of 1588 people who went missing in Cyprus in 1974.

 

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..."

I was actually watching the movie today when I heard that line and thought, "That's the best opening sentence I've ever heard" and it is. Other than that, the foma bit from cat's cradle was really good. Puts the book into perspective.

 

uhm, I'd want to put in 1984 with the clocks striking 13 and such but i don't remember that book at all in fact...

 

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

 

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.
the gunslinger- stephen king- The gunslinger

is the best i agree. and I think 2nd id defenetley agree with backtothelab.

 

I've always liked the opening lines of David Copperfield, although of course I can't remember it now.