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Best opening line from a book?

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=Hroswith:iconHroswith: Apr 30, 2008, 9:51:20 AM
What do you think is the best opening line from a book? (narrative only, let's not consider poetry this time)

Feel free to say also why do you think it is so powerful. :)

There are - obviously - several I am fond of, but some of my best loved ones include: the opening line from Melville's Moby Dick: "Call me Ishmael." and "All this happened, more or less." from Slaughterhouse-Five by K. Vonnegut.

What about you?

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=deejaybunny12:icondeejaybunny12: Apr 30, 2008, 6:58:25 PM
Hmm...can't find an opening line I like better then the beginning of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"

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~milksop:iconmilksop: Apr 30, 2008, 11:16:07 PM
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton

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I hung to that tree, and no one knows where it is rooted.
None gave me food. None gave me drink. Into the abyss I stared
until I spied the runes. I seized them up and, howling, fell
~im-diogenes:iconim-diogenes: May 1, 2008, 1:18:34 AM
The hideous low scarred yellow horny and barren headland lies curled like a scorpion in a blinding sea and sky.
`lovetodeviate:iconlovetodeviate: May 1, 2008, 1:25:17 AM
I think we've had a thread like this before, and I posted quite a few favourites there.

Anyway, here's one that I like (I'm still reading the book):

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.

- The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass (translation by Ralph Manheim)

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~im-diogenes:iconim-diogenes: May 1, 2008, 1:34:47 AM
I love the chapter in the The Tin Drum that's about the musician in the top-floor apartment, how it is more poetry than prose (prose seems more afraid of using repetitions-- maybe because it's more difficult to establish new situations for old words in paragraphs than in stanzas).
But you might not be up to that section yet, so I'll keep quiet...
~tweedledoom:icontweedledoom: May 1, 2008, 4:44:43 PM
This is just one off the top of my head for the moment, but if anyone's read Adverbs by Daniel Handler...

Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.

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~darkestpoetrylover:icondarkestpoetrylover: May 4, 2008, 3:36:05 PM
"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit" the reason this is the best opening line, from tolkein's the hobbit, is because it is straightforward. IT doesn't hide, it's out in the open, simple and gripping

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~patter:iconpatter: May 4, 2008, 7:11:52 PM
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....

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`leoraigarath:iconleoraigarath: May 5, 2008, 9:43:23 AM
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Gawd I can smell that lilac...

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

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Some days I write those words, others they write me.
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