What is your favorite opening line?

[Nikitta]

Something newer:

"Hayden Griffin was plucking a fish when the gravity bell rang" Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder

"I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army" Old Man's War by John Scalzi

Generally, John Scalzi is good at catching opening lines.

"Stryke couldn't see the ground for corpses" The Orcs trilogy/Bodyguard of Lightning by Stan Nicholls

Also more examples could be given here, but I've limited myself to one pr author.

 

[Nesacat]

For me it has always been these two:

Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
— Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

It is said that in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat; and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things which men cannot see. He is the soul of antique Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroe and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle’s lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.
— H.P. Lovecraft , The Cats of Ulthar

 

[Hypnos164]

Three that jumped directly to mind (and I did check they were correct ... I had a fourth but it turned out not to be the actual opening)

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." - Iain Banks - The Crow Road

"The sky above the port was the colour of a televison tuned to a dead channel." - William Gibson - Neuromancer

"His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He prefered to drop the Maha- and the -ataman, however, and call himself Sam" - Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light

 

[Switchback]

Just started on Wit'ch Fire by James Clemens, and I really enjoyed this opening line:

"First of all, the author is a liar."

 

[KESpires]

Well, my memory sucks and someone already put the opening line to The Gunslinger.

So I'm posting the whole opening paragraph to No Country for Old Men because I'm just sorta taken with the book and the movie.

Sorry to push my addiction on everyone.

I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didnt have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to. He'd killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He'd been datin this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely dont. I thought I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strap him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was about all. I really believe that he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And I've thought about that a lot. He was not hard to talk to. Called me Sheriff. But I didnt know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? I've thought about it a good deal. But he wasnt nothin compared to what was comin down the pike.

Edit: Oh, and the spelling "errors" and lack of ' in certain words, yeah, I don't know why he writes like that. It's weird.

 

[Praxxus]

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

And so opened The Hobbit. A long love affair with Fantasy began when I first read that classic over 30 years ago. To this day those lines come easily to mind like the remembered smile of an old friend that brightens your day. I owe many thanks to Mr. Tolkien for the hours spent lost in his world of Hobbits, Elves and Orcs.

 

[Clansman]

Praxxus, I agree wholeheartedly. I also think someone else posted this earlier in the thread, but who cares? It certainly bears repetition, as did the reading of that particular book, and the others that followed it.

 

[J-Sun]

If the criteria for a favorite opening line is to cite it from memory, then I hardly have one. The only line I can come close to remembering is

At the age of nine, Harrison Wintergreen first discovered that the world was his oyster when he looked at it sidewise.
-- "Carcinoma Angels", Norman Spinrad

and that's only a well-liked opener, as opposed to my favorite. I also always think of Pebble in the Sky's opener, which clovis-man cited, but also can't get that one right.

Leaving aside my pathetic memory, a semi-random look through some books turns up:

It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, and that afternoon I saved civilization.
-- "A Logic Named Joe", Murray Leinster

They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street. He was eight years old then. He'd been doing it for years.
-- The Dreaming Jewels, Theodore Sturgeon

The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear.
-- More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon

It was the first time the U.S. Marines had ever been routed with water pistols.
-- "The God Business", Philip Jose Farmer

And then, after walking all day through a golden haze of humid warmth that gathered about him like fine wet fleece, Valentine came to a great ridge of outcropping white stone overlooking the city of Pidruid.
-- Lord Valentine's Castle, Robert Silverberg
(I love the first couple of words to start a novel with an amnesiac protagonist, actually - "And then...")

"Who made you?"
"You mean recently?"
-- "Pretty Boy Crossover", Pat Cadigan

Eventually it came to pass that no one had to die, unless they ran out of money.
-- "Four Short Novels", Joe Haldeman

If this typewriter can't do it, then **** it, it can't be done.
-- Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
-- Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins

I know I'm missing a million classics but my favorite of what I came across is:

The blood-red Mercury with the twin-mounted 7.6 mm Spandaus cut George off as he was shifting lanes.
-- "Along the Scenic Route", Harlan Ellison

 

[clovis-man]

It was on the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, and that afternoon I saved civilization.
-- "A Logic Named Joe", Murray Leinster

Leinster: One of our least well appreciated masters of SF.

 

[J-Sun]

Leinster: One of our least well appreciated masters of SF.

Yep. To have been writing before Amazing even existed and to keep going into the 60s when the New Wave was nigh, turning out many great stories along the way, is quite an accomplishment in itself.

Baen has relatively recently brought out some collection/omnibus volumes of some of his stuff and hopefully that will lead some folks to pick those up and maybe go used-book hunting for more. He definitely should be in print and not forgotten.

 

[Lysalis]

Just started on Wit'ch Fire by James Clemens, and I really enjoyed this opening line:

"First of all, the author is a liar."

Me, too. That's a really good opening.

The openings I also liked are:

Fiona McIntosh, Betrayal:

"Mild, cloudless and still. It was a perfect day for an execution."
(I like it, because the book starts with the execution of the the main character.)

Jennifer Fallon, Wolfblade:

"It was always messy, cleaning up after a murder. There was more than just blood to be washed off the tiles. There were all those awkward loose ends to be taken care of alibis to be established, traitors to be paid off, witnesses to be silenced...
And that, Elezaar knew, was the problem. He'd just witnessed a murder."

And K.J. Parker, Memory (might be a bit long, but cannot be helped ):

"Precepts of religion. Every victory is a defeat. Every cut made is a wound received. Every strength is a weakness. Every time you kill, you die.
In which case, he thought, clawing briars away from in front of his face as he ran, the enemy must be taking a right pounding, the poor buggers. A dry branch snapped under his foot, startling him and throwing him off balance for a split second. Slow down, he urged himself; hast breeds delay. Another of those wonderful precepts.
[...] Only the idiot son of a congenital idiot would pick a fight in a wood - can't see, can't move, can't hold the line, can't communicate, can't swing, can't do any bloody thing. Slow down , before you fall over and do yourself an injury.
Precepts of religion, he thought. Every strength is a weakness; well, quite, and by the same token every bloody stupid idea is a stroke of genius. Such as attacking a larger, better armed, better led army in the heart of a dark, boggy, overgrown forest - dumbest idea in the history of mankind; stroke of genius."

 

[Nikitta]

And K.J. Parker, Memory (might be a bit long, but cannot be helped ):

"Precepts of religion. Every victory is a defeat. Every cut made is a wound received. Every strength is a weakness. Every time you kill, you die.
In which case, he thought, clawing briars away from in front of his face as he ran, the enemy must be taking a right pounding, the poor buggers. A dry branch snapped under his foot, startling him and throwing him off balance for a split second. Slow down, he urged himself; hast breeds delay. Another of those wonderful precepts.
[...] Only the idiot son of a congenital idiot would pick a fight in a wood - can't see, can't move, can't hold the line, can't communicate, can't swing, can't do any bloody thing. Slow down , before you fall over and do yourself an injury.
Precepts of religion, he thought. Every strength is a weakness; well, quite, and by the same token every bloody stupid idea is a stroke of genius. Such as attacking a larger, better armed, better led army in the heart of a dark, boggy, overgrown forest - dumbest idea in the history of mankind; stroke of genius."

Sounds very good. Now I want that book. Shame on you!

EDIT: to make matters worse, it seems to be part of a trilogy and the third one in the trilogy too (according to wikipedia). Oh dear! Ah well - I will look at it at least.

 

[Lysalis]

Sounds very good. Now I want that book. Shame on you!

EDIT: to make matters worse, it seems to be part of a trilogy and the third one in the trilogy too (according to wikipedia). Oh dear! Ah well - I will look at it at least.

The first book is very good and a bit weird, the second book, well, is really weird, and the third makes you almost crazy. The whole thing really is a new experience, especially his writing style, Parker goes one like the excerpt above through his whole trilogy. I loved the trilogy and I hated it. But I don't regret to have read it. I'm even thinking of reading Parkers other two trilogies.

Do it and read the books, it's definitively worth it.

 

[Lith]

"Gummitch was a superkitten, as he knew very well, with an I.Q. of about 160." -Space-Time for Springers, Fritz Leiber

 

[tangaloomababe]

As previously stated by favorite opening line remains from George Orwell's 1984, however lately I have found a couple of challengers:

"Early this morning, 1st January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenous Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days"

PD James - Children of Men

OR

This is the story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.

Mitch Albom: The Five people you meet in heaven.

Both turned out to be really great reading, but I have a habbit of picking a book from those first few lines, so they made it easy for me to pick them.

 

[asp3]

This one is my all time favorite that always comes to mind when thinking about book openings.

"In five years the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman.

He paused to let this planet-shattering information sink into our amazed brains. Personally I didn't know how many more wonders my brain could absorb before lunch.

Steel Beach - John Varley

 

[nixie]

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed. is probably my favorite of all time.

Can't say exactly why, but I knew one heck of an adventure was going to follow.

This sprung to mind as soon I seen this thread.

 

[Danny McG]

Awesome!
An old thread being revived without the mighty @BAYLOR

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?" - Hunter S Thompson - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. - Metamorphosis Kafka

It was a pleasure to burn. - Fahrenheit 451 - Bradbury

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. - HHGTTG Douglas Adams

 

[Vince W]

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place.

- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan
Frank Herbert