What is your favorite opening line?

"It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the East Portico of St Paul's at Covent Garden." - Ben Aaronovitch, "Rivers of London."
 
AE35Unit said:
"In spite of all of his efforts, Tavernor was unable to remain indoors when it was time for the sky to catch fire".
Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw
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I havent read this book for years. Must dig it out.
 
"The year 1866 was signified by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten"
--Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
 
I can't see it, scanning through, but if someone's already entered this, apologies...

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the biggest adventure of my life....."

the opening lines of Max Shulman's "Sleep Till Noon".
 
I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.

-- C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
 
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

--Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Right to the point.
 
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 scruitinised 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.

H. G. Wells of course, The War of the Worlds
 
I'd second The War of the Worlds and 1984 as great openings. But my all-time favourite is this, from Count Zero by William Gibson:

They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
 
Toby Frost said:
I'd second The War of the Worlds and 1984 as great openings. But my all-time favourite is this, from Count Zero by William Gibson:

They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
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That kinda sums up why I don't fancy reading Gibson.
 
Toby Frost said:
I'd second The War of the Worlds and 1984 as great openings. But my all-time favourite is this, from Count Zero by William Gibson:

They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.

He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
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This is just terrific, isn’t it? And it’s not even Gibson’s best-known opening, which is the much-quoted beginning of Neuromancer.

I need to reread this.
 
The first thing the boy Garion remembered was the kitchen at Faldor's farm. For all the rest of his life he had a special warm feeling for kitchens and those peculiar sounds and smells that seemed somehow to combine into a bustling seriousness that had to do with love and food and comfort and security and, above all, home. No matter how high Garion rose in life, he never forgot that all his memories began in that kitchen.
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Pawn of Prophecy David [and Leigh] Eddings
 
It was still dark in the cave. Outside in the forest, the birds screamed and chattered. Catweazle, who had been dreaming of monsters, woke with a sudden cry and shivered with relief. He scratched himself, removed a moth from his beard, and sat up. Such a dream was a bad omen, he thought uneasily as he rubbed his thin chest, and climbed stiffly from the pile of hay he slept in.

Catweazle, Richard Carpenter
 
vanye said:
It was still dark in the cave. Outside in the forest, the birds screamed and chattered. Catweazle, who had been dreaming of monsters, woke with a sudden cry and shivered with relief. He scratched himself, removed a moth from his beard, and sat up. Such a dream was a bad omen, he thought uneasily as he rubbed his thin chest, and climbed stiffly from the pile of hay he slept in.

Catweazle, Richard Carpenter
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I loved Catweazle on TV. I watched it in Australia in the 1970s. I have never read the books.
 
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