Best first lines in literature-- let's take a break from politics for a bit of culture.

The two biggest that always got me... Just something about Christmas Carol that grabs you from the first read to the millionth read of the book. Halloween Tree something about it grab me, maybe since huge Halloween fan or the depiction of fall.


Marley was dead, To begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of this burial was signed by the clerk, the clergyman, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it and Scrooge's name was good upon it.

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol


It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in as mall northern part of a Midwestern state. There wasn't so much wilderness around you couldn't see the town Both of the other hand there wasn't so much town you couldn't see and feel the touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And Dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and large ravine to tumble in and yell across. and the town was full of......


Ray Bradbury - The Halloween Tree

No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastard will see them soon enough.

-Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Not a first line, but it's an all-time favorite.

It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its theme, there was only ever room for three players.

Imajica. Clive Barker

Best book ever - first 4 sentences! (its Friday night)




"There are one hundred and ninety-three living species of monkeys and apes. One hundred and ninety-two of them are covered with hair. The exception is a naked ape self-named Homo sapiens. This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones. "

The Naked Ape - Desmond Morriss

a reply to: OzManHero and everyone, Here are three of my favorite first lines. Unfortunately, most of my book collection is elsewhere ... these authors are all men ... I'd like to check my books by women authors for their first lines, but that will have to wait.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" (George Orwell, 1984)

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." (JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye)

"On December 1, 2012, I received my first communication from Edward Snowden, although I had no idea at the time that it was from him." (Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State)

All these authors have an immediacy in their writing. They enthrall the reader from the first page.

Has it already been posted? Lord knows it's launched a thousand movie adaptations:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice.

ETA:

a reply to: DISRAELI

Great minds and basic human nature....