Great Opening Lines
This NPR story on great opening lines to hook the younger set got me thinking. I laughed at the very last book:
The Narnia books by C.S. Lewis are so popular already that I only want to mention that the first line of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is one of those classic sentences that, once heard, stick in your head forever:
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
Now, THAT’S a classic. Anyone care to contribute their favorites from the bookshelves?
Or, better yet ~ as we once did in a fiction exercise ~ write your own.
Littrachure | tree hugging sister | 
June 29, 2007 6:11 pm
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“It was love at first sight”
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
“Me, I just muddled along.”
That was the last sentence in an opening paragraph of an old favorite book of mine. Doesn’t exactly fit your criteria, but close enough says I!
That’s dandy, Jeff! Somewhere in the opening paragraph is close enough.
“Saigon. Shit! I’m still in Saigon”
Ok, so it was a movie.
Sue me.
Have another drink, Bingley.
The bottle’s empty…shit!
I’d best open anothr.
An thennothr ana nothr
‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’
“Marley was dead – that, to begin with.”
and
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”