I just started reading The Towers of Trebizond, which is often cited as having one of the best first sentences from a novel:
‘Take my camel, dear,’ said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.
I thought about some other favorite first lines (some longer than 1 sentence) from novels:
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.” - Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” -Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
“He came there in the off-season. So much was off. All bets were off. The last deal was off. His timing was off, or he wouldn’t have come here at this moment, and also every second arc lamp along the peninsular highway was switched off.” - Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man
“My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultraslow trickle.” - Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
“She could not remember a time when she had not known the story; she had grown up knowing it.” - Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown
“Taran wanted to make a sword; but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.” - Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three
“The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are-you-in-trouble?–Do-you-need-advice?–Write-to Miss-Lonleyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.” Nathaniel West, Miss Lonelyhearts
“No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard — and he had never been handsome.” - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
“It was about eleven ‘o clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.” - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
Over at the Constant Reader, a couple of first sentence tests
Do you have any favorites?
10:57 pm on March 29th, 2004 1
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice–not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” Say what you want about the book, at least it and its opening sentence are interesting!
11:56 pm on March 29th, 2004 2
I have to admit, I’ve never read any John Irving.
12:15 am on March 30th, 2004 3
Well, his first lines are always good!
2:02 pm on March 30th, 2004 4
My all-time favourite has to be: “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.” Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche. Great swashbuckler, and interesting as a parallel read to the better known Scarlet Pimpernel by the Baroness Orczy.
4:27 pm on March 30th, 2004 5
A recent favorite first (few) lines:
By the second week of kindergarten everyone has adjusted but me. The three girls with the prettiest names - Hayley, Stephanie, and Claire - and the longest straightest hair have formed a friendship that I watch alone, from the outside. They share secrets and jacks and make rules that everyone else obeys. “No drinking from that water fountain in the morning. No drinking from that fountain ever.” — from The Art of Seeing by Cammie McGovern.
The rest of the book itself wasn’t bad, though more chick that my usual lit. Actually, I lied.. what’s above are the first few lines of the first chapter. The first line of the introduction actually starts with, “When you are a younger sister, you are born with an eye not on the horizon, but on the hem of a shirt just ahead, the flash of a ponytail whipping side to side.” Which itself, isn’t a bad line either.
Oh and that Robin McKinley book, The Blue Sword? That was the first book I read as a kid where I really grasped that writing could be good. Before that, for me, I think books were just all about what happened in the story.
6:56 pm on March 31st, 2004 6
I’ve also never read the Scarlet Pimpernel. I think that my only knowledge of the Pimpernel comes from that one Blackaddar episode
I did read Captain Blood many years ago but I might not have read Scaramouche.
When I was a kid reading Robin McKinley books for the first time, I would often finish the book and then turn to the first page to start reading it again!
The McGovern book sounds good — now I’ve got so many extra things to add to my “to be read” list!
4:47 pm on April 2nd, 2004 7
Yay! I don’t have any lines to contribute, but I’m glad to see the loving for Robin McKinley. I haven’t read either book in many years, but I know that Hero in the Crown will probably always be one of my favorite books.