Famous first words

[nnyhav]

In the beginning ...

The opener of a novel can be a grabber.

The American Book Review compiled a list of what they consider the 100 best first lines, but it inclines more towards the novels' quality rather than that of the first words.

Another compendium of notable first lines:
List of First Lines

And the best shall be worst: The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is late in their judging of the 2008 contest.

Any particular favourites out there? I'll get it started with one of mine (not on the above lists):

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me. -- Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

(PS: I see obooki weighed in last year at the Guardian bookblog)

[Stewart]

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess

Got to love that. One day I may even read the book and find out where he takes the story from there.

[Cocko]

I'll take some liberties, I know this is technically five sentences, but what an opening for Peter Carey's 800-page saga of lies... Illywhacker:

My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die.

[Cocko]

Oops, I got carried away with Carey, I was also meant to say that of those listed I do like Margaret Atwood's opening from Cat's Eye:

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.

[nnyhav]

Stewart, I see that your response coincided with my first revision to add the quote [23:58] (didn't have the book at hand, had to seek it out) ... great minds think alike, eh? What's our excuse?

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by nnyhav

...great minds think alike, eh? What's our excuse?

I would answer but, since we're great minds, you should already know.

It was the first opening sentence that came to me. Most of the most memorable openers I can think of belong to books I haven't read. Elsewhere you posted the opening line to L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between ("The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."), which is also fantastic. Likewise that of Anna Karenina ("Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.")

There's definitely more memorable openers than there are great openers. I still remember the line to John Wyndham's The Day Of The Triffids, which we read in school. Or the similar ones to Melville's Moby Dick and Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, ("Call me Ishmael.") and ("Call me Jonah.") respectively.

[metin]

"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed." The New Life, Orhan Pamuk

I gotta admit that I'd long thought it was a cheap shot to try to impress a reader with such an opening. But I came to realize that once started, it makes sense.

[Mirabell]

In Germany people voted for the prettiest (best? God my memory...) first sentence of a novel. The winner was

Ilsebill salzte nach


(Ilsebill added some salt)
in Gunter Grass' remarkable "Flounder".
And it IS a great, great first sentence, when you think about it, in the context of that strange novel.

[Mirabell]

Oh, an all time great is of course
Kafka's

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

[Funhouse]

Following on from Cocko, my favourite Carey opener is this (from Bliss):

Harry Joy was to die three times, but it was his first death which was to have the greatest effect on him, and it is this first death which we shall now witness.

[Funhouse]

I also like John Barth's opening sentence to The Sot-Weed Factor:

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.

[Stewart]

Is the whole book like that, Funhouse? If so, no thanks.

[fausto]

Great opening and, yes, Stewart, the whole book is like that. Fantastic stuff.
I love Augie March's opening, but since it's a classic, I'd guess I'm not alone.

[Dante Amaral]

My favorite first line is from Mrs. Dalloway:

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

[Mirabell]

None of us noticed the body at first.

Coover/Gerald's Party

[Cocko]

Not sure if this is my favourite but I'm currently reading Patrick White's The Aunt's Story which starts with a great opening line (and paragraph)...

But old Mrs Goodman did die at last.

[fausto]

Oh yes, nice one Mirabell!

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by fausto

Oh yes, nice one Mirabell!

Currently reading this, my first Coover and it's so very fucking great. What a fucking awesome writer.

[Max Cairnduff]

Earthly Powers is pretty hard to beat on that front, I tried to read that novel as an adolescent due simply to that first line, sadly I completely bounced off the rest of the book and never finished it. I have no idea now whether that was because the book didn't live up to the line, or I was simply too young to take a go at it.

As a curio piece, the opening sentence of Neuromancer by William Gibson is the only one I know where changes in technology have changed the meaning of the sentence, so that it still makes sense to a modern reader but now means something wholly other than intended.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

When written, that meant the sky was a kind of churning grayish-white. To anyone who grew up in the last 20 years or so though, it would mean bright blue, as the colours of dead channels changed a few years after the novel was written.

My personal favourite is a paragraph, and so inadmissible, but I'll post it anyway:

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. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The first sentence there is pretty good in it's own right though anyway. That said, the best sentence in that para isn't the first, for me it's "I was clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it" which captures the essence of hardboiled in a nutshell.

[jackdawdle]

although i've outgrown salinger, the opening sentence of the catcher in the rye remains as fresh and irresistable.

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.