Best opening lines in a book

[mama2020]

"It was a dark and stormy night."
- A Wrinkle In Time

[Arthur Ahrens]

Most thrilling:

"The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."

—The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Mine too!

[yumnah]

good morning to the day;and next,my gold:
open the shrine,that may i see my saint.

lines from Volpone by Ben jonson

[armorclad]

I'll go first just to open this thread!

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

—Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I was going to go with this one too!! isn't it amazing? I can't get tired of rereading it

[Gimonbro]

A Tale of Two Cities for sure. The original opening lines set the tone for a rather diverse and strange tragedy.

[Letta_Jones]

"it's the freakiest thing"
talk under water by Kathryn Lomer

[Choine]

Well, this isn't an opening line. It's a chapter title. However, it did catch my attention. It is the first chapter in the Lightning Thief: "Chapter 1: I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher".

[MarsinOz]

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realised this when they were as caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were.

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

[Lauren3131]

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
The Go- Between

[Ekta Swarnkar]

The line I found a lesson to learn-

" The beauty is in the eyes of beholder."
There is always something, that capture your moment and, while reading this line I was wondering about it for few minutes.

[Ekta Swarnkar]

The line I found a lesson to learn-

" The beauty is in the eyes of beholder."
Book- The king's slave
There is always something, that capture your moment and, while reading this line I was wondering about it for few minutes.

[morgan4hoof]

A much-needed dose of brutal honesty:

“First the colours. Then the humans. That’s how I usually see things. Or at least, how I try. *** HERE IS A SMALL FACT *** You are going to die.”
– Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

[lachlan091]

Just gone through the comments, looks like i don't need to search book covers for amazing opening lines. Appreciate you all

[LinaMueller]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

[LinaMueller]

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me."
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759–1767)