Favourite opening line/chapter to a book?

[Tanya]

Introductions can sometimes say a lot about a book, we have to admit that they can be quite influential.

What's your favourite opening line/opening chapter to a book?

[Edmund Andros]

Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get murdered. - The Yiddish Policemen's Union

A novel which I find egotistical, self-serving, poorly written, and dull.

[Dane]

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

I think it went something like that.

[Cassie]

"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."

I really love this book. Like a lot.

[Emily]

-Peter Pan: "All children, except one, grow up."

-Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

[Bhakti Patel]

my fav lines too

[Stephanie Hribar]

" Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood"
I was not expecting that when I opened the book. It was pretty hilarious.

[Max B]

"The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Neuromancer, William Gibson.

[Kadie - Anne Elizabeth Evans]

Opening lines:

"The early summer sky was the colour of cat vomit."
-Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

I'll be surpirsed if this one hasn't been mentioned.

"If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, the San Fernando Valey is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps big strechy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lipgloss in the rearview mirror, causing sis to scream. Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will poison her."
- I Was a Teenage Fairy by Francesca Lia Block

It goes on but I think I'll leave it there. I just think the opening to this book creates such an amazing image. I just love it.

Last Line

"Katniss, there is no district twelve."
- The Hunger Games, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Obviously 1984 as well, both the opening and closing lines.

[Kim]

I love Francesca Lia Block! :D It's been so long since I read her books. I never read I Was a Teenage Fairy though, is it as good as her other books?

[Mariami]

"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday"
It's from the stranger by albert camus.

one of my favorite books :))

[Probably Someone]

"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say. About anything."

- The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.

"There are only eight people in London and fortunately I am one of them."

- Between the Conceits by Will Self.

"I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother's house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. I feel it roaring inside me - this thing that may not have taken place. I don't even know what name to put on it. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones."

- The Gathering by Anne Enright.

[Fake Crowley]

"I stopped believing in God after I met him."