Opening Lines

I like to judge a book by its cover. I also like for an opening line of a book to grab me and pull me into the book.

So I made a list of my top ten favorite opening lines of a book. While I could have opened every book I read and reflected on its first line, instead I listed the ones I really remembered or liked a lot.


My favorite opening lines going from 10 to 1

10. "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
9. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." ~The Hobbit, JRR Tolkein
8. "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, Jane Austen
7. "The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." ~The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams

6. "Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity." ~Elantris, Brandon Sanderson

5. "In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" ~The Bible, God

4. "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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way-in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." ~A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

3. "The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."~Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan

2. "What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And Brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me." ~Love Story, Erich Segal

1. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” The Gunslinger by Stephen King

I'd love to make a list of my favorite quotations from books but it is impossible to remember all of these. I do really like the Litany Against Fear and sometimes say it in my head when I am afraid (like when I go down to the basement) 

75 points on quiddler today