Thread: Best opening lines?

I ran across a list of the top 100 opening lines of all time here: Best First Lines of Novels — Infoplease.com Rather than argue with their selections, I'd like to talk about opening lines they missed entirely.
(OK, I can't help myself. "Call me Ishmael' is a ridiculous choice for inclusion, to say nothing of making it No. 1. Whatever you think of the book, the line itself is nothing remarkable.)

I don't remember another opening line that made me immediately aware that I would not be putting this book down anytime soon:

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

A couple more:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.

The telephone was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

While probably not top 100,
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
is pretty cool.

I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky "Notes from Underground"-1864

Read more: Best First Lines of Novels — Infoplease.com Best First Lines of Novels — Infoplease.com

His strong manly hands probed every crevice of her silken femininity, their undulating bodies writhing in sensual rhythm, as he thrust his purple-headed warrior into her quivering mound of love pudding.

Originally Posted by BIG JOE

His strong manly hands probed every crevice of her silken femininity, their undulating bodies writhing in sensual rhythm, as he thrust his purple-headed warrior into her quivering mound of love pudding.

You win.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away

And this sentence is to lengthen my post by at least one characters (sic).

Here a couple of my favorites not on their list.

"Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported-hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor." ( Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream)


"It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman--madder than the man I shot in his cell at the Arkham Sanitarium. Later some of my readers will wiegh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of that horror--that thing on the doorstep." (H. P. Lovecraft - The Thing on the Doorstep)

"All this happened, more or less."

50 Best Movie Closing Lines| TotalFilm.com