I think Jeffrey Eugenides beginning to Middlesex deserves a nod. . ."I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in December of 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan in August of 1974.

"I shall not say why and how I bacame, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven. Whether it was love, or the severity of my own father, the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble Lord, which induced me to leave my paternal roof and place myself under his protection, does not now much signify; or if it does, I am not in the humour to gratify curiosity in this matter."

- Harriette Wilson's Memoirs: The Greatest Courtesan of her Age by Lesley Branch, editor

"In the crypt of the abbey church at Hallowdene, the monks were boiling their bishop."

"It was a dark and stormy night…." from the unfinished and I guess it won’t ever be finished Snoopy ‘s novel

But until today I haven’t known this line was a real one written by the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford", shame on me , never heard of him nor of his novel

A funny opening is from Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia by Tony Horwitz , who happens to be Geraldine Brooks’ husband

Some men follow their dreams, some their instincts, some the beat of a private drummer. I had a habit of following my wife.

grelobe

Here's the first line from the top book on my nightstand:

"I believe that what separates humanity from everything else in this world--spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss and Mount McKinley--is that humanity alone has the capacity at any given moment to commit all possible sins."

Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland

I love first lines. Here is the first line of the book I'm rereading after many, many years:

"I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before."

John Knowles' A Separate Peace

Opening lines from one of my favorite Du Maurier novels: "My Cousin Rachel."

Now great "openings" are a different matter. They may take several lines or even paragraphs to draw the reader in.

To me, a great opening "line" is one that surprises, amuses or intrigues. They get me interested and then it's the author's job to keep me interested. Some of my favorites:

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin."
- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

"The magician's underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami." Tom Robbin: Another Roadside Attraction

"Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe." Christopher Moore The Stupidest Angel.

And one more Christopher Moore, from The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove "As dead people went, Bess leander smelled pretty good."

"I was an a**hole in 1984."

I may have the year wrong, and the word was spelled without asterisks. The book is described on the cover as "an outrageously funny novel." I picked it up one day while browsing at the library. It was outrageously funny, though not scatological as the opening line suggests it may be.