Favourite first lines from book?

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again ...”

‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.’

When I wake up the other side of the bed is cold..

"Dear Franklin,

I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you."

BlueSky that’s my favourite opening too.

Yes Rebecca for me too.

“Scarlett O’ Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realised it when caught by her beauty as the Tarleton twins were”.

Sorry, that doesn’t make sense!

“when caught by her charm….

Also 'When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow'.

See you the dimpled track that runs, all hollow through the wheat?

I was born on the .... or so I am told. Sorry can't remember the exact words.

I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone.

The first place that I can well remember…

Rebecca for me too

Mine is a paragraph rather than just a line. Not from a book I enjoyed or admired in any way, except for these lines which have been rattling around in my head for a great many years.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

"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..."

BlueSky

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again ...”

My DD got that line and part of the following story as her unseen passage to criticise in her A level English. She recognised it at once and did get a very good grade. You would have thought the examining board would have come up with something less well known.

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." Iain Banks, The Crow Road.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die.

When I was younger:
Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.
"It was Mrs. May who first told me about them."

And, rather poignantly now:
Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six.

The first line of Rebecca is wonderful.

Also ‘There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.’

And ‘Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself’

On the day that his grannie was killed by the English, Sir William Scott the Younger of Buccleuch was at Melrose Abbey, marrying his aunt.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
I'm also a fan of 'Rebecca'.

"Take my camel dear" said my aunt Dot as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

Something so quirky about this ?

"It is a truth universally acknowledged..."