Lily Dooner's question got me thinking about great opening lines.
Phil Rogers quoted a cracker from JG Ballard. Excellent!
One of my favourites is JD Salinger's Catcher In The Rye:
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.
Orwell's 1984 is also mind boggling:
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Anyone else have any favourite opening lines?
'Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him'.
Graham Greene - Brighton Rock.
Many authors have took their inspiration from Greene's dramatic opening line
What about "It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen"? Orwell 1984.
I couldn't remember a good opening line so I flicked through some of my favourites. Many of them don't have inspiring first sentences (though the story itself makes up for it and, of course, the stories already quoted), until I found F.Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'.
'In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.'
A great opener and story.