The Best Opening Lines in Fiction

[@fallenangelz291]

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

[@myboatforacar]

"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." Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

[@ImCalebRosengard]

As I read it, I thought this has to be Terry Pr… oh never mind I stand corrected

[@doctormorbuis]

Shirley Jackson tee is on point. Jackson has the opening of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, too: My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

[@TheDanishGuyReviews]

I NEVER remember opening lines in novels, so Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is special to me because it's still with me: We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

[@julienakpillankford1609]

I love Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier! So glad you included it! ❤️❤️❤️

[@tonihammes33]

Me too! One of my favorites.

[@vos7619]

I barely see it mentioned anywhere, I feel validated seeing this comment, haha.

[@allisonfeatherson1659]

“The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen. The pit was full of bones and her hands were full of wires”. T. Kingfisher, from ‘Nettle and Bone’

[@samuelleask1132]

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” is one of my favourite sentences ever

[@Bonitolibro]

"I was not sorry when my brother died. Nor am I apologising for my callousness, as you may define it, my lack of feeling. For it is not that at all. I feel many things these days, much more than I was able to feel in the days when I was young and my brother died, and there are reasons for this more than the mere consequence of age.”-Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga My favourite beginning from these years reads :)ahh great beginning in books, what a great joy they are ❤

[@johnsmith8906]

"It was the day my grandmother exploded" from Iain Banks "The Crow Road" always sticks with me.

[@nl3064]

Oh yeah! Fantastic opening line. The opening for The Wasp Factory is also absolutely great.

[@the_eerie_faerie_tales]

I finally read Rebecca - just finished it last night and omg I get the hype.. so good!! I knew that ending was coming but still... 😭

[@josepherhardt164]

Yes, the opening to _Rebecca_ is chilling. Not sure quite why. Another that works for me is, "THIS is the forest primeval." Recently read the autobiography of a chicken-and-hot-dog vendor who used to work at Yankee Stadium. It began, "It was the breast of times, it was the wurst of times ..."

[@TomBrzezicki]

"Call me Ishmael."

[@groofay]

A recent favorite of mine is the first line of David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten: "Who was blowing on the nape of my neck?"

[@christinedugas3089]

So many great choices! One of my favourite opening lines is this one by Louise Erdrich in Tracks: "We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall." Such an evocative sentence, the beauty and silence of falling snow juxtaposed with mass death. And I will defend the opening line of Pride & Prejudice. Satirical aphorism at its finest, setting up both the opening scene and the novel as a whole beautifully.

[@mikedahuman]

Im Soo glad I found your channel, I've been getting back into reading a lot over the past few years and I got like 75% of my book Recommendations from you, just over the past few months of watching your backlog. Thank You!!

[@MountainShadow8]

I really enjoyed this video. I'm inspired to pick up each book around me and read the first lines. I will also start a first line section in my current book notebook. Thank you and Happy Halloween!

[@callmebibliophile]

Layla Martínez is actually from Spain, and Wormwood (Carcoma) is an amazing novella, you should definetely give it a try. It is setted in the Spanish countryside and explores themes as classism, poverty, machismo, Spanish fascism, the opressiveness of a small village..., it is trully a masterpeice.

[@ameliezonato7450]

💯 agree, it’s a contender for my favorite book of the year!

[@anthonybernacchi2732]

A selection of my favorites, many of them from children's books (and not all from books I've read yet): "The antique shop is very still now." -- Rachel Field, "Hitty, Her First Hundred Years" "The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse." -- Charles Williams, "War in Heaven" "On rocky islands gulls woke." -- Esther Forbes, "Johnny Tremain" "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (translated by Gregory Rabassa) "As soon as the snow melts, I will go to Rass and fetch my mother." -- Katherine Paterson, "Jacob Have I Loved" "On the last day of summer, ten hours before fall, my grandfather took me out to the Wall." -- Dr. Seuss, "The Butter Battle Book" "'Did Mama sing every day?' asked Caleb. 'Every-single-day?'" -- Patricia MacLachlan, "Sarah, Plain and Tall" "Nobody knew how the stories about the poison pills got started." -- Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, "Lost Moon" (aka "Apollo 13") Five by Madeleine L'Engle: "It was a dark and stormy night." -- "A Wrinkle in Time" "'There are dragons in the twins' vegetable garden.'" -- "A Wind in the Door" "A sudden snow shower put an end to hockey practice." -- "Many Waters" "A heavy summer fog enveloped Kennedy International." -- "The Arm of the Starfish" "I first saw him at the funeral." -- "A Ring of Endless Light" And the greatest opening line of all time: "'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast." -- E. B. White, "Charlotte's Web"

[@ReadingNymph]

I relate to loving being in the city 😅 but I do also adore A Psalm for the Wild-built. Such a wonderful book

[@Georgia-e23]

I love the opening of Rebecca and I’d recommend to others who love that book to read Vera by Elizabeth Von Arnim. It’s believed that Daphne du Maurier was inspired by that earlier book for the plot of Rebecca (and I have to say that I firmly agree, even though the plots take very different directions!) it’s equally dark but in a different way as the husband is an abusive narcissist

[@jaydee4697]

"The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth, like an inefficient assassin." Terry Pratchett, 'Wyrd Sisters'.

[@Kat-iv1pv]

One of my favourite opening lines from a book i read recently has to be: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” - The Go Between by L P Hartley

[@salindrab4493]

Love the opening lines of Rebecca and The Hobbit as well as the following: Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

[@teaonarainyday5497]

"This fairy tale begins in 1968 during a garbage strike." - Victor LaValle's The Changelling. The opening paragraph builds on the juxtaposition and is just chef's kiss. The opening line of All System's Red is also one of my favourites. Unrelated, but excellent taste in mugs!

[@orkosubmarine]

the tiny insert about your upstairs neighbor 🤣🤣

[@ImCalebRosengard]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

[@richardhoward7503]

It was the best of times; it was the blurst of times?

[@luckynumberme3188]

also omg I did NOT expect the Mitchell and Webb jumpscare 🤣

[@WillowTalksBooks]

Hahaha nobody got the reference so I had to just shoehorn it in!

[@kevinmarques7716]

One of my favorite opening lines is from Red Sister by Mark Lawrence: "It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size."

[@josepherhardt164]

Red ants or black?

[@tillysshelf]

Totally agree about The Milkman. I read it a while after it came out and that sentence just pulled me in completely, it's a tantalising glimpse of what's to come. I disagree about Pride and Prejudice - it does work, like the other lines you mention, to set up the themes and the tone of the story as well as hinting at the humour and social commentary. It's also very memorable.

[@GentleReader01]

Sooo many great choices. A couple favorites of mine… Clive Barker, Weaveworld. The first sentence is great on its own, but the rest of the passage is also great: Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator’s voice recedes, the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making. Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys. Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes fact and fiction, mind and matter, woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world. Thomas Ligotti, “The Crown Puppet”: It has always seemed to me that my existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense.

[@andygilly14]

I love how Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees opens: "Once upon a memory, at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea, there lay an island so beautiful and blue that the many travellers, pilgrims, crusaders and merchants who fell in love with it either wanted never to leave or tried to tow it with hemp ropes all the way back to their own countries."

[@beththebookworm]

Some great opening lines here. I'm partial to the openings to The Stranger and Anna Karenina. And, Willow, you just reminded me that Milkman is still on my TBR.

[@luckynumberme3188]

One of my all time favorites is from Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey "The Crowder House clung to the soil the way damp air clings to hot skin"

[@LiteraryStoner]

I love Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House!

[@aritrachoudhuri6716]

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the river bank, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?" Ik the actual opening image of Alice in the Wonderland is much later and I was kinda underwhelmed by this line But after looking back I absolutely love this line as well . This line is plane , simple and doesn't draw to much attention other than Alice's 2 personality traits , she gets easily bored and is really curious. Not to mention the simplicity of the sentence and the fast pace also sets you up for the prose of Alice in the Wonderland

[@josepherhardt164]

I remember that the very first book I read that was actually a book in text, as opposed to comic books or illustrated books, was a Hardy Boys volume.

[@amaliazeichnerin]

Here are two of my favourite first sentences ever in a story: „As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.“ (Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis) As mentioned in you video: „It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.“ (Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice) The second one has been adapted in „Pride and Prejudice and Zombies“ by Seth Grahame-Smith as: „It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.“ And I took the liberty to take this first sentence by Jane Austen and adapt it for one of my queer romance novels called „Regency Park“ (which I published only in German): „It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unemployed actor must be in want of a job.“

[@josepherhardt164]

From memory: "Gregor Samsa erwachte eines Morgens und erfand dass er in einem ungeheuren Untier verwandelt worden war."

[@ericneff9908]

Great picks! Honorable mentions (IMHO) to Anna Karenina and Seveneves (Neal Stephenson).

[@nanimaonovi2528]

"The moon blew up with no warning and for no apparent reason" Seveneves is one of my faves.

[@nanimaonovi2528]

"I lost an arm on my last trip home" from Kindred. "Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her parent's house, where she washed the same pink-and-yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow and played with the same small and amiable dog." Any guesses who wrote that one?

[@michellefields3351]

I’ve always loved that one. Valante is so quotable in that series.

[@jamesbest9038]

I love that shirt!

[@max-reads]

"I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm." Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (historical time travel) "If you read nothing else we’ve sent home, please at least read this." Becky Chamber’s To Be Taught, If Fortunate (epistolary sci-fi)

[@WillowTalksBooks]

Both outstanding works of fiction

[@johnmichaelcule8423]

I have a list of first (and last) lines from SF and Fantasy I used at an SF con quiz a while back. Neither of these are great books but they are great opening (and closing) lines. John M. Ford's HOW MUCH FOR JUST THE PLANET is a Star Trek novel (and a Trek Musical years before STRANGE NEW WORLDS did it) starts like this: CHAPTER ONE: IN SPACE NO-ONE CAN FRY AN EGG The officers mess of the USS ENTERPRISE was a small, rather cozy room, with comfortable chairs, moderately bright lighting, and a food-service wall, with four delivery slots, no waiting. This morning, two officers entered the room, dropped briefing folders marked TOP SECRET onto the table and approached the service wall. "I don't know, Scotty," said Captain James. T.Kirk, with an offhand gesture toward the secret documents. "Maybe it's just the idea of an inflatable rubber starship that bothers me." And LADY SLINGS THE BLUES by Spider Robinson starts: It was noon before they finished scraping Uncle Louie off the dining room table. And it ends: "Was it necessary," asked the judge, "to bring this entire lake into evidence?"

[@tirarosaurioreads]

I'm so excited you included "The Haunting of Hill House"

[@futoijosei]

I think my favorite is from Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Saenz. "Some people have dogs. Not me. I have a therapist. His name is Adam." It's amazing but trigger warning it can be devastating since it deals with pretty severe trauma.

[@badger-1984]

I've had a copy of Pachinko for ages and hearing that opening line makes me regret that I haven't got round to reading it yet

[@Sue-xt6ne]

A couple form Franz Kafka. The Trial: "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning."; Metamorphosis: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.". And I have to defend P&P: that opener is clever, witty, playfully tongue-in-cheek, and perfectly sets out the book's interests.

[@bobbykeniston7240]

So many great opening lines here! For some reason, this opening line always stuck with me: "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice---" from "A Prayer For Owen Meany" by John Irving. The quote goes on, but it is those 11 words that stick with me. Also, Vonnegut's, "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time" from "Slaughterhouse Five or The Children's Crusade" is one I find endlessly intriguing. The opening line from "Breasts and Eggs" as mentioned in the video is excellent and one of my favorites, as well as the opening line of "Rebecca".

[@VwieValentina]

"By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton's narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive." Babel by RF Kuang

[@jamesbest9038]

My two favs: "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." And "A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Maud'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time: born in the 57th year of the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV. And take the most special care that you locate Maud'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact that he was born on Caladan and lived his first fifteen years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place."

[@eglantineluna]

“Jonna had the happy ability to wake up every morning as if to a new life, opening before her clean and unspent right through to evening, rarely shadowed by yesterday’s worries and mistakes.” From “Fair Play” by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal

[@sarahfath6780]

'"When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing."' Geek Love by Katherine Dunn has been by far my best read of the year, and I'm still chewing on those perfectly crafted sentences.

[@jamesbest9038]

Also! "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,"

[@ThePsycoDolphin]

"As far back as I remember, I've had hemorroids" - Wetlands by Charlotte Roche Legitimately strong enough for me to buy the whole book on this basis.

[@literarylove123]

The Haunting of Hill House. Yes.

[@micaelagonzalez71]

"My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted" (On the Jellicoe Road) made me go "wtf am I about to read?" And this is cheating because there's a whole prologue before it (and it's not particularly striking when you read the story for the first time), but it warms my heart and fills it with sadness every time and I think about it often: "The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispiness that hinted at the end of Summer" (A Game of Thrones).

[@phoebegee54]

What about the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs " it works because that's all you know about the Rosenbergs.

[@WillowTalksBooks]

Watch until the end

[@phoebegee54]

​@WillowTalksBooks ah, my bad

[@GentleReader01]

Her original audience would know that she was referring to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed for spying for the Soviet Union, and that therefore the events happened in 1953. But it hasn’t been then in a while now.

[@phoebegee54]

@@GentleReader01 didn't know this, thanks

[@GentleReader01]

@@phoebegee54 Glad to fill in the gap!

[@peachesnscream]

two for your consideration: firstly The Forester's Daughter by Claire Keegan. "Deegan, the forester, is not the type of man to remember his children's birthdays, least likely that of his youngest, who bears a strong, witch-like resemblance to her mother." and second, Bluebeard's Castle by Anna Biller. "Some husbands are pussycats, some are dullards or harmless rogues, and some are Bluebeards. Judith still wasn't sure which type she'd married. But she wasn't taking any chances so she decided to run away."

[@ImCalebRosengard]

Also, “The robber is a loser”, I am the Messenger, by Markus Zuzak, literally opens the story in the middle of a bank robbery

[@LivingDeadEnby]

My three favourite opening lines are: "I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles" (Inverted World by Christopher Priest) "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." (Seveneves by Neal Stephenson) "It was the day my grandmother exploded" (The Crow Road by Iain Banks)

[@rotbun428]

“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.”

[@marcellaraiconi1643]

“124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old-as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more" ( Beloved, Toni Morrison). I aways think about this when I think of a great opening 😊

[@cautionwetfloor2779]

"Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell" normal people Sally Rooney. Simple and clever

[@michellewayne]

I love being able to tell by the first punch if It will worth the fight. I am obsessed with first lines. “I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it.” - The Grownup by Gillian Flynn "Classical music makes me hard." - Instrumental by James Rhodes. (This one made me laugh the first time, then I read the book). “It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." (I know I'm cheating here, but I'm biased) - The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” ― Neuromancer by William Gibson. "Ash fell from the sky." ― Mistborn Brandon Sanderson. I could keep going, honestly.

[@the_almightyone]

In literature, my favourite opening line is probably "A specter is haunting Europe-the specter of Communism.", but in fiction it might be "‘I was there,’ he would say afterwards, until afterwards became a time quite devoid of laughter. ‘I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor.’ It was a delicious conceit, and his comrades would chuckle at the sheer treason of it." because it really sets the comedic but dark tone, and starts the novel off with the blatant foreshadowing present throughout

[@ttowntrekker5174]

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Daphne du Maurier Rebecca

[@WillowTalksBooks]

Yes. It’s in the video’s thumbnail…

[@M.elissa.M]

🖤📚

[@StephenSinclair-d6n]

"His name was Wandering Oscar and he was a skeleton..."

[@EvieM1]

They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days. Not any more though." My Cousin Rachel

[@idkanymore790]

1:07 was it Tarrare? Please don't tell me it was Tarrare.

[@TheDanishGuyReviews]

Baby back ribs are back on the menu!