What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line? – BTT

I don’t know if I have liked some books specifically because of their first line. Though, like most readers, I like a good first line. Looking back on some first lines, I like the lines more in memory of the fact I liked the books. I pretty

Here are some that I like :

“Happy families are all alike, and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don’t mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultraslow trickle.” – Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” – Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“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

“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

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” – Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca.

“All this happened, more or less.” – Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

To be fair, I only added books I have read. I would add Tale of Two Cities but I have yet to get to it.