For Marith, a list of ten, or something like it, favorite first lines of fiction:
1. “It was a dark and stormy night.” — A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L’Engle
2. “Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.” — Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery
3. “When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.” — The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
4. “I woke up in bed with a man and a cat.” — To Sail Beyond the Sunset, by Robert A. Heinlein
5. “Theo, by occupation, was a devil.” — Westmark, by Lloyd Alexander
6. “She wondered why she was afraid to go home.” — Black Sun Rising, by C.S. Friedman
7. “She could not remember a time when she had not known the story; she had grown up knowing it.” — The Hero and the Crown, by Robin McKinley
8. “She scowled at her glass of orange juice.” — The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley
9. “You’re Trent.” — The Long Run, by Daniel Keys Moran
10. “Nothing to do? Nowhere to go? Time hangs heavy? Bored? Depressed? Also badly scared? Casual factors beyond control?” — Emergence, by David Palmer
and one favorite *final* line:
1. “I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.” — Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Okay, I have to admit that The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword would be on my list. :)
I thought it was “first lines of favorite books” not “favorite first lines of books”. So maybe it’s good I didn’t post. :)
Hm, well, maybe it was, at that, Trip, in which case I should go do another list… :)
Belatedly amused to see ‘a dark and stormy night’ in this context, as I read somewhere it had ben voted the worst opening line ever. But that was by another author, if I can trust Google:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)