Top Ten First Lines (or The Beauty of a First Line)

As an avid reader of fiction, I find that I put a lot of stock in the first line (or lines) of a work. I realize that, in the same way that one cannot (or should not) judge the contents of a book by its cover, the first line does not always make or break a story. However, it has been my experience that works with incredibly intriguing first lines have not normally disappointed me. What makes a great first line is difficult to define and, in any case, I would be woefully inadequate and rather presumptuous to offer such a definition. I will say that it does not necessarily have to be shocking. There simply needs to be some tacit experience in the first line that cries out to the reader: "Read on!" Thus, it may be that different people connect with different lines, and any list given would certainly be subjective.

With these qualifications (and with a further one that my reading experiences are likely too limited to even attempt such a list), I offer you, in my opinion, the ten greatest first lines in works of literature. (A note to the reader: I have excluded from the list Scriptural quotations because Scripture, while a narrative, is certainly not literature in the same sense as the following works of fiction. But be it known that there shall never be a better first line than: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.")

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10. "It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet." -James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

9. "When in April the sweet showers fall / And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all / The veins are bathed in liquor of such power / As brings about the engendering of a flower." -Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. (from Middle English) Nevill Coghill

8. "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." -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

7. "When I had journeyed half of our life's way, / I found myself within a shadowed forest, / for I had lost the path that does not stray." Dante, Inferno, trans. Allen Mandelbaum

6. "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany." -John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

5. "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing." -Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

4. "Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. /From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; / Whole misadventured piteous overthrows / Do with their death bury their parents' strife. / The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, / And the continuance of their parents' rage, / Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, / Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; / The which if you with patient ears attend, / What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend." -William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

3. "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." -Frank Kafka, The Metamorphosis

2. “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–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

1. "It was a pleasure to burn." -Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

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Please feel free to balk, criticize, (perhaps) agree, and add your own favorites to the list.