It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ... – Tale of Two Cities
Mother died today, or perhaps it was yesterday. – The Stranger

Here is a first line that I knew, but I had to do a Web search to find which Russian novel it is from. All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in a different way Anna Karenina

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” The Gunslinger by Stephen King.

@LostInParadise Beat me to the Tale of Two Cities.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.” The Great Gatsby

“Call me Ishmael”. Moby Dick. Now I need a nap. It bores me to sleep just remembering it.

@canidmajor I surprised myself by loving Moby Dick. Not so much the spiritual parts, but the whaling descriptions.

“Hier fängt die Geschichte an.”; “This is where the story begins.” That’s from a book called “The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books”. I first read it when I was thirteen. It’s a great and wacky fantasy adventure about the power of books.

I’m surprised to realize that I can’t recall any other first or last lines. And everyone always claims those are so important for authors to get right.

In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. Can’t quite remember what book that was….(joking) lol

“A screaming comes across the sky.” Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

A Tale of Two Cities is the only one that came to mind. From 1984, and I think because the lecture on it discussed those lines and how famous they became.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of large fortune coming into a neighborhood must be in want of a wife.” I may be a few words off but that is approximately the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice.

Dera Reader, we lived happily ever after. -Jane Eyre (I’m sure this is wrong but the jist.)

Reader, I married him.

“A man can stand up…” -Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

I remember this one from 8th grade.

“Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet” -The Dead by James Joyce

I remember this one because of Joyce’s non-literal use of “literally”, indicating that this usage goes back far longer than many people think.

The end. (Sorry.)

Last night I dreamed of Manderley.

I have remembered these words, incorrectly it seems, for about 15 years. I don’t remember the last words. They are from Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca”.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” are the actual opening words.

It was hot in New York, the summer they burned the Rosenbergs.

Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”

“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Mrs Dalloway

What would be a really fun game would be if we just gave the quote and people had to guess without looking it up what book it was.

It was a dark and stormy night. – Bulwer-Lytton

@flutherother, finally! I was expecting that one as an early entry. Did you happen to read my tags?

Here’s another one I expected: “It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known.” That’s Sydney Carton at the end of A Tale of Two Cities. I’ve held that one in memory for something like sixty years.

@flutherother I should’ve thought of Rebecca. :P That might be my favorite opening line.

@Jeruba I didn’t notice the tag until you mentioned it.

My favorite opening line is from a book that I have to look at. I’ll look tonight and post it.

Doesn’t have to be your favorite, @Hawaii_Jake, although I’m interested to know what that is. It just has to be one you remember verbatim, or close to it.

Another one, for me, is “Marley was dead, to begin with.”—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Yes. Genesis.

In the beginning….

@flutherother I loved, and have read multiple times, both Rebecca and Mrs. DeWinter (the sequel written by Susan Hill).

“Lightning sought our mother out, when she was a young girl in Brown County, Indiana.”

Winner of the National Book Award
By Jincy Willett

(That’s the title of the book and not a description of receiving an award.)

I simply love that opening sentence, and the rest of the book is good.

1)
@LostInParadise It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ... – Tale of Two Cities

That was my first thought.

2)
The second was “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

3)
I can’t remember it verbatim, but I know Kafka’s The Metamorphosis begins with Gregor Samsa aware that he has awoken as a bug.

@Call_Me_Jay, it was something like this, right? “Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams to find that he had been transformed into an enormous insect.” Translations vary, but that’s the gist of them. The disturbing dreams seem to be part of what happens to him, but we never find out what they were.

I thought it was, “Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find out he had been turned into a large cockroach.” I don’t remember the dreams part bu I haven’t read it in a long time.

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.” Opening AND ending line for SE Hinton’s teen novel “The Outsiders”. I know it because I taught it in class for ages. We even did a dress up day for it a couple times and if I heard those lines once, I heard them a thousand times.

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.

Madeline.

I’m pretty sure that was the first sentence.

I’ve known that sentence for 50 years.

“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a pleasure to see things blacken and change.” -Fahrenheit 451

“A…”

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” – Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

@JLeslie
“In two straight lines they broke their bread
And brushed their teeth and went to bed.”

You had it right. I loved that one too. Remember the rabbit on the ceiling?

I don’t remember the rabbit. I’ll have to look at the books again. I think my mom loved Madeline books even more than me. I’m betting my grandmother read the books to my mother, I’ll have to ask her.

Weren’t there Madeline dolls too? I never had one, but I can picture the doll.

It was a warm dreamy afternoon and Alice’s elder sister was reading a dull book with no conversations or pictures in it when Alice saw something surprising.

Quite a famous introduction. I have paraphrased it and I missed out what surprised Alice but I’m sure you can guess what it was. The words themselves aren’t so memorable but the picture they conjure up is unforgettable.