Top Ten First Sentences

10. "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." The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger


9. "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath


8. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice" 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriell Garcia Marquez


7. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith


6. "Mr and Mrs Dursley of number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, JK Rowling


5. "Whomsoever could do the Most Incredible Thing was to have the hand of the king's daughter and half the kingdom" The Most Incredible Thing, Hans Christian Anderson


4. "Mother died today." The Stranger, Albert Camus


3. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy


2. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen


1. "For a long time I used to go to bed early." Swann's Way, Marcel Proust

Please feel free to add your own favorites in the comments! (if you exist...)