Best opening line in a novel

Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." - The Trial

Timbo7 wrote:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Without that line, no other line means anything.

Without a doubt the winner. Though I doubt the poster realized he was reading a novel.

"The music-room at the Governor's house in Port Mahon, a tall, handsome, pillared octagon, was filled with the triumphant first movement of Locatelli's C major quartet."

I am Sam.

Sam I am.

"I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and tell you he's the one."

I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor...

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes."

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

Technically more than one line, but the opening of All the King's Men is pretty money:

You follow Highway 58, going north-east out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don't quit staring at that line and don't take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you'll hypnotize yourself and you'll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you'll try to jerk her back on but you can't because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you'll try to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive. But you won't make it, of course.

Little hint... If it takes you seven lines to write, it's probably not an OPENING LINE.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Simpler Yet wrote:

Little hint... If it takes you seven lines to write, it's probably not an OPENING LINE.

Looks like lines from multiple books. Third one from the bottom, about Genoa, is the opening line from War and Peace.

Through the shredded black clouds a fire moved like a dying star, falling back to earth - the earth, that is, of the Discworld- but unlike any star has ever done before, it sometimes managed to steer its fall, sometimes rising, sometimes twisting, but inevitably heading down.

- Terry Pratchett

Some good ones here!

"The day broke gray and dull."

So much of the novel is prefaced in that one, short line.

The Monkey's Paw wrote:

My cite was from the WWJacobs novel and that correctly is just

It was a dark and stormy night.

I thought you were referring to the Snoopy version.

"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."

The Monkey's Paw wrote:

Bar Fly wrote:

You are cutting it off. The full line for its true impact:

"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."

Your cite is the first usage but

My cite was from the WWJacobs novel and that correctly is just

It was a dark and stormy night.

I thought it was Snoopy's novel.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, and Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginning nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

“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.”

I'v always thought that was a good one.

"This is the most beautiful place on earth"

Giant Johnson wrote:

Round Table Knight wrote:

For me it's "Who is John Galt?"

Please explain why that is the best opening line of any novel.

How many opening lines of novels have bumper-stickers?