Opening Sentences

"A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead."  - The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The most important part of a book is its opening sentence. It must draw the reader in It can be mysterious or humorous. For example, "She took a walk in the park," is not a good opening sentence. The reader must be enthralled so that they continue reading. I have selected some good opening sentences as examples.


1) "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."
      - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


2) "I am an invisible man."
      - Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison


3) "It was a pleasure to burn."
      - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury


4) "He woke, and remembered dying."
     - The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod


5) "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
      - The Crow Road by Iain Banks


6) "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possesion of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
       - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is an example of how not to write an opening sentence!
     "Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen."       
        - Double or Nothing by Raymond Federman