ONTD

Best line (imo) is
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Best book ever.

Mine too :)

No "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" are you freaking kidding me?

“I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me.”

Not techinically one sentence but;

"No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, *they* observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us."

You should! You wont regret it! :)

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.'

Not sure if this is accurate, sorry in advance if it isn't!
"I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support."
- Diary of Anne Frank

My sister's best friend is an amateur woodworker and made a gorgeous desk with the first lines of his favorite books on the top. He told me that he'd make me one as a wedding gift someday, so I've been keeping a little list of what I want. So far I have Harry Potter #1, I Capture the Castle, Rebecca, and Assassination Vacation.

"...bump, bump, bump...here is Edward Bear, coming down the stairs now on the back of his head. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it."

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

'The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Khao San Road.' The Beach

'When the phone rang I was in the kitchen, boiling a potful of spaghetti and whistling along with an FM broadcast of the overture to Rossini's The Thieving Magpie, which has to be the perfect music for cooking pasta.' The Wind Up Bird Chronicle

"My desert island, all time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order: 1) Alison Ashworth 2) Penny Hardwick 3) Jackie Allen 4) Charlie Nicholson 5) Sarah Kendrew."

"Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower-block? Of course I can explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower-block. I'm not a bloody idiot."

I love all but one of his books. So good.

“For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire." - Robert Penn Warren | All the Kings Men

Not an opening-line thing, but one of my favorite first paragraphs:

"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."

Personlly I quite like


Is it a masterpiece, no, but it sets the tone. And I just really like that the first words are actually THE END. :)