What's Your Opening Line? Challenge

First Lines have long been a passion of mine (The Mom). Last night as I began a new book --one that The Dad has been urging me to read for ages (see: What are You Reading RIGHT NOW! for more) I was sleepy, very sleepy --but the opening line hooked me. And I stayed up way too late, enjoying my new book.

Some first lines are so good, so catchy, so memorable that we never forget them, they even become a points of reference on Literature's permanent landscape. Think about it --we bet one comes to mind. 

Give your self a quick test --do you recognize these opening lines? Click on comments to check your answers.

1. “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”
2. “The play – for Which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper – was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.”
3. “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."
4. "A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news."
5. “Not every 13-year-old girl is accused of murder, brought to trial, and found guilty.”
6. “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
7. "At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin."

One LONG opening line!

From The Big Sister:

1. "Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof." (THAT IS ONE SENTENCE!!!)
2. "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
3. "'Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."
4. "That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me."
5. "Tamisin Warner saw real goblins the Halloween she was eleven."
6. "It was a dark and stormy night."
7. "This story begins within the walls of a castle, with the birth of a mouse."

Your challenge this week: give us a good opening line. 

One from memory, search out opening lines on the internet (there are lots of great lists), go to your bookshelf and pull a favorite. 

Whichever way you choose, What's Your Opening Line? And can you guess the first line others have added?