“A screaming comes across the sky.” - Gravity’s Rainbow : Thomas Pynchon
**Every Who down in whoville liked Christmas Alot, but the Grinch who lived just North of Whoville, did not. **
How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Best opening line of a book ever.
Thank you Ender! Was that from memory?
The first sentence of John Varley’s ‘Steel Beach’.
I can’t remember it verbatim, but it was something along the lines of ‘In five years the penis will be obsolete’.
Go up about 5 posts. 
Would that it was. I have various short story collections on my shelf and this was one of them.
Best opening line?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
It’s a very new book, so it’s hard to say if it qualifies as “best ever,” but the poem that open Clive Barker’s new novel Abarat sets the perfect tone for the book.
Follow that with the first sentence of the book itself…
Just beautiful. After that beginning, I was ready for anything.
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, by J. D. Salinger
I defy any to read that and instantly stop.
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
Norman Maclean A River Runs Through It
“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.”
–George Orwell, “1984”
“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
Looking through some of my favorite books, I fear that I will list the openings to them, not because they are particularly memorable, but simply as an excuse to call attention to them.
However, I know that these two do have very worth-while and famous openings that deserve mention (and I am surprised that the second has yet to be listed).
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.
Dune
Frank Herbert
“Who is John Galt?”
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand
“It was the best of times, it was the…blurst of times!!! Stupid monkeys!”
I’ll second bristlesage on the obviously memorable opening sentence being from 1984. But the particularly perfectly judged opening words are “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan …” Can’t remember the rest of the sentence offhand, yet that’s just the most wonderful mouthful of vowels.
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”
I’ll enthusiastically add another vote for Ulysses.
And lest we forget;
“It was a pleasure to burn.” - Farenheit 451
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.” – The Dark Tower Series: The Gunslinger
You know, Jurhael, I was just about to type a post about that very same opening.
“It’s hard to know where to start with this.” Kevin Brooks, Martyn Pig
From Blue Moon Rising, by Simon Green. One of my favorites.
Enjoy,
Steven