From Ngaio Marsh’s False Scent [1963 Fontana-HarperCollins ed., pp9-10):
"When she died it was as if all the love she had inspired in so many people suddenly blossomed. She had never, of course, realised how greatly she was loved, never known that she was to be carried by six young men who would ask to perform this last courtesy: to bear her on their strong shoulders, so gently and with such dedication.
{snipped two paragraphs of details.}
Miss Bellamy paused, bogged down in her own fantasy. Enjoyable tears started from her eyes. She often indulged herself with plans for her funeral and she never failed to be moved by them. The only catch was the indisputable fact that she wouldn’t live to enjoy it. She would be, as it were, cheated of her own obsequies and she felt there was some injustice in this."
The complete reversal of where I thought this passage was going – it was, after all, a detective novel – made me laugh out loud. On an airplane. The woman in the next seat asked me what was so funny.
These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feuds.
“Just before dawn one winter’s morning, New Year’s Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.”
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
Genesis 1.1
Other favorites would be David Copperfield, “To begin with, I was born…” and the afore mentioned Moby Dick
That was going to be mine when I opened this thread, nice to see somebody thinks like me…or perhaps it’s frightening I always found that line very clever, and in fact it was hearing the first line on some quiz show that made me first want to read that book.
My honorable mention goes to the succinct:
“It was a squat grey building of a mere 42 stories.”
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
I always found that line very clever, and in fact it was hearing the first line on some quiz show that made me first want to read that book.