[TANGENT] Of course, this was written back when digital watches had high power drain LEDs and when you wanted to see the time, you had to press a button, otherwise the screen was blank. If it was written today, it would probably be about the Apple Watch. (Of course, then again the Guide itself is an utterly unimpressive piece of tech today, other than the scope/update range of it’s info.) [/TANGENT]
He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd, in the circumstances. (This one did win an award for best opening line from EW.)
Voyager, Diana Gabaldon.
“On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen”
Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban
I hate it when authors write like this. It is so damn hard for me to read it.
I hear you. I had to read the book about three times before I was able to get everything. It’s an amazing book, though.
I would think it’s “Not Long Before the End”, but I could be wrong. 
Hey, I was going to mention that one.
Here’s a personal favorite:
“He doesn’t know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death…or else you will die another" Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit.”
“Dear Penthouse, you’ll never believe what happened to me.”
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt
-As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.
“You better not tell nobody but God.” - Alice Walker, The Color Purple.
“Msrley was dead to begin with, dead as a doornail.” - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Otherwise known as: why Christmas ghost stories became wildly popular in Victorian London.
“To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.”
Steinbeck, The Grapes Of Wrath.
John Steinbeck probably wrote more beautiful individual sentences than any other author I’ve read.
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
– Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
Yep, although I always called it “Not Long Before the End”. But most certainly Niven. The ending sentence is also great, but that is another thread…
Oh! Oh! Connie Willis, Lincoln’s Dreams: “I have picked up a nail.” Shivered me to the marrow, that did.
The trouble with a topic like that is (a) you need to have read the book to get the full flavor, and (b) it can be rather a spoiler for those who haven’t read it yet. The Willis line illustrates both.
Forgot to add: That quote was straight out of memory; no need to go look it up to check. Burned indelibly into the memory cells.
Six sentences, actually:
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Four shots ripped through my groin, and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life.
But first, let me tell you a little about me.
One of Max Shulman’s comic novels, the name of which I cannot remember.
One of the characters is teaching novel-writing to another, and emphasizes how important the opening sentence is.
I’m also a long time Hornblower fan.
But the first novel I ever read set in the age of sail still sticks in my memory, and the first sentence contains the promise of a good story:
Two sentences:
“They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.” - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
The changeling’s decision to steal a dragon and escape was born, though she did not know it then, the night the children met to plot the death of their supervisor.
Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows