I stole this idea. But I like it a lot. So here are some of my favorite first lines. I’m not going to repeat any of the ones that have already been used.
"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle, everyone said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen."
"It was a pleasure to burn."
"I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before."
"Matrimony was ordained, thirdly,’ said Jane Studdock to herself, ‘for mutual society, help, and comfort that the one ought to have of the other.’
"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 cascades, 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."
"The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon."
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 