A personal favourite
[quote]It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers[/quote]
Any more one-sentence entries?
Any more one-sentence entries?[/quote]
Heh. I had to look up catamite… 
“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
Orwell, 1984
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a slngle man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Two that always stayed with me…
Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word…
(gasping for air)
…it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou has been instructed.
(There, if THAT doesn’t “arrest” the reader I don’t know what will!
Dear Jesus,
Just STORY openings please. But if you deem, as I do, the bible a splendid work of fiction, we’ll save you from the cross.
interesting thread. [glad to see it was finally moved from the Culture and History section to the BOoks and FIlm section.]
I love that story.
“A screaming comes across the sky.” – Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon.
But I like the second sentence even better:
“It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”
Charles Dickens
“Tale of Two Cities”
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only.
[quote=“Alien”]Charles Dickens
“Tale of Two Cities”
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,
we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its
being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree
of comparison only.[/quote]
Doh! I was going to write that. One of favorites of all time. Alrighty then. try this one, its a classic.
“It was a dark and stormy night…”
Snoopy
[quote=“chodofu”]“It was a dark and stormy night…”
Snopy[/quote]
I believe that was a joke used by Schultz, referencing this classic of bad writing:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
He even has bad fiction contests named after him 
Well done daasgirl. I was looking for the original that inspired Schultz. hhad to settle for the next best thing.
Chou
I’m a big fan of Andre Gide, so my personal favorite opening is from his book called the Immoralist.
“My dear friends, I knew you were faithful. At my request you came to me at once just as I should have come to you. Yet it is three years since you have seen me. May your friendship, so resistant to absence, resist as well the accounting I am about to make. For if I summoned you abruptly and made you travel to the out-of-the-way place where I live, it was solely that I might see you, that you might hear me. That is all the help I need: to speak to you. For I am at a moment in my life past which I can no longer see my way. Yet this is not exhaustion. The point is, I no longer understand. I need… I need to speak, I tell you. The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task. – Let me talk about myself; I shall tell you my life, simply, without modesty and without pride, more simply than if I were speaking to myself. Listen to me:”
[quote]
[quote=“sandman”][quote]
[quote=“daasgrrl”][quote=“chodofu”]“It was a dark and stormy night…”
Snopy[/quote]
I believe that was a joke used by Schultz, referencing this classic of bad writing:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
–Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
He even has bad fiction contests named after him [/quote]
Another Bad Writing Contest:
Barbara Hodgson, The Sensualist
How can you NOT continue reading after that?
[/quote]
Sandman, perhaps a touch of this earlier work in that: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
Yes, Cranky, that’s probably the most arresting of them all.
Yes, Cranky, that’s probably the most arresting of them all.[/quote]
Or perhaps not:
Der Prozess