What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?

I don’t know that I have a favourite first sentence, but I have a couple good stories.

The first anecdote is about Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series. When my boyfriend first wanted me the read the books, he gave me the second one and I started with that, stopping every few pages to ask him questions. He said he didn’t think I should start with the first one because it was a bit boring and he hated one of the first sentences: “It was an odd-looking vine.”

The second anecdote is about a book I recently finished called Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. She’s a great writer and this is a terrific book for a psychological viewpoint into a mother-daughter relationship gone wrong. The first line of the book is: “When it came down to it, killing my mother wasn’t that hard.”