Novel openings need to be first quality

like Tolstoy's famous first sentence in Anna Karenina ("Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way")
from here


Source
From Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler: Once upon a time there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
From The Call of the Wild by Jack London Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, string of muscle and with warm long hair from Pugent Sound to San Diago.
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky submitted by Nick Roumel I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious).

A Tail of Two Cities by Charles Dickens submitted by Andrew Campbel It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was an age of wisdom, it was an age of foolishness, it was an epoch of belief, it was an epoch of incredulity, it was a season of Light, it was a season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair . . .

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie submitted by Jim Richwalsky All children, except one, grow.


and i saved the best for last
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson submitted by Alexa New "Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women