seen some discussion of the best opening line in fiction recently and I'm sorry but the discussion is over. The honor belongs to C.S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

honorable mention to Tolkien's "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," of course

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@joshcarlosjosh I’m going to be controversial, but it’s not actually that good an opening line. The opening passage is excellent, but dry that line of its context (difficult to do I know) and it doesn’t compare to some others, particularly pratchett imo