I'm on a listserv where someone sent out a link to a list of "best first lines" of novels. A few of us on the listserv noted that in some cases, lines were included because they were from great novels, not because they were great lines. (I might even take issue with the idea that some of those novels were great, but they certainly are all respected for one reason or another.)

As much as I thought several "best lines" were missing from the list, it was a great conversation starter. So, let's play! Before I go into a long list of best lines that should have been included from *my* favorite novels, let's start with just one author in particular. I've already played a similar game with Robert A. Heinlein. In fact, that had started with another essay I'd written about first lines in general (when a fellow writer posed the question of what a first line should accomplish).

Let's play "Best First Lines" with today's guest author, Stephen King. I've culled the list down to what I arbitrarily consider to be the "top twenty":

From Rage:

The morning I got it on was nice; a nice May morning.

From 'Salem's Lot:

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.

From The Shining:

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

From "Night Surf":

After the guy was dead and the smell of his burning flesh was on the air, we all went back down to the beach.

From "The Mangler":

Officer Hunton got to the laundry just as the ambulance was leaving -- slowly, with no sirens or flashing lights.

From "Trucks":

The guy's name was Snodgrass and I could see him getting ready to do something crazy.

From "The Ledge":

"Go on," Cressner said again. "Look in the bag."

From "The Lawnmower Man":

In previous years, Harold Parkette had always taken pride in his lawn.

From Cujo:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.

From "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption":

There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess -- I'm the guy who can get it for you.

From Christine:

This is the story of a lover's triangle, I suppose you'd say -- Arnie Cunningham, Leigh Cabot, and, of course, Christine.

From "The Mist":

This is what happened.

From It:

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years -- if it ever did end -- began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

From The Dark Tower:

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

From "Secret Window, Secret Garden":

"You stole my story," the man on the doorstep said.

From "The Library Police":

Everything, Sam Peebles decided later, was the fault of the goddamned acrobat.

From "Dolan's Cadillac":

I waited and watched for seven years.

From "The Doctor's Case":

I believe there was only one occasion upon which I actually solved a crime before my slightly fabulous friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

From "Why We're in Vietnam":

When someone dies, you think about the past.

From "L.T.'s Theory of Pets":

My friend L.T. hardly ever talks about how his wife disappeared, or how she's probably dead, just another victim of the axe man, but he likes to tell the story of how she walked out on him.

I love these lines because they do what a first line should do: make you want to read the second line.

The first lines above are listed roughly in chronological order (by the publication of the mass market paperbacks they appear in, and not necessarily the first appearance of the stories/novels).