To you, which book has the best first line?

Yours belongs to Ayn Rand's Anthem, I think.

I would have to say my favorite opening line is, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." ----Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. The entire novel comes directly from this line. It has to be the best quote for the novel - I just love it.

"It was a dark and stormy night." A wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle

I always loved that this was so cliche and it always sticks with me. I think other books also have started with this but it will always be this book for me.

There are others of course that are fantastic beginnings...but this is the only one that comes to me so it must be my favorite!

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

-Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

That one sentence fuels her entire novella and is compact with so much meaning. Once you read the novella, you can go back and find how this one sentence plays a large part.

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."

--from 'Their Eyes Were Watching God'

and,

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

--from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. "

"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."

Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities"

FYI:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html

is that frankenstein?

and my fave first line is "it was the best or times, it was the worse of times... ect"