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"I am the vampire Lestat. I'm immortal. More or less."
-The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice

Oh, back when the ARVC were good... *fangirly nostalgia* It's such a perfect opening line for Lestat. He's pretentious, dramatic, and sort of sloppy and random all at the same time. And... weird, basically.

Also, Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede:

"Chapter One: In Which Cimorene Refuses to be Proper and has a Conversation with a Frog."

I figure a chapter title like that might as well count as a line.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

Because you just know it's going somewhere weird; the book cover's got a kid on a broomstick on it. And if you need that line ID'd, get off my journal.

Apparently I'm rather fond of opening lines with description rather than action. Dealing With Dragons' first opening line proper begins "Linderwall was a small kingdom, just east of the Mountains of Morning, where philosophers were highly respected and number five was fashionable..." and I can still remember the voice on the book on tape the first time I ever heard that read in Pam's car in second grade. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," which should be obvious, and the first line of Hitchhiker's Guide, which is something about the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the galaxy in which there lies a small unregarded yellow sun. And I think one of the other books in the series starts off with the brilliant line about how in the beginning the universe was created and how this made a lot of people very angry and has generally been regarded as a bad move, although I could be wrong and that could just be a chapter beginning. I need to reread those books. Also, I think I totally missed Towel Day this year.

At the moment, I can't remember any film opening lines at all except "I amar prestar aen," because I'm a dork and went to a particular effort to learn all the Elvish in that movie a few years ago; "Who's this? That's not my father" from Death at a Funeral because I watched it on Friday (it is a brilliant opening, though), and "I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me" from The Departed, which I actually find to be kind of an annoying speech, because I watched it last night. But this all has less to do with things being "gripping" than with me having an awful memory.

I think the first lines to Heathers are "Your turn, Heather." "No, Heather, it's Heather's turn." I really hope I don't have to explain why this is amusing.