14. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953)
"It was a pleasure to burn." Where I come from, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is required reading sometime between elementary school and high school. Set in a strange dystopia where books are highly illegal, 451 follows "fireman" Guy Montag as he slowly realizes his profession of destroying books is counterintuitive to his moral codes. In setting, tone, and message the book is certainly Orwellian, and in fact the opening line uses a kind of reverse-1984 tactic. Instead of ending with something as weighty as "He loved Big Brother", Bradbury starts in Guy's addled brain and tries to bring him the other way. The line is succinct and agreeable, and even became the title of Bradbury's published notes on the novel, 2010's A Pleasure to Burn.
13. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." Nabokov was a master of the English language and, like Tolkein, was more than familiar with other languages as well - his first nine novels were in Russian. Lolita, narrated by a schoolteacher named Humbert Humbert who becomes infatuated with the title character, was written in English, and the first line - brief as it is - displays a deep knowledge of the language. The alliteration alone is formidable, enough to make Alexander Pope smile, and the singsongy progression of the entire opening paragraph makes clear how complete this infatuation is that Humbert has with Little Lo-Lee-Ta.
12. Bullet Park, John Cheever (1969)
"Paint me a small railroad station then, ten minutes before dark." Cheever's commanding tone at the opening of his 1969 novel Bullet Park sets the stage for the rest of the book to follow. Much like Cormac McCarthy's "See the child" (entry #23), the reader is immediately arrested by the narrator before any indication is given as to who the narrator is, who the players are, or what we are about to witness. There is a sense that the reader is being told to tell the story, a sense that the roles are begging to be reversed from the traditional and spun into the surreal. Bullet Park doesn't approach any kind of postmodernist or surreal bent, but it does demand the attention of the reader to such a degree that his other novels do not.