This may be my new favorite first line...

A quirky memoir from the '70s crossed my path this winter, written by H.H. the Honourable Sylvia Lady Brooke, Ranee of Sarawak. It had the most astonishing first line I've ever read:

"I do not like facts, and dates appall me."

What better invitation, what stronger enticement?  As you can imagine, the rest of the book is similarly, and  deliciously, nervy.  Here's how she starts chapter 1:

"I was born at Number One, Tilney Street, Park Lane, London, on 25 February, 1885. There was nothing momentous about my arrival into the world. Only my mother's wire-haired terrier, Griz, was violently sick when she first caught sight of me.  I was that sort of a baby and she was that kind of a bitch!"

Wow. I love it.

When it comes to favorite first lines, Lady Sylvia has some stiff competition (John McPhee comes to mind). But I don't think she would have cared in the slightest.  Her memoir somehow manages to be genuinely self-deprecating and aggressively confident at the same time.  Witness the comment that follows her discussion of her august parents:

"What incredible children should have been born from such a union, instead of the disappointing brood my poor little mother gave birth to!" 

Ha!  That's either an apology or an insult...