I don't know that we can necessarily remember any of the original game, but I'm sure we can come up with some good ones for you.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times....

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes."

Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Kath, if you go to Google and type in 'famous first (or last) lines' there are many eg's to choose from. Of course the majority seem to come from US authors but there is quite a choice and you will get plenty of ideas.
One eg below.

Here is a link that might be useful: A first line quiz

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Quite like old times the room says. 'Yes? No?'.

3 May. Bistritz.-Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May. arrivimg at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6.46 but the train was an hour late.

We slept in what was once the gymnasium.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne nack ceaselessly into the past.

'I dont believe that', he answered.

Here's a few to be going on with - all from well known novels - good luck

We probably played that game more than once, but I remember opening one version with "It was the day my grandmother exploded", which nobody could identify!

Here's another link to a site with opening lines.

Here is a link that might be useful: Great opening lines from recent novels

Oops, that last posting was me! Accidentally left it logged in on my daughter's settings (she frequents the Circle Theater, shh - nobody knows she's mine...)

Here's a classic --

Call me Ishmael.

One of those links had what must be the WORST first line ever written....

What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.

Bleurghhhh!

Hey, I liked that book! Um, when I was about 13.....

Hmmm. Is this going to be a game in and of itself, or should we include references? I'll leave them out just for fun. :) Here are three of my favorite last lines:

"I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience."

*****

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

*****

"Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out."

*****

Well, musicmom, you and I have started and finished the same book!

Here's a challenge - is there a more well-known first and last line of a book? There are better known first lines, certainly, and possibly better known last lines. But is there a single book which can outdo A Tale of Two Cities?

Do you think perhaps Dickens outdid himself in that category?

"Marley was dead: to begin with." ... "God Bless Us, Every One."

hmmmmm....

OK, I'd accept that as a good challenger.

Any non-Dickens?

This is a pair from a genre classic:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

He spent the bulk of his Swiss account on a new pancreas and liver, the rest on a new Ono-Sendai and a ticket back to the Sprawl. He found work. He found a girl who called herself Michael. And one October night, punching himself past the scarlet tiers of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority, he saw three figures, tiny, impossible, who stood at the very edge of one of the vast steps of data. Small as they were, he could make out the boy's grin, his pink gums, the glitter of the long gray eyes that had been Riviera's. Linda still wore his jacket; she waved as he passed. But the third figure, close behind her, arm across her shoulders, was himself. Somewhere, very close, the laugh that wasn't laughter. He never saw Molly again.

Thanks, that will give me some to go on with, although I will have to look some of the answers up :-)

And Vee, can't believe I didn't think to Google it myself.

Kath