First Sentences are Doors to Worlds

Ursula Le Guin wrote these words to inspire us all to open a book and delve into a world of the writer's imagination but our own experience.

And as writers, we are singers carrying the reader through the door and along a journey in the new world.

She writes again:

“It is a rare and great pleasure to find a fantasist writing not only with the kind of accuracy of language absolutely essential to fantasy-making, but with real music in the words as well. Wherever Pat Rothfuss goes with the big story that begins with The Name of the Wind, he’ll carry us with him as a good singer carries us through a song.”

If you haven't read Patrick Rothfuss's book, The Name of the Wind, I will share with you the opening from the prologue. His words keep us wondering what happens next:

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

This opening immediately tilts the balance of our minds.
What, silence has three parts?
And it is night, so why is the Waystone Inn so quiet?

We need to know more. We are hooked.