literary first lines
Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Moby Dick: Call me Ishmael.
Anna Karenina: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
1984: . It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Farenheit 451: It was a pleasure to burn.
The Time Machine: The time traveler (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
Catch-22: It was love at first sight.
The Bell Jar: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.
David Copperfield: Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Slaughterhouse-Five: All this happened, more or less.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.
The Martian: I'm pretty much fucked.
The Great Gatsby: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
The Catcher in the Rye: If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how
my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
I Capture the Castle: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
Scaramouche: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Cat's Eye: Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.
Don Quixote: Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
The Princess Bride: This is my favourite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Mr and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
Peter Pan: All children, except one, grow up.
Howl's Moving Castle: In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.
The Hobbit: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'?.
The Color Purple: You better not never tell nobody but God.
One Hundred Years of Solitude: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Scaramouche: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Notes from Underground: I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: The year 1866 was signalized by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.
Charlotte's Web: 'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
Frankenstein: I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic.
Of Mice and Men: A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy.
The Trial: Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
Gone with the Wind: Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it was caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
The Stranger: Mother died today.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: They're out there.
Neuromancer: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
2001 A Space Odyssey: The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.
Jane Eyre: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
The Outsiders: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I only had two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
A Clockwork Orange: That was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dum, Dum being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard through dry.
To Kill a Mockingbird: When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
The Hunger Games: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.
Life of Pi: My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
Invisible Man: I am an invisible man.
Mrs Dalloway: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
The Old Man and the Sea: He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
Cat's Eye: Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.
Midnight's Children: I was born in the city of Bombay...once upon a time.
Good Omens: It was a nice day.
The Handmaid's Tale: We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
The Hunger Games: When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.
Kindred: I lost an arm on my last trip home.
Never Let me Go: My name is Kathy H. I am thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years.
Gravity's Rainbow: A screaming comes across the sky.
Lord of the Flies: The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.
Ulysses: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Rebecca: Last night I dreamt I want to Manderly again.
Murder on the Orient Express: It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria.
In Cold Blood: The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.'
The Picture of Dorian Gray: The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
The Knife of Never Letting Go: The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
IT: The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
