List Rules Novels that have often quoted first lines or opening sentences that are otherwise in the cultural zeitgeist. Vote up the most memorable.
The opening lines of a novel can prove crucial, and many authors spend an inordinate amount of time considering how their books will begin. From Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities to Melville's Moby Dick, often the opening sentence or two of a book will become the most frequently quoted and iconic passage from the entire novel. This list has the best novels with great first lines, bound to make the best impression on readers.
These books of fiction are well known for their opening lines. The authors know that books don't just need a great story, there also needs to be something that draws in the reader. The opening line is that hook and the books on this list all have intriguing, interesting, and unique opening sentences.
This is a list of the greatest novels with the best introductory text, including world literature (with an emphasis on English literature), from throughout history, with the most memorable and significant beginnings. Vote up the most memorable first lines from fiction below.
A Tale of Two CitiesCharles Dickens 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.
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415 106
Nineteen Eighty-FourGeorge Orwell It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
David CopperfieldCharles Dickens 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.
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169 65
One Hundred Years of SolitudeGabriel García Márquez Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
The Catcher in the RyeJ. D. Salinger 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.
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212 94
The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
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188 82
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnMark Twain You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.
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174 74
Don QuixoteMiguel de Cervantes 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.
Middle PassageCharles R. Johnson Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women.
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139 54
The Bell JarSylvia Plath It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
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117 42
DeannaChurch added To Kill a MockingbirdHarper Lee When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
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125 48
The Go-BetweenL. P. Hartley The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
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101 33
DeannaChurch added Gone with the WindMargaret MitchellScarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
The Color PurpleAlice Walker You better not never tell nobody but God.
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165 75
The Crow RoadIain Banks It was the day my grandmother exploded.
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114 45
ParadiseToni Morrison They shoot the white girl first.
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101 39
MiddlesexJeffrey Eugenides I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
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193 103
LolitaVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
The TrialFranz Kafka Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
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83 40
The Red Badge of CourageStephen Crane The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
The End of the AffairGraham Greene A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
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89 48
The Old Man and the SeaErnest Hemingway 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.
Ethan FromeEdith Wharton I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
City of GlassDouglas Coupland It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
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62 32
The Napoleon of Notting HillG. K. Chesterton The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
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57 33
Paul CliffordEdward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
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43 21
kingbee63 added A Clockwork OrangeAnthony BurgessThere was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim and we sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
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68 43
MurphySamuel Beckett The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.