{"id":5238,"date":"2023-03-26T06:35:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T09:35:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/?p=5238"},"modified":"2024-03-30T20:22:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T23:22:28","slug":"30-famous-first-lines-from-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/30-famous-first-lines-from-books\/","title":{"rendered":"30 Famous Opening Lines from Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The opening line of a book is often what draws readers in, and some of the most iconic first lines have been immortalized in literature. From Ray Bradbury’s “It was a pleasure to burn” to Iain Banks’ “It was the day my grandmother exploded,” these memorable beginnings linger long after their stories have ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famous Opening lines from Books<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I’ve compiled 30 famous first lines from books that will leave you wanting more. Whether it be Samuel Beckett’s wry humor or Mark Twain’s wit, these famous opening lines from books are sure to captivate and inspire your imagination. Check them out below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. <\/strong>“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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2.<\/strong> “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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Charles Dickens\u2019 novel A Tale of Two Cities<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.<\/strong> \u201cIn a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.\u201d J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. <\/strong>“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.<\/strong> “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell, 1984<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6.<\/strong> \u201cThe past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.\u201d \u2015 L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. <\/strong>\u201cIn my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.\u201d \u2015 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

8.<\/strong> “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buend\u00eda was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

9.<\/strong> “Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.” The Outsider<\/a> by Albert Camus<\/p>\n\n\n

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10.<\/strong> \u201cIt was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I’m stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that’s all there was to read about in the papers..”Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11.<\/strong> \u201cThe sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.” Samuel Beckett, Murphy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12.<\/strong> “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

13. <\/strong>\u201cI am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind.”Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14.<\/strong> “It was a pleasure to burn.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451<\/p>\n\n\n\n

15.<\/strong> “A screaming comes across the sky.” – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow<\/p>\n\n\n\n

16.<\/strong>“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” – William Gibson, Neuromancer<\/p>\n\n\n\n

17. <\/strong>“Call me Ishmael.” – Herman Melville, Moby-Dick<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18.<\/strong> “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.” – Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

19.<\/strong> “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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” –Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20.<\/strong> “You better not never tell nobody but God.” – Alice Walker, The Color Purple<\/p>\n\n\n

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21. <\/strong>\u201cI write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog’s blanket and the tea-cosy.” Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle<\/p>\n\n\n\n

22. <\/strong>“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” – C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23.<\/strong> “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” he Secret History by Donna Tartt <\/p>\n\n\n\n

24. <\/strong>\u201cIt 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.\u201d  Paul Auster, City of Glass<\/p>\n\n\n\n

25.<\/strong> \u201cLolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.” Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita<\/p>\n\n\n\n

26. <\/strong>“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” – James Joyce, Ulysses<\/p>\n\n\n\n

27.<\/strong> \u201cThe sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.\u201d Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat<\/p>\n\n\n\n

28.<\/strong> \u201cThe man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.\u201d Stephen King, The Gunslinger<\/p>\n\n\n\n

29.<\/strong> “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka <\/p>\n\n\n\n

30. <\/strong>\u201cIt was the day my grandmother exploded.\u201d Iain Banks,\u00a0The Crow Road<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Final thoughts <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These iconic opening lines remind us that a book\u2019s first sentence holds the power to transport us instantly into its narrative, setting the tone for our journey through its pages. From the whimsical to the profound, these beginnings underscore the diverse approaches writers take to engage their readers from the outset. As we close this compilation, let us appreciate not only the creativity these lines exhibit but also the endless possibilities they introduce us to. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opening line of a book is often what draws readers in, and some of the most iconic first lines have been immortalized in literature. From Ray Bradbury’s “It was a pleasure to burn” to Iain Banks’ “It was the day my grandmother exploded,” these memorable beginnings linger long after their stories have ended. Famous…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/First-lines-from-books-600x400.png","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/First-lines-from-books-600x600.png","author_info":{"display_name":"Med Kharbach, PhD","author_link":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/author\/med\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5238"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5238"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17204,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5238\/revisions\/17204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.selectedreads.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}