Famous Opening Lines in Literature

91 flashcards by MentisLibrary

Call me Ishmael, a hobbit in a hole, clocks striking thirteen. Match the greatest first sentences ever written to their books and authors, and learn what each one is quietly setting up.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Call me Ishmael.
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
All this happened, more or less.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
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.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.
The Stranger by Albert Camus
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
It was a pleasure to burn.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Neuromancer by William Gibson
124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
They shoot the white girl first.
Paradise by Toni Morrison
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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
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.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Marley was dead: to begin with.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
Ulysses by James Joyce
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay.
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
I have just returned from a visit to my landlord, the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien