Top Ten Books with the Best Opening Lines

Put the opening line in a comment after you post the book title.
The Top Ten
1 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles 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.

2 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
3 1984 - George Orwell

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

4 Ulysses - James Joyce

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

5 Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

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.

6 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

7 Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

A screaming comes across the sky.

8 If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

9 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

10 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The Contenders
11 The Catcher in the Rye - J.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."

BAdd New Item