Opening lines

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because Im old, and you said, I dont think youre old.Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

— Opening lines time

It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears house. Its eyes were closed.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

— Opening lines time

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

— Opening lines love

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.

— Opening lines art

Its hot as hell in Martirio, but the papers on the porch are icy with the news.Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.

— Opening lines god

Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file.As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.

— Opening lines sin

One Wednesday afternoon in late September, Ann Veronica Stanley came down from London in a state of solemn excitement and quite resolved to have things out with her father that very evening.Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells.

— Opening lines men

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

— Opening lines art

To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new.All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren.

— Opening lines war

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it “the Riddle House,” even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.

— Opening lines family

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tylers pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.

— Opening lines life

As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor.Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse.

— Opening lines home

I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart.

— Opening lines art

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

— Opening lines war

The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.

— Opening lines art

The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.

— Opening lines art

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad.The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien

— Opening lines music

From a little after four oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that – a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that sight and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner.

— Opening lines war

I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow.

— Opening lines time

You dont know about me without you have read a book called The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that aint no matter.Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

— Opening lines adventure

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

— Opening lines art

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, 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?Alices Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

— Opening lines reading

I sing of arms and the man, he who, exiled by fate,first came from the coast of Troy to Italy, and to Lavinian shores – hurled about endlessly by land and sea, by the will of the gods, by cruel Juno’s remorseless anger, long suffering also in war, until he founded a city and brought his gods to Latium: from that the Latin people came, the lords of Alba Longa, the walls of noble Rome. Muse, tell me the cause: how was she offended in her divinity. how was she grieved, the Queen of Heaven, to drive a man, noted for virtue, to endure such dangers, to face so many trials? Can there be such anger in the minds of the gods?Aeneid by Virgil Translation by A. S. Kline.

— Opening lines god

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.

— Opening lines

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.The End of the Affair by Graham Greene.

— Opening lines men

Christmas wont be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

— Opening lines women

Dr. Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse.Captain Corellis Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres.

— Opening lines joy

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.

— Opening lines life

George is my name; my deeds have been heard of in Tower Hall, and my childhood has been chronicled in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.Giles Goat-boy by John Barth.

— Opening lines art

Gotham City. Maybe its all I deserve, now. Maybe its just my time in Hell.Batman: Year One by Frank Miller.

— Opening lines time

His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before.Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

— Opening lines country

I looked at my notes and I didnt like them. Id spent three days at U.S. Robots and might as well have spent them at home with the Encyclopedia Tellurica.I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.

— Opening lines home

Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: Have they discovered evolution yet?The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

— Opening lines life

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

— Opening lines truth

Ive been called Bone all my life, but my names Ruth Anne.Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

— Opening lines life

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P----, in Kentucky.Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

— Opening lines men

Less Bread! More Taxes!--and then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted as well as I could make out Who roar for the Sub-Warden? Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting Bread! and some Taxes!, but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted.Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll.

— Opening lines war

Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle.

— Opening lines art

No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than mans and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells.

— Opening lines intelligence

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling.

— Opening lines time

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor.Tess of the dUrbervilles by Thomas Hardy.

— Opening lines war

Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. Stop! cried the groaning old man at last, Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree.The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein.

— Opening lines man

So youre all set for money, then? the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice.Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami.

— Opening lines money

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

— Opening lines joy

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood.

— Opening lines war

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane.

— Opening lines art

The Morris dance is common to all inhabited worlds in the multiverse.Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.

— Opening lines world

The telephone was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.War in Heaven by Charles Williams.

— Opening lines war

The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party.Looking for Alaska by John Green

— Opening lines life

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis.

— Opening lines ya

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut.

— Opening lines men

What about the teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me.Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

— Opening lines shakespeare

When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - To Whom It May Concern - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

— Opening lines ya

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

— Opening lines men

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