Famous Novels First Lines

'1984'
"It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen."

A-Confederacy-of-Dunces'

 
'Anna Karenina'
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone'
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number four Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

'Fahrenheit 451'
"It was a pleasure to burn."

'A Tale of Two Cities'
"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 directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."

 Moby-Dick
"Call me Ishmael."

One Hundred Years of Solitude'
"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."

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

'Slaughterhouse-Five'
"All this happened, more or less."

The Catcher in the Rye'
"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."

The Color Purple'
"You better not never tell nobody but God."

'The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy'
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

'Their Eyes Were Watching God'
"Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board."

 'The Sound and the Fury'
"Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."