Best First Lines

Descrizione
Novels that have excellent or memorable first lines. Started from American Book Review's 100 Best First Lines from Novels (http://americanbookreview.org/100bestlines.asp)
Utenti
7 utenti hanno contribuito
1
78,326 utenti
1,346 recensioni
½ 4.4
5 Members
Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
2
24,552 utenti
243 recensioni
4
6 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it
3
91,738 utenti
1,164 recensioni
½ 4.3
5 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
4
9,023 utenti
288 recensioni
4.1
5 Members
Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
5
79,839 utenti
1,245 recensioni
4.2
5 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
6
35,688 utenti
442 recensioni
3.9
5 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
7
52,311 utenti
970 recensioni
4
5 Members
hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It was a pleasure to burn.
8
24,117 utenti
518 recensioni
½ 4.3
4 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: This is my favorite book in all the world, though I've never read it.
9
23,762 utenti
507 recensioni
4.1
3 Members
hipdeep, merrystar, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: Marley was dead, to begin with.
10
41,982 utenti
510 recensioni
3.9
4 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
11
43,125 utenti
690 recensioni
4.1
4 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: All this happened, more or less.
12
20,038 utenti
594 recensioni
4.2
3 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
13
18,587 utenti
337 recensioni
4
4 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
14
43,554 utenti
673 recensioni
4.2
3 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
15
37,447 utenti
611 recensioni
4.1
3 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
16
34,486 utenti
526 recensioni
3.8
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Call me Ishmael.
17
9,229 utenti
425 recensioni
3.9
2 Members
ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
ManWithAnAgenda: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
18
68,159 utenti
1,064 recensioni
3.8
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
19
27,423 utenti
484 recensioni
4
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
20
15,409 utenti
369 recensioni
4
2 Members
Aquila, hipdeep
Spiegazioni
Aquila: I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.
21
7,612 utenti
110 recensioni
3.9
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.
22
70,279 utenti
1,137 recensioni
3.8
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
23
20,796 utenti
208 recensioni
½ 3.7
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
24
20,139 utenti
262 recensioni
4.1
3 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
25
29,761 utenti
433 recensioni
4.1
3 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
26
22,243 utenti
397 recensioni
3.9
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 124 was spiteful.
27
18,235 utenti
315 recensioni
3.9
3 Members
Aquila, hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
Aquila: All children, except one, grow up.
28
34,640 utenti
489 recensioni
3.9
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Mother died today.
29
4,686 utenti
110 recensioni
3.8
2 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
30
8,219 utenti
242 recensioni
½ 3.5
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
31
9,329 utenti
209 recensioni
½ 3.6
3 Members
Aquila, aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
32
7,729 utenti
159 recensioni
4
3 Members
hipdeep, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: Taran wanted to make a sword, but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.
33
10,508 utenti
237 recensioni
4
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.
34
5,720 utenti
106 recensioni
4.1
2 Members
ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
ManWithAnAgenda: My wound is geography.
35
19,186 utenti
330 recensioni
4.1
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: You better not never tell nobody but God.
36
20,065 utenti
323 recensioni
3.9
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
37
6,081 utenti
115 recensioni
4.1
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
38
6,387 utenti
168 recensioni
3.9
3 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
39
24,084 utenti
316 recensioni
½ 3.6
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.
40
17,259 utenti
325 recensioni
4.2
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
41
11,788 utenti
138 recensioni
3.8
3 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
42
22,706 utenti
368 recensioni
3.9
2 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
43
1,717 utenti
54 recensioni
4
2 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
44
31,129 utenti
546 recensioni
4.1
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
45
25,678 utenti
393 recensioni
4
2 Members
Aquila, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
Aquila: "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents."
46
748 utenti
31 recensioni
½ 3.4
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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.
47
5,230 utenti
56 recensioni
3.9
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
48
15,889 utenti
203 recensioni
4
2 Members
hipdeep, aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I am an invisible man.
49
116 utenti
3 recensioni
½ 3.7
Member
Macbeth
Spiegazioni
Macbeth: I blame the Pope
50
19,494 utenti
234 recensioni
4
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
51
21,478 utenti
163 recensioni
½ 3.7
2 Members
hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, [...]
52
17,841 utenti
301 recensioni
3.8
2 Members
hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: 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 man's 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.
53
12,262 utenti
252 recensioni
4.1
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.
54
2,249 utenti
38 recensioni
4
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
55
547 utenti
18 recensioni
½ 3.5
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
56
2,240 utenti
75 recensioni
½ 4.3
2 Members
hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: I don't know what I should talk about - about death or about love? Or are they the same?
57
10,781 utenti
192 recensioni
½ 3.7
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
58
21,388 utenti
334 recensioni
4
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
59
10,325 utenti
167 recensioni
3.9
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.
60
1,422 utenti
33 recensioni
½ 3.7
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It 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.
61
16,869 utenti
222 recensioni
4
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
62
14,085 utenti
190 recensioni
4
2 Members
hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
63
12,034 utenti
208 recensioni
3.9
2 Members
hipdeep, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
64
10,836 utenti
176 recensioni
4.2
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: For a long time, I went to bed early.
65
29,875 utenti
492 recensioni
3.8
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
66
10,521 utenti
139 recensioni
4.1
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: A screaming comes across the sky.
67
756 utenti
10 recensioni
3.8
Member
ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
ManWithAnAgenda: The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
68
26,816 utenti
622 recensioni
4.1
2 Members
aethercowboy, ahef1963
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
69
8,831 utenti
114 recensioni
½ 3.7
2 Members
aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.
70
445 utenti
18 recensioni
3.9
Member
ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
ManWithAnAgenda: I am thirty years old and that is nothing.
71
10,610 utenti
126 recensioni
3.9
Member
ManWithAnAgenda
Spiegazioni
ManWithAnAgenda: Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
72
4,973 utenti
318 recensioni
4.1
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites.
73
4,067 utenti
164 recensioni
4.1
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: In the myriadic year of our lord—the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!—Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.
74
113 utenti
4 recensioni
3.9
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: Hal was not yet a prince when she fell in love with Lady Hotspur, but she would be within the hour.
75
739 utenti
24 recensioni
3.8
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: The wind came into the house from the Sound, and it blew Daisy and me around her East Egg mansion like puffs of dandelion seeds, like foam, like a pair of young woman in white dresses who had no cares to weigh them down.
76
8,553 utenti
152 recensioni
4.2
Member
hipdeep
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: I am old now, and have not much to fear from the anger of gods.
77
1,836 utenti
44 recensioni
3.9
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: The note said: someone in this class is a witch.
78
10,404 utenti
261 recensioni
4.1
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: There was a wall.
79
2,420 utenti
44 recensioni
3.9
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: Apart from the one in the church tower, there were five clocks in the village that kept reasonable time, and my father owned one of them.
80
4,785 utenti
119 recensioni
½ 3.7
Member
Aquila
Spiegazioni
Aquila: I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.
81
1,613 utenti
25 recensioni
3.8
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
82
1,202 utenti
77 recensioni
½ 3.5
Member
hipdeep
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb.
83
233 utenti
4 recensioni
½ 3.7
Member
hipdeep
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: My old eighth-grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by some of the brighter pupils.
84
4,708 utenti
414 recensioni
3.8
Member
hipdeep
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: From the top of the large boulder he sat on, Ensign Tom Davis looked across the expanse of the cave toward Captain Lucius Abernathy, Science Officer Q'eeng, and Chief Engineer Paul West and thought, "Well, this sucks."
85
99 utenti
1 recensione
4
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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 house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
86
3,997 utenti
79 recensioni
½ 3.6
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.
87
12,135 utenti
147 recensioni
4.1
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.
88
565 utenti
10 recensioni
3.9
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Where now? Who now? When now?
89
2,287 utenti
100 recensioni
3.8
Member
hipdeep
Spiegazioni
hipdeep: Dirk Moeller didn't know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident.
90
437 utenti
3 recensioni
3.2
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: 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."
91
609 utenti
11 recensioni
½ 3.6
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: In a sense, I am Jacob Horner.
92
1,302 utenti
28 recensioni
3.8
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It was like so, but wasn't.
93
1,338 utenti
18 recensioni
4.2
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: —Money . . . in a voice that rustled.
94
4,767 utenti
46 recensioni
3.8
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: They shoot the white girl first.
95
187 utenti
2 recensioni
½ 3.4
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: The moment one learns English, complications set in.
96
7,747 utenti
134 recensioni
4.2
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane;
97
234 utenti
6 recensioni
½ 3.6
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation.
98
3,179 utenti
60 recensioni
4
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: It was the day my grandmother exploded.
99
1,504 utenti
43 recensioni
4
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: Elmer Gantry was drunk.
100
2,140 utenti
37 recensioni
3.9
Member
aethercowboy
Spiegazioni
aethercowboy: We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.