22 OF THE BEST OPENING LINES TO BOOKS
The Possibility Poet
A literature blog obsessed with stories, fictional worlds and made-up characters
april 27, 2021
22 OF THE BEST OPENING LINES TO BOOKS
assemble of books and its amazing first lines
We all know that blissful beginning, when, upon opening a new book, after brushing the first pages aside, we are greeted with a first line so powerful that its words ring through the rest of the book like an unmistakable echo, and we begin to read with the thrilling excitement of the promising journey ahead. Naturally, a good first line does not equal a good book, and thus, first lines can sometimes lead to a letdown, but there’s just something inexplicably magical about those crisp first moments. I, evidently, have a soft spot for these moments and therefore decided to dedicate a post to some of the best opening lines to books that I have come across over the years.
Some of these lines are famous, universal favourites, others more personal preference, so you might already be familiar with a few of the examples below but, hopefully, there’s something left to be discovered. Anyway, here is my selection of 22 great opening lines in books.
1. “Before my wife turned vegetarian, I’d always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way.”
– From The Vegetarian by Han Kang
2. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
– From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. “Call me Ishmael.”
– From Moby Dick by Herman Melville
4. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
– From Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
5. “All this happened, more or less.”
– From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
22 great first lines in books
6. “A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house.”
– From “Viewfinder”, a short story by Raymond Carver
Ps: I know, technically, not a book, so not really a part of the best opening lines to books, but in my defence, this first sentence already conjures so many questions that to answer all of them, one would have to write a book. Plus, it’s just such a wonderfully odd and quirky line that I had to include it.
7. “History has failed us, but no matter.”
– From Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
8. “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.”
– From One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
9. “I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg airport.”
– From Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
10. “One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.”
– From The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
selection of the 22 best opening lines to books
11. “Whenever I think of my mother, I picture a queen-sized bed with her lying in it, a practiced stillness filling the room.”
– From Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
12. “At dusk they pour from the sky.”
– From All the Lights We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
13. “Is it me or are the barstools in this place getting lower? Perhaps it’s the shrinking. Eighty-four years can do that to a man, that and hairy ears.”
– From When All Is Said by Anne Griffin
Ps: I was pretty strict in only including the very first line of each book but, in this example, I cheated a little because a list of the best opening lines to books should also include something funny and, here, the third line is the funniest part.
14. “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 direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
– From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
15. “In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.”
– From The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. “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.”
– From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
great opening lines in books
17. “Since Atlanta, she had looked out the dining-car window with a delight almost physical.”
– From Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
18. “What does this mean. – What – does this mean…”
– From Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
19. “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
– From Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
20. “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.”
– From Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
21. “In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.”
– From Sula by Toni Morrison
22. “From where I sit, the story of Arthur Less is not so bad.”
– From Less by Andrew Sean Greer
Hopefully, this list featuring some of the best opening lines to books will endow you with the magic of new beginnings and entice you to give these formidable stories a try. If you’re looking for further reading inspiration, check out The Possibility Poet’s prose section or simply click on the button below to browse through the catalogue of bookish posts!
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POSTED IN: ALL THINGS BOOKISH
COMMENTS
N HAZARI SAYS
May 27, 2021 at 4:38 am
Beautiful lines.
Great effort in compiling.
RACHEL SAYS
May 27, 2021 at 8:56 am
Thank you so much, I’m glad you liked it! 🙂
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