I'm taking a couple of tests in the morning (at 6:00 am no less!) and I have to fast before I take them. I haven't had food for HOURS (or straight sugar for 4 days, but that's another story). Unfortunately, I'm way dependent on constant food intake to make my brain function and I might be losing it right now .... So there's no good reason for this post, I just thought it was interesting -
100 Best First Lines from Novels
1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
4. 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. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)
7. 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. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
9. 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. —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
You can find the rest of the list here. #82 is full of clever lines that I've enjoyed borrowing.
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3 comments:
Thanks for that post. It was fun to glance through. Sadly, I only knew two or three by their first lines.
how do you even come into knowledge of a list like that?? you never cease to amaze me my friend! how did your test go?
Very fun. It was the best of blog it was the worst of blogs
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