Ask any writer you know, all of them will probably admit their biggest struggle is finding the right first sentences of books. Sometimes it's easier to draft an entire story and actually write a nice ending paragraph before deciding on the good starting sentences of their pieces.
The beginning of a story carries the daunting task of hooking the prospective reader in, and adding your work among best selling books. You get only a few sentences and maybe less than two minutes to write good opening lines which will pass the vibe check between the reader and the book. If you’re an inspiring writer, our list of 83 famous opening lines of books will show you how to write books that grab attention from the beginning.
In a recent survey from Amazon Literary Partnership, British book lovers voted for the timeless French Revolution-era classic novel “A Tale of Two Cities,” published in 1840. Charles Dickens wrote the most iconic novel opening that still wins in polls:
“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”
Scroll through our list with literary masterpieces and the best books of all time if you want to become the next Charles Dickens who writes the best opening sentences. Be sure to let us know which book you didn’t judge by its cover, but by its opening lines. And if you haven’t laid your eyes on any of these books, you will definitely pick your next read here.
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'The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' By Douglas Adams
A true must read :) Specially if you want to know the answer to life, universe and everything ^^
'The Martian' By Andy Weir
'Fahrenheit 451' By Ray Bradbury
'1984' By George Orwell
'Anna Karenina' By Leo Tolstoy
'The Great Gatsby' By F. Scott Fitzgerald
I can think of a few people right now who would do well to remember the same.
'Middlesex' By Jeffrey Eugenides
I remember hearing this line, getting interested, and then hearing a summary and being less interested for some reason.
'The Go-Between' By L.P. Hartley
'The Princess Bride' By William Goldman
'The Crow Road' By Iain Banks
'Pride And Prejudice' By Jane Austen
'Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone' By J.K. Rowling
'A Tale Of Two Cities' By Charles Dickens
"looking to the LEFT because you never treated me right... Looking to the RIGHT because you left me...looking DOWN because you messed me up... looking UP because you let me down...
'Peter Pan' By J.M. Barrie
All children, except one, grow up, and now he's President, so help us.
'The Metamorphosis' By Franz Kafka
This book was, like so many on this list, much better the second time I read them, as an adult and not for an assignment in school!
'Their Eyes Were Watching God' By Zora Neale Hurston
'A Frolic Of His Own' By William Gaddis
SECOND LINE: Then the killing started. (Ever notice how that often works as a 2nd line?)
God's Law differs from the law of man. God's Law convicts but Christ cures. Whereas the law of man is an a*s, thought Dickens rightfully so. Better to be judged by Law of God, die, and then fall on His mercy and believe upon Jesus, the cure... cause we've all f*ckd up.
'Howl's Moving Castle' By Diana Wynne Jones
Ive read this! I really really enjoyed it. The only similarity to the film is at the beginning, the introduction. The book itself is simply a whole new world. Its hard to explain but the best i can do is say it was simply the best, it made me feel like a child again
'Slaughterhouse-Five' By Kurt Vonnegut
'The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe' By Douglas Adams
'The Hobbit' By J.R.R. Tolkien
'The Catcher In The Rye' By J.D. Salinger
This book was one I hated when I was a teenager, but then laughed about when I was an adult.
'Back When We Were Grownups' By Anne Tyler
'Waiting' By Ha Jin
'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland' By Lewis Carroll
I have a big volume of all of the Wonderland stories and poems, they've been some of my favourites since childhood.
'The Color Purple' By Alice Walker
'Lolita' By Vladimir Nabokov
Its so amazing how people believe its about love when its about pedophilia and abuse :/
'One Hundred Years Of Solitude' By Gabriel García Márquez
'Middle Passage' By Charles R. Johnson
:D "Cherchez la femme," as we say in French: "look for the woman," when there is trouble with a man. (Meaning, look for the woman he is trying to impress.)
'Scaramouche: A Romance Of The French Revolution' By Rafael Sabatini
'Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale' By Herman Melville
'Chromos' By Felipe Alfau
With so many rules that apply to grammar and pronunciation, absolutely.
'Tracks' By Robyn Davidson
Are you sure this isn't the first line to Tracks by Louise Erdrich?
'David Copperfield' By Charles Dickens
'Notes From Underground' By Fyodor Dostoyevsky
'The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman' By Laurence Sterne
'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea' By Jules Verne
'The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn' By Mark Twain
My teacher read both "Tom Sawyer" and this one to the class, and we all loved it. As I grew older, I read them personally, and still can't make up my mind which of the two I like best. It must be the "Rugged Individualism" in Mr. Clemens that I found so appealing, and is probably why I am such an H.Beam Piper follower.
'Charlotte's Web' By E.B. White
'Goodbye To Berlin' By Christopher Isherwood
'Breakfast Of Champions' By Kurt Vonnegut
'The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader' By C. S. Lewis
'The Trial' By Franz Kafka
'Don Quixote' By Miguel De Cervantes
'Gone With The Wind' By Margaret Mitchell
'Murphy' By Samuel Beckett
'The Stranger' By Albert Camus
Wait for the rest of it. "Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure." Incredible start!
'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' By Ken Kesey
This is a great book. I really do like the movie, but the book is from the perspective of Chief Bromden, whom I consider much more interesting than McMurphy.
'Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas' By Hunter S. Thompson
'Neuromancer' By William Gibson
'The Bell Jar' By Sylvia Plath
'2001: A Space Odyssey' By Arthur C. Clarke
Once upon a time, growing up, I read a short story "The Star". It made such an impression on me that I just had to read more Clarke. I couldn't find 2001 at the time, but did locate "The City and the Stars", and "Rendezvous with Rama". By the time I managed to get a copy of 2001, I was already mesmerized by O'Neil Cylinders, and this work was a little bit of a put-down. His dry English prose may have been the reason why.
'Paradise' By Toni Morrison
'Jane Eyre' By Charlotte Brontë
'The Outsiders' By S.E. Hinton
'A Clockwork Orange' By Anthony Burgess
Love this book. Had to read it three times to understand it, but well worth it.
'The End Of The Affair' By Graham Greene
'City Of Glass' By Douglas Coupland
This is from the Paul Auster book of the same name, not Douglas Copland's!
'To Kill A Mockingbird' By Harper Lee
Yup, I was also quite surprised by this first line. I wondered if the book would be interesting to me... Then I read it in a matter of two days.
'The Hunger Games' By Suzanne Collins
'And Then There Were None' By Agatha Christie
'Life Of Pi' By Yann Martel
Another book everyone should read. A sad one, really. But a good read.
'High-Rise' By J.G. Ballard
'A River Runs Through It' By Norman Maclean
'The Portrait Of A Lady' By Henry James
'I Capture The Castle' By Dodie Smith
'The Napoleon Of Notting Hill' By G. K. Chesterton
'Changing Places: A Tale Of Two Campuses' By David Lodge
Ok... Probably I should check this one, the first line sounds insane enough for my taste.
'The Invisible Man' By H.G. Wells
'The Brief History Of The Dead' By Kevin Brockmeier
'Oryx And Crake' By Margaret Atwood
'Elmer Gantry' By Sinclair Lewis
'The Old Man And The Sea' By Ernest Hemingway
'Catch-22' By Joseph Heller
'Cat's Eye' By Margaret Atwood
'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe' By C.S. Lewis
'A Confederacy Of Dunces' By John Kennedy Toole
'Wide Sargasso Sea' By Jean Rhys
'Middlemarch' By George Eliot
I love the language. Why use one word when you can use five. Magnificent
'Ethan Frome' By Edith Wharton
'Goldfinger' By Ian Fleming
'Gravity's Rainbow' By Thomas Pynchon
The real reason I check book lists on Bored Panda is finding something good to read. I think that I found some books that I might consider interesting. Thanks to everyone who added a book line, sometimes it's really difficult for 15 years old introvert to find a book.
Books can change the way you see the world, the way you act and the way you are
Load More Replies...One very good opening: Mortal engines by Philip Reeve: “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.” download-3...acfe6f.jpg
Thanks for your suggestion, we added it to our list! :)))
Load More Replies..."For a long time I would go to bed early" opening line of Proust's classic In search of lost time (and maybe the shortest sentence of the book)
“Early in the morning, late in the century Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1, 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate facedown on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be too heavy upon him." Who knows this one??
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeliene L'Engle: "It was a dark and stormy night."
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason" - Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.
"Here's how it started" from Journey to the end of the night by Céline
How do you leave Richard Bachmans Rage " the morning I got it on was nice a nice May morning "
Where's REBECCA's (Daphne du Maurier) , "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"?
Here is one from an Urdu novel: "When I fell in love with her, she has been dead for three days"
Honestly, most of these didn't grab me. But people usually read more than one sentence when deciding on a book.
"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. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone." Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House.
This list was great, thank you! I'm feeling inspired to read some classics I missed in college - and some classics in the making, too!
Friday started as an ordinary day, but that was before I failed to save Ann Neelam from burning to death. OTWAB-623b...c50958.jpg
"Friday started as an ordinary day, but that was before I failed to save Ann Neelam from burning to death. " from Only the Women are Burning by Nancy Burke
I am certain I read a book years ago that opened with the line 'The trees stood in a line down the avenue and broke wind' Anyone know what book this was from?
My favorite ever Douglas Adams (HHGTTG) first line is from "Life, The Universe & Everything": "The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."
"the subtle art of not giving a f**k" by Mark Manson ... Fantastic read
Call me shallow, but I'm not the least curious about ANY of those first lines. I would read a book because of its reputation, not some clever one-liner.
Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhung: When the land has been long separated, it is certain to unite; when it has been long united, it is certain to separate. (ten words in Chinese)
The real reason I check book lists on Bored Panda is finding something good to read. I think that I found some books that I might consider interesting. Thanks to everyone who added a book line, sometimes it's really difficult for 15 years old introvert to find a book.
Books can change the way you see the world, the way you act and the way you are
Load More Replies...One very good opening: Mortal engines by Philip Reeve: “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.” download-3...acfe6f.jpg
Thanks for your suggestion, we added it to our list! :)))
Load More Replies..."For a long time I would go to bed early" opening line of Proust's classic In search of lost time (and maybe the shortest sentence of the book)
“Early in the morning, late in the century Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1, 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate facedown on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be too heavy upon him." Who knows this one??
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeliene L'Engle: "It was a dark and stormy night."
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason" - Seveneves by Neal Stephenson.
"Here's how it started" from Journey to the end of the night by Céline
How do you leave Richard Bachmans Rage " the morning I got it on was nice a nice May morning "
Where's REBECCA's (Daphne du Maurier) , "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"?
Here is one from an Urdu novel: "When I fell in love with her, she has been dead for three days"
Honestly, most of these didn't grab me. But people usually read more than one sentence when deciding on a book.
"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. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone." Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House.
This list was great, thank you! I'm feeling inspired to read some classics I missed in college - and some classics in the making, too!
Friday started as an ordinary day, but that was before I failed to save Ann Neelam from burning to death. OTWAB-623b...c50958.jpg
"Friday started as an ordinary day, but that was before I failed to save Ann Neelam from burning to death. " from Only the Women are Burning by Nancy Burke
I am certain I read a book years ago that opened with the line 'The trees stood in a line down the avenue and broke wind' Anyone know what book this was from?
My favorite ever Douglas Adams (HHGTTG) first line is from "Life, The Universe & Everything": "The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was."
"the subtle art of not giving a f**k" by Mark Manson ... Fantastic read
Call me shallow, but I'm not the least curious about ANY of those first lines. I would read a book because of its reputation, not some clever one-liner.
Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhung: When the land has been long separated, it is certain to unite; when it has been long united, it is certain to separate. (ten words in Chinese)