30 Stunning Opening Lines From Famous Works of Literature

30 Stunning Opening Lines From Famous Works of Literature From the scandalous opening lines of Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita to the arsonist rant that begins Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451, weve collected some of the most stunning literary openers out there. If you are a writer looking for inspiration for your own novels opening, look no further, weve got you covered.Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.William Faulkner, The Sound and the FuryShips at a distance have every mans wish on board.Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching GodIt was a pleasure to burn.Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451You better not never tell nobody but God.Alice Walker, The Color PurpleHe- 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.Virginia Woolf, OrlandoThe cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.Stephen Crane, The Red Badg e of CourageIt 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 PrejudiceCall me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.Herman Melville, Moby DickOnce 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†¦James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist of Young ManWheres Papa going with that axe? said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.E B White, Charlottes WebI first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I wont bother to talk about, except it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that e verything was dead.Jack Kerouac, On the RoadMother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I cant be sure.Albert Camus, The StrangerLolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.Vladimir Nabokov, LolitaIt 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.Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two CitiesAs Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.Franz Kafka, Me tamorphosisQuiet as its kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.Toni Morrison, The Bluest EyeIn my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that Ive been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world havent had the advantages that youve had.The Great Gatsby, F. Scott FitzgeraldThe sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.Samuel Beckett, MurphyThere was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn TreaderIt was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.George Orwell, 1984The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.William Gibson, NeuromancerThey shoot the white girl first.Toni Morrison, ParadiseI had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.Edith Wharton, Ethan FromeIf you really want to hear about it, the first thing youll 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 dont feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the RyeI am a sick man†¦ I am a spiteful man.Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from UndergroundWhat if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual ThingsFrancis Marion Tarwaters uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it wa s still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.Flannery OConnor, The Violent Bear It AwayOf all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, Ive come to learn, is women.Charles Johnson, Middle PassageWe were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las VegasI am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye To Berlin