The best 100 opening lines from books

The best 100 opening lines from books by Stylist

• The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger “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."

• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

• Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens “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.”

• Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolfe “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

• Back When We Were Grownups, Anne Tyler “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”

• Moby-Dick, Herman Melville “Call me Ishmael.”

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

• The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed.”

• The Time Travellers Wife, Audrey Niffenegger “Clare: It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.”

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein “When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyifirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

• The Color Purple, Alice Walker “You better not never tell nobody but God.''

• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”

• Bridget Jonses’ Diary, Helen Fielding "I will not drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week."

• A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolfe "But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction."
And the rest of it.