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Prepare to read the most fascinating article of your life.
The first sentence of any piece of writing is arguably the most important – both in terms of hooking the reader in and of doing justice to the body of work that it is introducing.
Our attempt, here, is perhaps a little on-the-nose and definitely overestimates the quality of the copy that follows but, hey, it caught your attention and demonstrated our point.
From Daphne du Maurier 's Rebecca and J R R Tolkien 's The Hobbit, to Toni Morrison 's Beloved and F Scott Fitzgerald 's The Great Gatsby , here are the 27 best opening lines in books...
Click through the gallery below to read them all.
Show all 27 1 /27The 27 best opening lines in books The 27 best opening lines in books Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by 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 27 best opening lines in books Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
The 27 best opening lines in books Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
The 27 best opening lines in books Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
The 27 best opening lines in books The Great Gatsby by 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. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
The 27 best opening lines in books The Go-Between by LP Hartley "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
The 27 best opening lines in books A Tale of Two Cities by 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, 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."
The 27 best opening lines in books Peter Pan by JM Barrie "All children, except one, grow up."
The 27 best opening lines in books Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut “All this happened, more or less.”
The 27 best opening lines in books The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”
The 27 best opening lines in books The Catcher in the Rye by 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."
The 27 best opening lines in books Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
The 27 best opening lines in books Beloved by Toni Morrison "124 was spiteful."
The 27 best opening lines in books The Stranger by Albert Camus "Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure."
The 27 best opening lines in books Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
The 27 best opening lines in books Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”
The 27 best opening lines in books High-Rise by JG Ballard “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”
The 27 best opening lines in books Catch-22 by Joseph Heller “It was love at first sight."
The 27 best opening lines in books The Road by Cormac McCarthy “When he woke in the woods in the dark and cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.”
The 27 best opening lines in books Pride and Prejudice "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
The 27 best opening lines in books I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."
The 27 best opening lines in books The Bell Jar by 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.”
The 27 best opening lines in books The Secret History by Donna Tartt "The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."
The 27 best opening lines in books Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."
The 27 best opening lines in books Murphy by Samuel Beckett “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."
The 27 best opening lines in books The Crow Road by Iain Banks "It was the day my grandmother exploded."
The 27 best opening lines in books David Copperfield by Charles Dickens "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."
To find out the 20 books Brits lie about reading the most, click here.
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