Poll
Sometimes the first line of a book just grabs you by the nostrils and drags your fool head into its pages, preventing escape in any way, shape or form. Which of these opening lines has its phalanges most firmly planted in your nasal cavities?
"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini
Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
"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 Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
"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 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"He— 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."
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
"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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Bah! Foolish poll-maker-person! The nostril seizing power of these paltry lines is minimal, at best! Look to the comments section where I shall carefully type out my choice, which you have so imprudently omitted!
"As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
"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."
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
“'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'”
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Neuromancer by William Gibson
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim and we sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening."
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up."
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton
"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."
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
“'When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.'”
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
"Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden."
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
"Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation."
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish
"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
"When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - 'To Whom It May Concern' - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
"Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror."
Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
"My lady and I are being shut up in a tower for seven years"
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
"'Barabbas came to us by sea', the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy."
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
"What 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?"
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature."
The Debut by Anita Brookner
The Debut by Anita Brookner
Poll added by: Samantha
This Poll is About
Authors:
Anne Tyler, Katherine Dunn, Herman Melville, Isabel Allende, Leo Tolstoy, Iain Banks, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Rafael Sabatini, Gilbert Sorrentino, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Felipe Alfau, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Charles R. Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Shannon Hale, H.G. Wells, Maya Angelou, William Gibson, James Crumley, J.D. Salinger, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, H.P. Lovecraft, John Wyndham, G.K. Chesterton, David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Ha Jin, Anita Brookner, Dodie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Walter Abish, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Marcel Proust, J.M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, W. Somerset Maugham
Books:
Anne Tyler, Katherine Dunn, Herman Melville, Isabel Allende, Leo Tolstoy, Iain Banks, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Rafael Sabatini, Gilbert Sorrentino, J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Felipe Alfau, C.S. Lewis, John Irving, Charles R. Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Shannon Hale, H.G. Wells, Maya Angelou, William Gibson, James Crumley, J.D. Salinger, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, H.P. Lovecraft, John Wyndham, G.K. Chesterton, David Foster Wallace, Sylvia Plath, Ha Jin, Anita Brookner, Dodie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Walter Abish, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Marcel Proust, J.M. Barrie, Charles Dickens, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, W. Somerset Maugham
Books:
Comments Showing 201-250 of 263 (263 new)
I loved like five of these but alas I can only choose one... so I chose the Book of a Thousand Days one. I love dairy entry types of books and that line was just a work of art. I also loved the ones from Harry Potter, The Hobbit, the Dawn Treader, and Pride and Prejudice.
The opening of the Wheel of Time is a paragraph that i will never forget... Probably because it's been repeated more than 10 times throughout the series"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning"
'The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say'- The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness
I voted for Tolkien from your poll choices. That was my introduction into fantasy novels. However, I agree with a previous comment that the intro to Jane Eyre was the first classic to catch my interest many many moons ago, and it wasn't required reading.
i first voted the thing where it says pick your own quote 'cause i didn't notice the harry potter one and then when the results showed harry potter as the highest i was like NOOOOO CHANGE VOTE! CHANGE VOTE!
I'd vote, but I am completely torn between six or seven of them. And I 100% can't choose.Dawn Treader
Catcher in the Rye
1984
The Hobbit
Philosopher's Stone
Hitchhiker's Guide
Pride and Prejudice
Peter Pan
War of the Worlds
Prayer for Owen Meany
I just can't choose.
She was born Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she did not open her eyes for three days.~The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
It's hard to decide between the Hobbit, Pride and Prejudice and the Dawn Treader...
The first sentence of "Anthem" by Ayn Rand: "It is a sin to write this."
I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
I chose Orwell's "It was a bright cold day in April..." because I am extremely partial to 1984, but immediately afterwards realized I should have chosen Bradbury's "It was a pleasure to burn."That opening line of Fahrenheit 451 was what really drew to me reading the book for the first time, after all. Though I still preferred 1984 in the end.
The first line of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair is still my favorite opening line in a book.
"Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death."The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
this is the sentence that should be there
Absalom, Absalom!"From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that -- a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes filled with dust motes which Quentin thought of as being of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. "
Pride & Prejudice--Almost exclusively because I was expecting it :D. Of course, the book turned it to be more ponderous than I anticipated.The final option is wonderful, though. I resisted the urge to click it.
"I spent my life folded between the pages of books." It's not really nostril grabbing but it's the first sentence of my favorite book. -Shatter Me, by Tahereh Mafi
How could you ever leave out A Tale of Two Cities --Charles DickensI only feign outrage; great poll --thanks.
But seriously, this one is the best of all time --IMHO
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.
Look, I didn't want to be a demigod. The Lightning Thief.
I voted for Pride & Prejudice. But I am shocked that you don't have
on here. That is probably my favorite first line ever!"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
It's just so awesome. And it has been stuck in my head for as long as I can remember! :)
Great poll, though! :)
![Cheshire Cat [Heidi]~ We're All Mad Here ~](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1454696753p1/40221410.jpg)
I've never read it, but the first sentence of Alphabetical Africa just blows my mind. I have to read that book some time.
Probably mentioned already and absolutely fucked up: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." -Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
I'm sorry, I just HAVE to use the entire first paragraph:"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose on the great plain called the Caralain Grass. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."(The Wheel of Time, book four: The Shadow Rising)
This is the starting paragraph for all the books in the series, only the underlined portion is changed, depending on where the wind comes from.
This is my favorite poll ever. Great job! May I offer my favorite first line?"IN WATERMELON SUGAR the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. "
--Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar, 1964
I voted for "Murphy" because it is the only time a first line has intrigued me enough to read the book, but my favourite is:"Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me." Gunter Grass. The Tin Drum.
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" ( The Gunslinger by Stephen King)
I ain't saying it's the best opening line...I'm saying I like it
Judy wrote: "This is my favorite poll ever. Great job! May I offer my favorite first line?--Richard Brautigan,..." I second that!
Just ONE Quote???! Ahh whhyy
Everyone’s forgotten one:“Sophie had always wanted to be kidnapped.”
~ The School for Good and Evil
"Midway upon the journey of our lifeI found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more."
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." ~ The Gunslinger [The Dark Tower #1] by Stephen King
How is A Tale of Two Cities not in this list?
For me it was a tie between Moby Dick and Pride and Prejudice. But I have to give an honorable mention to Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson:“I exist!”
The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan