Sunday, August 31, 2008

The American Book Review's 100 Greatest Opening Lines

Including some personal favorites:

2. It 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 Prejudice (1813)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

16. 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. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)


...and buried all the way at 100...

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. —Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

3 comments:

Carlton Farmer said...

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Liz Waggoner said...

101. "So, you boys want to help me on another case?" Fenton Hardy, internationally known detective, smiled at his teenage sons.

Carlton Farmer said...

Well played.