The 100 best first lines from novels

American Book Review has listed the 100 best first lines from novels:

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

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)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

4. 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. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

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

But I call Shennanigans. The ABR doesn’t include anywhere in their list Capote’s opener from Breakfast at Tiffany’s:

 

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.

See the full list.

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