30 opening sentences of the greatest openings in international novels.

30 opening sentences of the greatest openings in international novels.

1. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of good fortune must be in need of a wife.
   Jane Austen: Pride and Contempt (1813)
2. All happy families are alike; While every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
   Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina (1878)
3. 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 age of faith, it was the age of doubt, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, it was all before us, it was nothing Before us, we were all heading toward heaven, we were all headed the other way.
   Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
4. It was a cold bright day in April, and the clock was ticking thirteen.
   George Orwell: One thousand nine hundred and eighty-four (1949)
5. It was a sweltering summer, the summer the Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
   Sylvia Plath: The Bell Bell (1963)
6. You wouldn't know anything about me without reading a book called "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", but that's not a problem. That book was written by Mr. Mark Twain, and he often told the truth.
   Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
7. If you really wanted to know, the first thing you would probably want to know is where I was born, what my sordid childhood was like, how busy my parents were, what it was like before I came, and all that David Copperfield-like nonsense. Except I don't feel like going into that, if you want the truth.
   c. Dr.. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
8. They say that when misfortunes come, they close the ranks, and so did the whites.
   Jane Rice: The Broad Sea of ​​Syracuse (1966)
9. In my early, darkest years, my father gave me advice that has been on my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing someone,” he said to me, “just remember that not all people in this world have the qualities you do.”

• F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)

1. The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

• for. B. Hartley: The Medium (1953)

1. As soon as Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from his troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a hideous insect.
   Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (1915)
2. Call me Ismail.
   Herman Melville: Moby-Dick (1851)
3. The sun has risen, for it has no other choice, over nothing new.
   Samuel Beckett: Murphy (1938)
4. It was love at first sight. The first time Yocharian saw the priest, he fell in love with him like a madman.
   Joseph Heller: Catch-22 (1961)
5. Miss Brooke had the kind of beauty that seemed to be evident in a tattered dress.
   George Eliot: Middlemarch (1871)
6. All children, except one, grow.
   JM Barry: Peter Pan (1911)
7. Under a certain circumstance there are few hours in life that are sweeter than the ceremonial hour known as afternoon tea.
   Henry James: Portrait of a Lady (1880)
8. Lolita, the light of my life, the fire of my desire. My sin, my soul.
   Lo-li-ta: The tip of my tongue is on a three-step journey down the palate to knock, at the third, on the folds. Lo-li-ta.
   Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (1955)
9. It was inevitable, the smell of bitter almonds reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
   Gabriel García Márquez: Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
10. They're out there. Black boys in white jumpsuits are up before me to commit sex acts in the hallway and wipe them off before I can catch them.
    Ken Kesey: Someone Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)
11. I'm an open shutter camera, totally passive, recording and not thinking.
    Christopher Isherwood: Farewell to Berlin (1939)
12. Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was drunk with eloquence, drunk with affection and quarrelsome.
    Sinclair Lewis: Elmer Gantry (1926)
13. A green hunting hood was pressed against the top of the flesh balloon of one of the heads.
    John F. Kennedy Tolle: Pact of Fools (1980)
14. The hail passed reluctantly over the land, and the shrinking mist revealed an army stretched out over the hills, resting.
    Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
15. That was the day my grandmother blew up.
    Line Banks: The Rook's Way (1992)
16. The headmaster had left the village, and everyone seemed to be sorry.
    Thomas Hardy: Jude the Submerged (1895)
17. It was not possible to go for a walk that day.
    Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre (1847)
18. My mom passed away today, or maybe yesterday, I'm not sure.
    Albert Camus: The Stranger (1946)
19. An old man was fishing alone in a small boat in the Gulf Stream, and he had gone eighty-four days without getting a single fish.
    Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
20. All this has happened, more or less.
    Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Number Five (1969)