Stylist's pick of the best hundred first lines from books, from classic to modern literature.

The Best 100 Opening Lines From Books

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No Woman, No Cry: My life With Bob Marley

Brighton Rock

The Year Of Magical Thinking

I Capture The Castle

The Siren And Selected Writings

Still Life With Woodpecker

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Many Lives, Many Masters

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

A Tale Of Two Cities

Eureka Street

The Catcher in the Rye

Rebecca

Anna Karenina

Pride & Prejudice

Mrs Dalloway

Back When We Were Grownups

The Great Gatsby

The Bell Jar

Moby-Dick

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

The Time Travellers Wife

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

The Color Purple

Their Eyes Were Watching God

A Room of One's Own

The Secret Life of Bees

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

A Certain Slant of Light

Emma

Frankenstein

Revolutionary Road

Love in the Time of Cholera

Wuthering Heights

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Vanity Fair

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Little Women

Lolita

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Charlotte's Web

A Clockwork Orange

Matilda

Atonement

Where the Heart Is

The Princess Bride

Peter Pan and Wendy

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Breakfast of Champions

Choke

The Crow Road

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

The Godfather

Gone With The Wind

1984

The Invisible Man

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

Thank You for Smoking: A Novel

Gravity's Rainbow

Scaramouche

2001 - A Space Odyssey

Northanger Abbey

Middlemarch

Cat's Eye

Catch-22

Herzog

The Big Sleep

All The Pretty Horses

Old Man's War

American Psycho

The War Of The Worlds

This Side Of Paradise

The Thief of Always

The Exorcist

The Grapes of Wrath

I Am Legend

Swann's Way

The Bible

Jane Eyre

The Road To Wellville

Life of Pi

Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal in Bohemia

Slaughterhouse-Five

Smilla's Sense Of Snow

Watership Down

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Twelfth Night

Desert Of The Heart

Enduring Love

Disgrace

A Christmas Carol

The Dain Curse

The Clown

The Blind Assassin

Bastard Our Of Carolina

Celebrity special: opening lines from books

The best opening lines from books, as chosen by celebrities