Best First Lines
- Beschreibung
- Novels that have excellent or memorable first lines. Started from American Book Review's 100 Best First Lines from Novels (http://americanbookreview.org/100bestlines.asp)
1
von Shirley Jackson
9,740 Mitglieder
431 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 17
Bewertung 6.03
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- 2 Members
- ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- ManWithAnAgenda: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
2
von Pat Conroy
5,819 Mitglieder
108 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 34
Bewertung 5.1
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- 2 Members
- ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- ManWithAnAgenda: My wound is geography.
3
von Charles Williams
776 Mitglieder
9 Rezensionen
3.8
Globaler Rang 67
Bewertung 3.04
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-16, 10:52 AM
- Member
- ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- ManWithAnAgenda: The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.
4
von Madhuri Vijay
456 Mitglieder
18 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 72
Bewertung 2.83
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-16, 10:51 AM
- Member
- ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- ManWithAnAgenda: I am thirty years old and that is nothing.
5
von Henry James
10,818 Mitglieder
125 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 76
Bewertung 2.68
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-16, 10:52 AM
- Member
- ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- ManWithAnAgenda: Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
6
von Sylvia Plath
28,105 Mitglieder
502 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 19
Bewertung 5.92
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:38 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
7
von Jane Austen
80,613 Mitglieder
1,369 Rezensionen
½ 4.4
Globaler Rang 1
Bewertung 16.02
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 12:07 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
8
72,193 Mitglieder
1,170 Rezensionen
3.8
Globaler Rang 22
Bewertung 5.71
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
9
von Dodie Smith
9,201 Mitglieder
294 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 4
Bewertung 11.75
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:45 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
10
von L. P. Hartley
2,329 Mitglieder
38 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 54
Bewertung 3.6
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:44 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
11
von Jean Rhys
8,457 Mitglieder
254 Rezensionen
½ 3.5
Globaler Rang 30
Bewertung 5.25
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:54 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.
12
von Carson McCullers
10,719 Mitglieder
243 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 33
Bewertung 5.19
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:52 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together.
13
von Virginia Woolf
10,608 Mitglieder
175 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 59
Bewertung 3.38
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:53 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: 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.
14
von Herman Melville
35,549 Mitglieder
540 Rezensionen
3.8
Globaler Rang 16
Bewertung 6.07
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 12:07 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Call me Ishmael.
15
von Nathanael West
775 Mitglieder
33 Rezensionen
½ 3.4
Globaler Rang 46
Bewertung 4.23
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:09 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.
16
von Anita Brookner
558 Mitglieder
18 Rezensionen
½ 3.5
Globaler Rang 55
Bewertung 3.57
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:23 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.
17
von J. D. Salinger
69,536 Mitglieder
1,079 Rezensionen
3.8
Globaler Rang 18
Bewertung 5.97
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:11 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: 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.
18
von Alice Walker
19,720 Mitglieder
336 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 35
Bewertung 5.07
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: You better not never tell nobody but God.
19
von C. S. Lewis
25,388 Mitglieder
257 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 2
Bewertung 14.23
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:25 PM
- 6 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it
20
von Laurence Sterne
7,665 Mitglieder
113 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 21
Bewertung 5.75
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:13 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.
21
von Toni Morrison
22,829 Mitglieder
406 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 26
Bewertung 5.49
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: 124 was spiteful.
22
6,224 Mitglieder
115 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 37
Bewertung 4.97
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:31 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
23
30,516 Mitglieder
449 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 25
Bewertung 5.52
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: 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.
24
von James Joyce
21,206 Mitglieder
217 Rezensionen
½ 3.7
Globaler Rang 23
Bewertung 5.67
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:12 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
25
von Albert Camus
35,518 Mitglieder
507 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 28
Bewertung 5.34
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:17 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Mother died today.
26
von Graham Greene
6,522 Mitglieder
171 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 38
Bewertung 4.94
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:28 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
27
von Daniel Defoe
24,876 Mitglieder
322 Rezensionen
½ 3.6
Globaler Rang 39
Bewertung 4.9
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:29 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.
28
von George Eliot
17,713 Mitglieder
330 Rezensionen
4.2
Globaler Rang 40
Bewertung 4.86
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:30 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
29
von Ray Bradbury
53,903 Mitglieder
998 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 7
Bewertung 10.35
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:28 PM
- 5 Members
- hipdeep, merrystar, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: It was a pleasure to burn.
30
von Kurt Vonnegut
44,012 Mitglieder
704 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 11
Bewertung 8.07
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:21 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: All this happened, more or less.
31
von Virginia Woolf
20,628 Mitglieder
330 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 36
Bewertung 5.03
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:21 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
32
von Franz Kafka
19,887 Mitglieder
237 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 50
Bewertung 3.79
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:10 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
33
von Mark Twain
42,956 Mitglieder
518 Rezensionen
3.9
Globaler Rang 10
Bewertung 8.53
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:09 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.
34
von George Orwell
81,946 Mitglieder
1,272 Rezensionen
4.2
Globaler Rang 5
Bewertung 11.2
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 12:10 PM
- 5 Members
- Aquila, hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
35
von Vladimir Nabokov
31,704 Mitglieder
563 Rezensionen
4.1
Globaler Rang 44
Bewertung 4.32
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 12:09 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.
36
von Thomas Pynchon
10,995 Mitglieder
194 Rezensionen
½ 3.7
Globaler Rang 57
Bewertung 3.46
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:15 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
37
von Marcel Proust
11,131 Mitglieder
183 Rezensionen
4.2
Globaler Rang 64
Bewertung 3.21
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:22 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: For a long time, I went to bed early.
38
von Salman Rushdie
12,039 Mitglieder
138 Rezensionen
½ 3.7
Globaler Rang 41
Bewertung 4.67
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:37 PM
- 3 Members
- aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
39
19,115 Mitglieder
346 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 13
Bewertung 7.51
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:24 PM
- 4 Members
- hipdeep, aethercowboy, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
40
von Joseph Conrad
9,033 Mitglieder
115 Rezensionen
½ 3.7
Globaler Rang 69
Bewertung 2.94
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-15, 01:43 PM
- 2 Members
- aethercowboy, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- aethercowboy: He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull.
41
von J. R. R. Tolkien
94,343 Mitglieder
1,189 Rezensionen
½ 4.3
Globaler Rang 3
Bewertung 13.63
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-17, 01:24 PM
42
von Lloyd Alexander
7,897 Mitglieder
168 Rezensionen
4
Globaler Rang 32
Bewertung 5.19
Hinzugefügt 2022-06-17, 01:23 PM
- 3 Members
- hipdeep, ahef1963, ManWithAnAgenda
- Erklärungen
- hipdeep: Taran wanted to make a sword, but Coll, charged with the practical side of his education, decided on horseshoes.