Some Great First Lines in Literature

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

• I put these together a while ago, and then didn't do anything else with them.  I'm not sure what I was up to, so I'm posting what I have, simply because it is a niuce read.   A Tale of Two Cities is still a stellar entrance.

All children, except one, grow up. Peter Pan

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. Madeline/Bemelmans

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.Wind in Willows/Grahame

In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon.Goodnight Moon/MW Brown

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?" Alice in Wonderland

When Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.Stuart Little EB White

This is George. He lived in Africa. Curious George HA REy

Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong

The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Black Beauty

I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house. Kidnapped

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 epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so. Tale of Two Cities

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. Portrait of the Artist

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. Great Expectations

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.  Personal History David Copperfield

The day broke gray and dull. Of Human Bondage

Now, what I want is Facts. Hard Times

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. Good Soldier, FM Ford

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream. Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan

I am an invisible man. Invisible Man R Ellison

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there". In Cold Blood

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green. Of Mice and Men

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. To Kill a Mockingbird

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. Sound and the Fury

Isaac McCaslin, 'Uncle Ike', past seventy and nearer eighty than he ever corroborated any more, a widower now and uncle to half a county and father to no one ---- this was not something participated in or even seen by himself, but by his elder cousin, McCaslin Edmonds, grandson of Isaac's father's sister and so descended by the distaff, yet not withstanding the inheritor, and in his time the bequestor, of that which some had thought then and some still thought should have been Isaac's, since his was the name in which the title to the land had first been granted from the Indian patent and which some of the descendants of his father's slave still bore in the land. Go Down Moses

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett

To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. Grapes of Wrath

Comments

[Jeff Donlan]

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. -- Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon.

[Jeff Donlan]

Wait! I copied and pasted too much ...

"A screaming comes across the sky."