first lines

dedicated to nonah



See whether you can recognize these first lines from novels:



1. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.



2. 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.



3. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.



4. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.



5. 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.



6. 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.



7. 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.



8. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.



9. It was a pleasure to burn.



10. You better not never tell nobody but God.



answers: 1. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813) 2. Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa) 3. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett) 4. George Orwell, 1984 (1949) 5. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) 6. J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) 7. Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900) 8. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911) 9. Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953) 10. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)





I love number 9!!