It’s Monday here at the Eclectic Eccentric and the start of the work week for most of you out in the world so I thought as a little bit of extra motivation for both you and for me I would share some of my favorite opening lines in all of literature in this month’s edition of Wily Wordplay. As always the quotes are in no particular order. Enjoy!
- “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
- “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
- “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson
- “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.”- The Princess Bride, William Goldman
- “All this happened, more or less.” -Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- “All children, except one, grow up.”- J.M. Barrie: Peter Pan (1911)
- “Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”- Albert Camus: The Stranger (1946)
- “It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.” —Paul Auster, City of Glass
- “I am an invisible man.” —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
- “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.” –Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Did I leave out one of your favorites? Feel free to leave it in the comments section below.