100 Best First Lines of Novels

I'll give you the first 100, without comment. From infoplease:

1.Call me Ishmael.Herman MelvilleMoby-Dick1851
2.It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.Jane AustenPride and Prejudice1813
3.A screaming comes across the sky.Thomas PynchonGravity's Rainbow1973
4.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.Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa)One Hundred Years of Solitude1967
5.Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.Vladimir NabokovLolita1955
6.Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett)Anna Karenina1877
7.riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.James JoyceFinnegans Wake1939
8.It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.George Orwell19841949
9.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.Charles DickensA Tale of Two Cities1859
10.I am an invisible man.Ralph EllisonInvisible Man1952

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