9 Most Famous Opening Lines from Books

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

"Call me Ishmael." 

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

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

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

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

1984 by George Orwell

"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."  

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested."

The Trial by Franz Kafka

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

Murphy by Samuel Beckett

"I am an invisible man."  

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison