1. Great First Lines Peggy Korman CNM

2. First lines of a novel. The first line sets the scene, the tone, sheds just enough light on the upcoming story to make you keep reading.

3. A great first line stays with you long after you finish the novel.

4. “I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong hills.”

5. Out of Africa

6. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

7. A Tale of Two Cities

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

9. Pride and Prejudice

10. “All children, except one, grow up.”

11. Peter Pan

12. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

13. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

14. “Call me Ishmael.”

15. Moby Dick

16. “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and 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?”

17. Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland

18. “On May 18,1860, the day when the Republican Party would nominate its candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln was up early.”

19. Team of Rivals