90+ Best Opening Lines in Books

The first sentence of a novel is more than just an introduction—it’s an invitation into another world. A powerful opening line can set the tone, establish a voice, and hook the reader instantly. In this article, we’ve collected some of the most unforgettable and iconic first lines ever written, organized by century and style. Whether you’re a literature lover, a writer seeking inspiration, or simply curious, these famous openings are sure to resonate.

Best Opening Lines in Books of All Time

• “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 (1813)
• “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”—A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)
• “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”—Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997)
• “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”—1984 by George Orwell (1949)
• “It began, as it often does, with a woman putting on her shoes.”—The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta (2011)
• “The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.”—2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968)
• “The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”—Blood Rites by Jim Butcher (2004)

Best First Lines of Books From the 17th Century

• “Who’s there?”—Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1603)
• “Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.”—Othello by William Shakespeare (1603)
• “If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die.”—Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (1602)
• “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!”—Henry V by William Shakespeare (1600)
• “All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold, But my outside to behold.”—The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (1600)
• “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”—Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (1599)
• “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”—Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1597)
• “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”—Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1597)
• “Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”—Richard III by William Shakespeare (1597)
• “In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack…”—Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605)
• “I was exceedingly glad the other day to receive a letter from my dear friend Montague, which put me in hopes of seeing him soon.”—Volpone by Ben Jonson (1606)
• “When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”—Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606)
• “I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.”—King Lear by William Shakespeare (1608)
• “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”—The Holy Bible (King James Version) (1611)
• “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”—As You Like It by William Shakespeare (1623)
• “To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.”—Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1603)
• “Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world…”—Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)
• “I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till after a considerable degree of attention has been paid to the style.”—The History of the Royal Society by Thomas Sprat (1667)
• “As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep.”—The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

Famous Opening Lines of Books From the 18th Century

• “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull.”—Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
• “I cannot but conclude that the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that ever sate or repined in a colony, and that the public is served by destroying them.”—Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)
• “It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, to see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms.”—A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (1729)
• “As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.”—The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

Best Book Opening Lines From the 19th Century

• “Call me Ishmael.”—Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
• “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”—Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
• “The cold passed reluctantly from the land.”—The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)
• “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”—Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1830)  
• “Thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northamptonshire, and thereby raise her own and her family’s fortune.”—Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814) 
• “My father’s family have been settled in this country, as gentlemen, for a very long time indeed.”—Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861)
• “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”—David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
• “The railway station at St. Ogg’s was no very splendid affair; the passenger traffic was so scanty that the porters loitered there for hours…”—The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860)
• “In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Trent…”—Adam Bede by George Eliot (1859)
• “Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, sat up in his dressing-gown by the fireplace.”—The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)  
• “The door opened, and a young man entered; he advanced to the middle of the room, and there paused.”—The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
• “It was about noon, my host said, when we first caught sight of the prison.”—Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
• “The year is 1858—sixty years from the date at which this narrative begins.”—North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854-55)

Famous First Lines of Books From the 20th Century

• “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”—The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)
• “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice…”—The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
• “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning…”—The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)
• “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”—Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
• “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”—Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
• “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.”—The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
• “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”—I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
• “I am an invisible man.”—Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
• “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”—The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (1953)
• “It was a pleasure to burn.”—Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
• “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”—Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
• “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I had separated.”—On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
• “It was love at first sight.”—Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
• “It was a dark and stormy night.”—A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
• “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”—The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
• “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember…”—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)
• “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)
• “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”—The Gunslinger by Stephen King (1982)
• “The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”—Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
• “124 was spiteful.”—Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
• “I am not a prince, I am a man.”—The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (1991)
• “They shoot the white girl first.”—Paradise by Toni Morrison (1997)

Greatest Opening Lines in 21st Century Literature

• “I could tell you a story.”—Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001)
• “I am the product of a generation born in the 1970s.”—The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (2002)
• “I have a terrible feeling that this is the last time we are going to have dinner together.”—The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)
• “Here is a small fact: You are going to die.”—The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
• “The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”—The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005)
• “I am the last of my kind.”—The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
• “In the beginning, there was nothing.”—The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
• “I never meant to hurt anyone.”—The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
• “The magic was a part of them both, as it always is with those who learn the real tricks of life.”—The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (2011)
• “She was to go to Paris as a witness.”—The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure (2013)
• “The rest of the world is composed of stories.”—Storyteller by Jodi Picoult (2013)
• “I was born in a house my father built.”—The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison (2013)

Best Short Novel Opening Lines

• “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 (1813)
•   “All this happened, more or less.”—Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
• “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (1971)
• “124 was spiteful.”—Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
• “I am an invisible man.”—Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
• “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”—The Gunslinger by Stephen King (1982)
• “The cold passed reluctantly from the land.”—The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)
• “I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man.”—Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864)
• “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York.”—Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)
• “The sky was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”—Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)
• “It was a dark and stormy night.”—A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1962)
• “I could tell you a story.”—Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001)
• “The rest of the world is composed of stories.”—Storyteller by Jodi Picoult (2013)
• “I never meant to hurt anyone.”—The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
• “I have a terrible feeling that this is the last time we are going to have dinner together.”—The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)