Literature's Best Opening Lines

Stylist Magazine compiled a list of the best 100 opening lines from books. I picked my favorites from the list, along with pictures of the book covers; see if you can match the books to the openers.

1.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

2.

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

3.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

4.

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

5.

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

6.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”

7.

For a long time, I went to bed early."

8.

1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.”

the answers (don't cheat!)
1. j.d. salinger, catcher in the rye 2. leo tolstoy, anna karenina (the only one of these, admittedly, that i haven't read!) 3. sylvia plath, the bell jar 4. f. scott fitzgerald, the great gatsby 5. gabriel garcia marquez, love in the time of cholera 6. charlotte brontë, jane eyre 7. marcel proust, swann's way 8. emily brontë, wuthering heights