Results: First Impressions
Published on 05/05/2021
Have you ever started a book, and from the very first line, you were hooked? Or has the last line of a book ever stayed with you, long after you close the cover. You might enjoy this survey series, based on some of the best first lines, and last lines, ever written.
QUESTIONS
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Comments
1.
1.
It only takes one line. The first line. Instantly you are intrigued, all in and ready to read on. These first lines from popular novels did exactly this. Which of these first lines do you remember from these popular novel?
"They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they take their time." From Paradise by Toni Morrison
4%
96 votes
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." From Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
6%
131 votes
"I sent one boy to the gas chamber at Huntsville." from No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
5%
124 votes
"My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist." From Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
2%
56 votes
"We slept in what had once been the gymnasium." From The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
6%
130 votes
"All this happened, more or less." From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
7%
154 votes
None
80%
1832 votes
2.
2.
How about these first lines -- which do you remember?
"It was a dark and stormy night." From A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
23%
525 votes
"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not." From The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
5%
123 votes
"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband, nor my last." From Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter
5%
121 votes
"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children." From Beloved by Toni Morrison
4%
101 votes
"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
12%
265 votes
"He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle." From Doc by Mary Doria Russell
2%
47 votes
"The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart." From Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
2%
40 votes
None
64%
1471 votes
3.
3.
Some of the most classic books started off with classic, unforgettable first lines that instantly set the mood and hooked the reader. Which of these famous first lines are you familiar with?
'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.' The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (1951)
14%
318 votes
'Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board'. From Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
5%
105 votes
'It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York' . From The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
6%
147 votes
'Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure'. From The Outsider by Albert Camus (1942)
5%
113 votes
'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect'. From Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915)
5%
117 votes
None
73%
1669 votes
'It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.' Catch 22, Joseph Heller (1961)
9%
208 votes
4.
4.
Finally, these just might be the most famous first lines, in novels we are probably all familiar with. Which of these are you familiar with?
'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' . From Great Expectations by Charles D*ckens (1859) (Tellwut! This is really ridiculous)
39%
908 votes
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
18%
421 votes
'He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.' The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1952)
18%
416 votes
'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, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
12%
286 votes
'Call me Ishmael'. From Moby D*ck by Herman Melville (1851) (Tellwut, you have to look into the algorithm that flags words like this as "bad words")
28%
647 votes
None
49%
1135 votes
5.
5.
If you have a famous first line in a novel that has resonated with you, please share in the comments. My favourite, at least for now (it does tend to change as I read more and more) is this line that opens one of my favourite current novels, The Dry by Jane Harper: "It wasn't as though the farm hadn't seen death before, and the blow flies didn't discriminate. To them there was little difference between a carcass and a corpse." Will you comment your favourite first line?
Yes
4%
90 votes
I have a favourite, but will not leave it in the comment section
10%
232 votes
No
75%
1728 votes
Mine was actually listed
11%
250 votes
COMMENTS