complete article at following URL:  http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/03/news/doc43e3e6b004381080724526.txt 

 

100 best first lines from novels
Bloomington Pantagraph,  USA - By American Book Review

Following is a list of the 100 best first lines from novels, as decided by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University:

1. Call me Ishmael. -- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
 
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5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. — Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

 

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43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; — Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

 

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