From the category archives:

Opening Lines

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

by Reviewer on August 30, 2009

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

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Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on August 8, 2009

Opening line: “I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train…”

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The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on July 28, 2009

Opening line: “At night I would lie bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched…”

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The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on July 24, 2009

Opening line: “When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.”

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On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin

by Derwood Hunsdale-Talbot on July 23, 2009

Opening line: “When we compare the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.”

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