Opening Lines of Novels

Question 1

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Answer 1

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Question 2

I’m pretty much fucked.

Answer 2

The Martian

Question 3

It was a pleasure to burn.

Answer 3

Fahrenheit 451

Question 4

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Answer 4

1984

Question 5

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

Answer 5

Anna Karenina

Question 6

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

Answer 6

The Great Gatsby

Question 7

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.

Answer 7

Middlesex

Question 8

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

Answer 8

The Go-Between

Question 9

This is my favourite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

Answer 9

The Princess Bride

Question 10

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

Answer 10

The Crow Road

Question 11

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Answer 11

Pride and Prejudice

Question 12

All children, except one, grow up.

Answer 12

Peter Pan

Question 13

As Gregor Sansa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

Answer 13

The Metamorphosis

Question 14

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.

Answer 14

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Question 15

Justice? You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.

Answer 15

A Frolic Of His Own

Question 16

In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of the three.

Answer 16

Howl’s Moving Castle

Question 17

All this happened, more or less.

Answer 17

Slaughterhouse-Five

Question 18

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created.

Answer 18

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Question 19

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Answer 19

The Hobbit

Question 20

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to hear is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me…..

Answer 20

The Catcher in the Rye

Question 21

You better not never tell nobody but God.

Answer 21

The Colour Purple

Question 22

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Answer 22

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Question 23

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.

Answer 23

David Copperfield

Question 24

The year 1866 was signalized by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.

Answer 24

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Question 25

‘Where’s Papa going with that as?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.

Answer 25

Charlotte’s Web

Question 26

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

Answer 26

Breakfast of Champions

Question 27

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

Answer 27

The Trial

Question 28

Mother died today.

Answer 28

The Stranger

Question 29

They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.

Answer 29

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Question 30

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Answer 30

Fear and Loathing in las Vegas

Question 31

The sky above the port was the colour of television, turned to a dead channel.

Answer 31

Neuromancer

Question 32

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

Answer 32

The Bell Jar

Question 33

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

Answer 33

2001: A Space Odyssey

Question 34

They shoot the white girl first.

Answer 34

Paradise

Question 35

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Answer 35

Jane Eyre

Question 36

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.

Answer 36

The Outsiders

Question 37

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

Answer 37

The End of the Affair

Question 38

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

Answer 38

The Hunger Games

Question 39

In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.

Answer 39

And Then There Were None

Question 40

My suffering left me sad ad gloomy.

Answer 40

Life of Pi

Question 41

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.

Answer 41

A River Runs Through It

Question 42

Under certain circumstance there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

Answer 42

The Portrait of a Lady

Question 43

The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving slow….

Answer 43

The Invisible Man

Question 44

Snowman wakes before the dawn.

Answer 44

Oryx and Crake

Question 45

It was love at first sight.

Answer 45

Catch-22

Question 46

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of the head.

Answer 46

A Confederacy of Dunces

Question 47

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

Answer 47

Wide Sargasso Sea

Question 48

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Answer 48

Middlemarch

Question 49

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.

Answer 49

Ethan Frome

Question 50

A screaming comes across the sky.

Answer 50

Gravity’s Rainbow