Opening Lines of Books

Johanna gave me a gift a year or so ago. It's called "The Writer's Block." It is a small, thick, square, block of writing starters and ideas to get the pen moving on the paper.
One of the suggested exercises is to identify some of your favorite opening lines of books. And then you are told to write 5 of your own.

Well after giving this much thought I decided to share my favorites list with you. Here are my favorite opening lines:

1. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
-Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

2. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
-City of Glass by Paul Auster

3. 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.
-A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

5. This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
-The Princess Bride by William Golding


Some of my favorite more modern ones are:

1. I sat across the table from the man who had battered and tortured and brutalized me nearly thirty years ago.
Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra

2. There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess - I'm the guy who can get it for you.
-Rita Hayworht and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King.

3. My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

4. 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.
-The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

5. Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn’t know that my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were lock in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would try to live our lives.
-Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam