10 Opening Lines Questions

1. “Now is the winter of our discontent / made glorious summer by this son of york.”

RICHARD III (William Shakespeare).

2. “Call me Ishmael.”

MOBY DICK (Herman Melville).

3. “We were somewhere near Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”

FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (Hunter S. Thompson).

4. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

HARRY POTTER & THE SORCERER’S STONE (J.K. Rowling).

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

1984 (George Orwell).

6. “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).

7. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

A TALE OF TWO CITIES (Charles Dickens).

8. “It was the finest outhouse in the Dakotas. It had to be.”

EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES (Tom Robbins).

9. “Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth.”

THE MALTESE FALCON (Dashiell Hammett).

10. “Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.”

THE ILIAD (Homer).