100 Iconic First Lines from Books

That Hook You Instantly

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A great first line is a promise.

It says, "Trust me." Keep reading. This is going to be worth your time.

Some first lines are so famous they've become part of our culture.

"Call me Ishmael." "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."

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

I've collected 100 of the best opening lines from fiction and non-fiction—lines that are funny, shocking, mysterious, romantic, and unforgettable. Some are from books I've read and reviewed. Others are on my TBR because the first line alone convinced me.

Whether you're looking for inspiration, your next read, or just want to appreciate the craft of a perfect opener, this list is for you.

Many of these books are also available on Kindle Unlimited. Try Kindle Unlimited Free for 30 days!

First Lines from Classic Literature

The openings that have stood the test of time.

Best First Lines from Contemporary Fiction

Modern classics with opening lines that grab you.

1. The circus arrives without warning. – Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus.
2. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
3. 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. —Paul Auster, City of Glass
4. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved

1. It was a pleasure to burn. —Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
2. It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22
3. You better not never tell nobody but God. —Alice Walker, The Color Purple
4. In a corner of the city, inside a tall, narrow house at Number 4 rue Vauborel, on the sixth and highest floor, a sightless sixteen-year-old named Marie-Laure LeBlanc kneels over a low table covered entirely with a model. – Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See  Review
5. A bank robbery. A hostage drama. A stairwell full of police officers on their way to storm an apartment. It was easy to get to this point, much easier than you might think. All it took was one single really bad idea. –Fredrik Backman, Anxious People  Review
6. When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games  Review
7. Punctually at midday he opened his bag and spread out his professional equipment, which consisted of a dozen cowrie shells, a square piece of cloth with obscure mystic charts on it, a notebook and a bundle of Palmyra writing. – R.K.Narayan, Malgudi Days.  Review
8. On the White House roof, tucked into a corner of the Promenade, there’s a bit of loose paneling right on the edge of the Solarium. – Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue  Review
9. Here is the house. – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye  Review
10. ON THE DAY THEY WERE GOING TO KILL him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of Death Foretold  Review
11. Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. – John Green, The Fault In Our Stars  Review

1. MAE MOBLEY was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. – Kathryn Stockett, The Help  Review
2. Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford.  – Matt Haig, The Midnight Library  Review
3. “If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.” – Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale  Review
4. WHO AM I? And how, I wonder, will this story end? – Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook  Review
5. Through the long, lonely years of my childhood, when my father’s palace seemed to tighten its grip around me until I couldn’t breathe, I would go to my nurse and ask for a story. – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions  Review
6. "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." — Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
7. "History has failed us, but no matter." — Min Jin Lee, Pachinko
8. "My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist." — Tayari Jones, Silver Sparrow

Most Memorable Opening Lines in Fiction

Most memorable lines that never leave you. 

1. I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have. – The perks of Being a Wallflower  Review
2. The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. – Delia Owens, Where The Crawdads sing  Review
3. The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, and neckline darkened with his own effort. – Britt Benett, The Vanishing Half  Review
4. That night, when Mrs. Chamberlain called, Elmira could only piece together the words “take Briar somewhere” and “pay you double”. – Kiley Reid, Such a fun age. 
5. There are 158 footsteps between the bus stop and home but it can stretch to 180 if you aren’t in a hurry, like maybe if you’re wearing platform shoes. – Jojo Moyes, Me Before You.

1.  I have a fatal flaw. – Emily Henry, Beach Read.
2. "The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created." - "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
3. "Call me Ishmael." -  "Call Me By Your Name" by André Aciman
4. "It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit and ended up with my being eaten alive by a recluse spider." - Karen Russell, "Swamplandia" 
5. "The end of the world started when a pegasus landed on the hood of my car." - Rick Riordan, "The Blood of Olympus" 
6. "When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him." - Cormac McCarthy, "The Road" 
7. "In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street." - Celeste Ng, "Everything I Never Told You" 
8. "On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope." - Jeffrey Eugenides, "The Virgin Suicides"
9. "The first time Yvonne heard herself called a nigger, she was eleven years old." - Colson Whitehead, "The Nickel Boys" 
10. "The taximan is never polite, never says, 'Excuse me, madam, but could you possibly direct me to Pine Street?'" - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "Americanah" 
11. "The screw through Cinder's ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle." - Marissa Meyer, "Cinder" 

1. "It was the day my grandmother exploded." - "The Crow Road" by Iain Banks
2. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
3. The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. - Donna Tartt, The Secret History
4. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. - Dodie Smith, I Capture The Castle 
5. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." — Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." — Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Best First Lines of Mystery Novels

First lines that make you nervous—in the best way.

1. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
2. WELCOME TO THE beautiful Sinclair family. No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure. – E.Lockhart, We Were Liars  Review
3. Linnet Ridgeway! "That's Her." said Mr. Burnaby, the landlord of the Three Crowns.- Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile  Review
4. It was five o'clock on a winter's morning in Syria. – Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express  Review
5. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” – Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca  Review
6. “Oh dear,” Linus Baker said, wiping the sweat from his brow, “This is most unusual.” – T J Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea  Review

1. ALICIA BERENSON WAS THIRTY-THREE YEARS OLD when she killed her husband. – Alex Michaelides, The Silent patient  Review
2. Her husband’s almost home. He’ll catch her this time. – A J Finn, The Woman In The Window  Review
3. It is the absolute shittiest day for a walk. – Rachel Hawkins, The Wife Upstairs
4. Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.- Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger  Review
5. Your house glows at night like everything inside is on fire. – Ashley Audrain, The Push
6. Jack Torrance though: Officious little prick.- Stephen King, The Shining
7. Pinch myself and say I am AWAKE once an hour – Sarah Pinsborough, Behind Her Eyes
8. "This is not for you." - Mark Z. Danielewski, "House of Leaves" 

1. "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." - The Gunslinger by Stephen King 
2. "When I think of my wife, I always think of her head." - Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
3. "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." — Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

Best First Lines in Books (Non-Fiction)

True stories that start with unforgettable lines.

1. I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving. - Michelle Obama, Becoming  Review
2. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. —Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar  Review
3. But, you may say we asked you to speak about women and fiction-what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own? – Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own  Review
4. The fate of British Cycling changed one day in 2003. – James Clear, Atomic Habits  Review

1. My strongest memory is not a memory. - Tara Westover, Educated  Review
2. The fact that I spelled subpoena, suhpeena, may suggest I am not qualified to tell this story.- Chanel Miller, Know My Name  Review
3. When you and I are together you often ask me questions about many things and I try to answer them. – Jawaharlal Nehru, Letters from a father to his daughter.  Review
4. THEY CALLED D HIM Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname. – Elie Wiesel, Night.  Review
5. Roseto Valfortore lies one hundred miles southeast of Rome in the Apennine foothills of the Italian province of Foggia. – Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers.  Review
6. In the pages of history there lives no city more glamorous than Babylon – George S.Calson, The Richest man in Babylon.  Review
7. About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens.  Review
8. Charles Bukowski was an alcoholic, a womanizer, a chronic gambler, a lout, a cheapskate, a deadbeat, and on his worst days, a poet. – Mark Manson, The Subtle art of not giving a f*ck.  Review
9. Okoloma was one of my greatest childhood friends. – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, We should all be feminists  Review
10. The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves. - Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie.  Review

1. You know you have to read “between the lines” to get the most out of anything. - Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
2. I didn’t want it to end. - Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary
3. The aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” not only embraces the whole of a man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. - James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
4. Listen, Paula, I am going to tell you a story, so that when you wake up you will not feel so lost. - Isabel Allende, Paula.
5. “I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.” - Nick Horby, Fever Pitch
6. A few months after my twenty-first birthday, a stranger called to give me the news. - Barack Obama, Dreams from my Father
7. Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag. - Diane Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind

• What makes a great first line?
  A great first line creates curiosity, establishes tone, or introduces conflict. It makes you need to know what happens next.
• What is the most famous first line in literature?
  "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and "Call me Ishmael" from Moby-Dick are among the most quoted.
• Why do first lines matter?
  First lines hook readers. In a bookstore or online sample, the opening line often determines whether someone keeps reading or moves on.
• Which book has the best opening line?
  That's subjective! But Pride and Prejudice, 1984, Harry Potter, and The Fault in Our Stars consistently appear on "best first lines" lists.
• Can I use these quotes for Instagram or Pinterest?
  Yes! These are short quotes perfect for sharing. Just credit the author and book.

Why First Lines Matter

Writers agonize over opening lines for a reason.

A first line is an invitation. It sets the tone. It makes a promise. The best ones stay with us forever—we quote them, tattoo them, use them as Instagram captions.

This list is my love letter to great beginnings. Some of these books changed my life. Others are still on my TBR because their first lines alone convinced me they're worth reading.

If you discover a new favorite from this list, come back and tell me. I'd love to know which opening line hooked you.

Happy reading. 📚