Opening Lines

I have been reading a book off-and-on called, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. She says that writing involves "putting every word on trial for its life." This has inspired me to analyze and consider why a writer's work survives. To sample their genius I have collected the opening lines of a few classic, tried and true authors. I like to consider their approaches. Do they open with suspense? Do they name their characters right away? What is the tone?

Enjoy and consider these opening lines:
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1. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ~ Anna Karenina

2. "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:" ~ Ulysses

3. "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin." ~ Metamorphosis

4. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." (this is a famous one, who knows it?)

5. "Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a land owner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place." ~ Brothers Karamazov

6. "Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. " ~ The Idiot

7. "In 1815, M. Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—— He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D—— since 1806.

Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. " ~ Les Miserables

8. "Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?' " from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

9. "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her." ~ from Emma

10. "A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes." ~ The Scarlet Letter

11. "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question." ~ Jane Eyre