Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is opening lines. I’m not someone who typically remembers first lines of a book, so I don’t have ten that really stick out to me. As a result, here are four opening lines from books that I remember, for better or worse:
The boy was fifteen.
Conrad Richter, A Light in the Forest
I remember this quote distinctly because it was the first line in a book that I didn’t enjoy that we read in eighth grade and somehow I knew that I wouldn’t like it from the first line. When someone asks me about a first line that I remember, I always think of this one because it takes me back to how I felt when I read this book in eighth grade.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
This is a quote that I remember, with a much more positive association from the first one on my list. I read Pride in Prejudice (also in eighth grade for a classical book report) and since then have read numerous retellings of this story that always play on this quote in some way.
Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene…
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
In some schools, students memorize The Gettysburg Address. In my school, every ninth grader memorized the prologue of Romeo and Juliet and had to say it in front of the entire class. To this day, I can still quote the entire prologue to this play. As awful as reciting to the entire class sounds, I actually really enjoyed reading this play in school since I was chosen to read as Juliet in class.
There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.
Veronica Roth, Divergent
I couldn’t quote this line directly, but somehow years later, I still remember this opening scene from Divergent.
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Beauty and the Bean Boots 
All four are great first lines. 🙂
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Great post
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I have always loved that first line from Divergent.
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