It is a truth universally acknowledged \u2013 and a must \u2013 that a good book has a good first line. With it comes an extraordinary responsibility: not merely to begin the story, but to establish the writer\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asking someone to name the best first line of all time tends to make people skittish. So I asked myself a slightly different question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are the three best first lines in all of fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer, inevitably, depends on what we mean by best.<\/em> A first line can be memorable because it is beautiful, because it is startling, because it introduces a voice we immediately want to follow. Or because, in a handful of words, it manages to contain an entire world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My three choices do a little of all these things. They are lines that announce themselves with such confidence that, having read them once, you are unlikely ever to forget them. More importantly, each makes a promise to the reader and then spends the rest of the novel keeping it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in no particular order, here they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Call me Ishmael.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Herman Melville\u2019s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.<\/em> Three words. No description, no explanation, no elaborate scene-setting; just a voice speaking directly to us, with the strange intimacy of someone introducing himself before telling us something important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n George Orwell\u2019s Nineteen Eighty-Four;<\/em> the first half is perfectly ordinary. The second quietly destroys that sense of ordinary life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Tolstoy\u2019s Anna Karenina;<\/em> the line sounds almost like a proverb, but it is also a thesis statement for one of the great novels about love, marriage, jealousy and unhappiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three openings, three voices, three very different kinds of invitation. And perhaps that is what the best first lines have in common: they do not simply open a book. They open a door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three openings, three voices, three very different kinds of invitation. And perhaps that is what the best first lines have in common: they do not simply open a book. They open a door<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":"{\"authors\":[579],\"author_categories\":{\"579\":\"1\"},\"fallback_author_user\":\"2\",\"ppma_author_box_select\":\"\",\"selected_authors\":[{\"id\":579,\"display_name\":\"Dan Costinas\",\"is_guest\":0,\"category_id\":\"1\"}]}"},"categories":[49,372,123,13],"tags":[232,590,592,589,591],"ppma_author":[579],"class_list":["post-4603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-legends","category-picks","category-trails","tag-books","tag-george-orwell","tag-herman-melville","tag-opening-lines","tag-tolstoy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"authors":[{"term_id":579,"user_id":3,"is_guest":0,"slug":"dan-costinas","display_name":"Dan Costinas","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/dc.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/dc.jpg"},"author_category":"1","first_name":"Dan","last_name":"Costinas","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4605,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4603\/revisions\/4605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4603"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eurolit.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fppma_author&post=4603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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