<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/a9d95dbe-02bb-474b-883b-7b6b87120a79/769B278F-1D64-4356-93F4-C2F7E7E945C6/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/04/news/doc43e3e6b004381080724526.txt" href="http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/04/news/doc43e3e6b004381080724526.txt" style="font-size: 11px;">www.pantagraph.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/02/04/news/doc43e3e6b004381080724526.txt"><DIV class="headline1">100 best first lines from novels</DIV> <DIV class="subheadline"></DIV> <DIV class="byline">By American Book Review</DIV> <TABLE cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" class="bigadtable"><TBODY><TR><TD class="bigadheader">Advertisement</TD></TR><TR><TD id="bigadcontent" class="bigadcontent"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><BR /><DIV>Following is a list of the 100 best first lines from novels, as decided by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University:</DIV><BR /><DIV>1. Call me Ishmael. -- Herman Melville, <I>Moby-Dick</I> (1851)</DIV><BR /><DIV>2. 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, <I>Pride and Prejudice</I> (1813)</DIV><BR /><DIV>3. A screaming comes across the sky. � Thomas Pynchon, <I>Gravity's Rainbow</I> (1973)</DIV><BR /><DIV>4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buend�a was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. � Gabriel Garc�a M�rquez, <I>One Hundred Years of Solitude</I> (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)</DIV><BR /><DIV>5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. � Vladimir Nabokov, <I>Lolita</I> (1955)</DIV></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/769B278F-1D64-4356-93F4-C2F7E7E945C6/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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