For us book nerds, the power of the written word is a very tangible thing. And whether you prefer delving into some Hemingway and Faulkner on your morning commute, or perhaps a side of YA with your evening cuppa, you can't deny that at one point or the other, you have been touched by a work of fiction.
Literature has an amazing ability to speak to different facets of the human condition, including existential topics such as life, death, love and, of course, the ephemeral question about what humankind's purpose in life actually is.
Now, whether you're part of the lucky minority who have found some special work of prose that has managed to piece together some semblance of an answer to one of those empiric qualms or not, we all have at least one novel that has come close to unveiling some universal truths for us.
However, at one point or the other, we all neglect to pick up a book for a substantial amount of time. If that's you right now, here are 25 opening lines from some of the most famous novels in the English language that will undoubtedly have you running to the nearest bookshop for more.
1. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
2. Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
3. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
4. American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis
5. 1984 - George Orwell
6. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
7. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
8. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
9. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
10. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
11. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
12. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
13. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
14. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
15. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
16. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
17. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
18. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
19. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
20. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
21. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
22. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
23. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
24. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
25. The Shining - Stephen King
Well, I don't know about you, but that's got me headed to the bookstore on my lunch break. I mean, there's nothing like digging into a new book to get those creative juices flowing.
