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First lines

Test your knowledge of some memorable opening lines from fiction - match the first line with the book that it comes from.

 

Check your answers here

'Mr and Mrs Dursley, of Number Four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.'

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...'

'Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.'

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

'Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening Hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.'

'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'

'Call me Ishmael.'

'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?''

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.'

'James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.'

'When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.'

'It was a dark and stormy night'

'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.'

'Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.'

'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'

'When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.'

'All children, except one, grow up.'

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