It was literature itself that saved a lot of us, and to hold a glass to cheers that, here are our ten favorite opening lines from books that we love:
1. “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” – Love In The Time Of Cholera, Leo Tolstoy
2. “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, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” – A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
3. “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” – Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
4. “This is a story about a man named Eddie and it begins at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” – The Five People You Meet In Heaven, Mitch Albom
5. “Whatever falls from the sky above, thou shall not curse it. That includes the rain. No matter what might pour down, no matter how heavy the cloudburst or how icy the sleet, you should never ever utter profanities against whatever the heavens might have in store for us.” – The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak
6. “Amma / is walking along the promenade of the waterway that bisects her city, a few early morning barges cruise slowly by.” – Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
7. “I don’t know why I’m writing this. That’s not true. Maybe I do know and just don’t want to admit it to myself. I don’t even know what to call it – this thing I’m writing.” – The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides
8. “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist. They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities.” – Circe, Madeline Miller
9. “The morning has dawned dreary and gray, with a mist that hung over the streets of the capital. It was, the media correspondents all agreed, appropriate for a funeral.” – Majesty, Katharine McGee
10. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
