The Sound and The Fury, by William Faulkner
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
(Faulkner's title is taken from MacBeth, where he says, "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.")

The Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge, a Story of a Man of Character, by Thomas Hardy. 

One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.

State Of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

The news of Anders Eckman's death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the stationery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

Tom glanced behind him and saw the man comng out of the Green Cage, heading his way.

Two Girls Fat And Thin, by Mary Gaitskill

I entered the strange world of Justine Shade via a message on the bulletin board in a laundromat filled with bitterness and the hot breath of dryers.

Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.

The Abstinence Teacher
by Tom Perrotta

On the first day of human sexuality, Ruth Ramsey wore a short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldn't have worn on a date -- not that she was going on a lot of dates these days -- let alone to work.

The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman
by Aldo Busi

Guiditta drags along a rag doll and stares straight ahead.

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens

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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way --- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

(Perhaps the most famous first line ever.)

Persuasion
by Jane Austen

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt, as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last centjry -- and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed -- this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:

'ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH-HALL'

'Walter Ellior, born Marc 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he had issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, Nov. 5, 1789; Mary, born Nov. 20, 1791.'

The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of a landowner from our district, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, well known in his own day (and still remembered among us) because of his dark and tragic death, which happened exactly thirteen years ago and which I shall speak of in its proper place.

The Wings of the Dove, by Henry James

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him.

The Brooklyn Follies, by Paul Auster

I was looking for a quiet place to die.

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

The Ambassadors, by Henry James

Strether's first question, when he reached the hotel, was about his friend; yet on his learning that Waymarsh was apparently not to arrive till evening he was not wholly disconcerted.

Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill

The afternoon before I left London for New York -- Rachel had flown out six weeks previously -- I was in my cubicle at work, boxing up my possessions, when a senior vice-president at the bank, an Englishman in his fifties, came to wish me well.

Maurice, by E.M. Forster

Once a term the whole school went for a walk -- that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys.

Tropic of Capricorn
by Henry Miller

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

Out Stealing Horses,
by Per Petterson

Early November.

Confessions of Zeno
by Italo Svevo

When I spoke to the doctor about my weakness for smoking he told me to begin my analysis by tracing the growth of that habit from the beginning.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers

Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic.

The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton

On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.

"Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me"
by Richard Fariña

To Athené Then.

Not a first line -- just some animal groupings:

A cloud of bats.
A crush of rhinoceruses.
A squabble of seagulls.
A parade of penguins.
An ostentation of peacocks.
An exaltation of larks.*

*This is the title of the dictionary of these terms, by James Lipton.

Here's the first line:

"Most introductory chapters are written in the well-grounded expectation that they will be blithely ignored."

The Odyssey
Homer

"Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy."

The Iliad
Homer

"Sing, O Goddess, the anger of achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans."

In Search Of Lost Time, Vol. 1, Swann's Way
by Marcel Proust

"For a long time I would go to bed early."
(For various reasons, this is one of my favorites. For one thing, it's so simple and short it belies the incredibly long endurance test that follows. Ten words, followed by 1,6 million or so. It took me two years to read all six books (with breaks to read other books of course). But also it's intriguing -- it hints at his neurosis and ill health; it tells us that he is writing this from a distance which gives us a present day to look forward to. And for such a simple statement, it gives away no sense that you're going to be exploring human emotions -- especially jealousy -- to the very end points of their effect. No one has come close to Proust in reaching deeper and deeper into human emotion (and I would add, folly).

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen
by Laurence Sterne

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing; -- that not only the production of a rational Being was concern'd in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind; -- and for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost: -- Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly, -- I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.

The Wasteland
by T.S. Eliot

"April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

The Hours
by Michael Cunningham

"She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather."

Moby Dick
by Herman Melville

"Call me Ishmael."

Ulysses
by James Joyce

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and razor lay crossed."

Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."

A Room Of One's Own
by Virginia Woolf

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction - what has that got to do with a room of one's own?

The Last Tycoon
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Though I haven't ever been on the screen I was brought up in pictures.

Travesty
by John Hawkes

No, No, Henri.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by John Berendt

He was tall, about fifty, with darkly handsome, almost sinister features: a neatly trimmed mustache, hair turning silver at the temples, and eyes so black they were like the tinted windows of a sleek limousine -- he could see out, but you couldn't see in.

The Shining
by Stephen King

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

Youth and the Bright Medusa
by Willa Cather

Don Hedger had lived for four years on the top floor of an old house on the south side of Washington Square, and nobody had ever disturbed him.

Day of the Locust
by Nathaniel West

Around quitting time, Tod Hackett heard a great din on the road outside his office.

On The Beach
by Nevil Shute

Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes of the Royal Australian Navy woke soon after dawn.

Siddhartha
by Herman Hesse

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin's son, grew up with his friend Govinda.

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon

A screaming comes across the sky.

A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

"Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert."

Paper Moon
by Joe David Brown

"They say my mama, Miss Essie Mae Loggins, was the wildest girl in Marengo County, Alabama."

V.
by Thomas Pynchon

"Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia."

The Stranger
by Albert Camus

"Mother died today."

On The Road
by Jack Kerouac

"I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up."

Funeral Rights
by Jean Genet

"The newspapers that appeared at the time of the Liberation of Paris, in August 1944, give a fair idea of what those days of childish heroism, when the body was steaming with bravura and boldness, were really like."

The Blood Oranges
by John Hawkes

"Love weaves its own tapestry, spins its own golden thread, with its own sweet breath breathes into being its mysteries -- bucolic, lusty, gentle as the eyes of daisies or thick with pain."

Interview With The Vampie
by Anne Rice

I see..." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window.

The Color Purple
by Alice Walker

"You better not tell nobody but God."

As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner

"Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file."

A Separate Peace
by John Knowles

"I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before."

Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"All this happened, more or less."

Underworld
by Don DeLillo

"He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful."

Still Life With Woodpecker
by Tom Robbins

"If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done."

The Cave
by Jose Saramago

"The man driving the truck is called Cipriano Algor, he is a potter by profession and is sixty-four years old, although he certainly does not look his age."

A Question of Upbringing
by Anthony Powell

"The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterrranean drainpipes."

The Emigrants
by W.G. Sebald

"At the end of september 1970, shortly before I took up my position in Norwich, I drove out to Hingham with Clara in search of somewhere to live."

Possession
by A. S. Byatt

"The book was thick and black and covered with dust."

Kiss of the Spider Woman
by Manuel Puig

"-Something a little strange, that's what you notice, that she's not a woman like all the others."

Long Walk To Freedom
by Nelson Mandela

"Apart from life, a strong constitution and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla."

Everything That Rises Must Converge
by Flannery O'Connor

Her doctor had told Julian's mother that she must lose twenty pounds on account of her blood pressure, so on Wednesday nights Julian had to take her downtown on the bus for a reducing class at the Y.

Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates

The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.

An Instance of the Fingerpost
by Iain Pears

Marco da Cola, gentleman of Venice, respectfully presents his greetings.

Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Dune
by Frank Herbert

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul.

A Book Of Common Prayer
by Joan Didion

I will be her witness.

Of Human Bondage
by W. Somerset Maugham

The day broke gray and dull.

Animal Farm
by George Orwell

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes.

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

Kalki
by Gore Vidal

Where to begin?

A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.

Tender is the Night
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel.

The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

Finnegans Wake
by James Joyce

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.