“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four

“ Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending “you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” Robber bride by Margaret Atwood

Unfortunately typical but: "The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation”. (The Secret History by Donna Tartt)

"Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know." (The Stranger by Albert Camus)

And this isn't strictly a first line but is the first line in the beginning of chapter one (there's one page before it that I skipped lol): "All of this happened more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true." (Slaughterhouse-V by Kurt Vonnegut)

"My mother is a fish" from As I Lay Dying.

Had to know what that was all about

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter.” - Love in the Time of Cholera

Great book. Significantly less romantic than that quote led me to believe.

“It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

• P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

I'm the type that would apologize when another person bumps into me. It's an ongoing process to break that habit and one day I randomly came across this quote... I have now read almost all pf P.G. Wodehouse's body of works AND I'M NOT SORRY IN THE LEAST! Lol!

“I would die for you. But I won’t live for you.” - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

The opening line of The Crow Road by Iain Banks, which remains one of my favourite books ‘til this day.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again." -Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

My wife loved this book and wanted me to read it forever and with a line like this it definitely is a good one to reel you in.

"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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going 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 being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

“Man is broad, too broad, indeed. I'd have him narrower. "

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.

Love Iris Murdoch! discovered her somewhat by accident and spent the next year reading pretty much all she wrote. I knew I had to read Oscar Wilde after seeing the quote "“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

"It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." - from "The Name of the Wind"

The first two sentences of the book. I just had to read it. And I did not regret it. It was amazing. It's now my favourite book of all times.

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"Dag says he's a lesbian trapped inside a man's body. Figure that out." from Generation X by Douglas Coupland.

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ - {{1984}} by George Orwell

"THE FOLLOWING DAY, NO ONE DIED." - Saramago, Death with Interruptions, the first line of the book which grew to become my absolute all time favourite.

I think some of you have misinterpreted the question. The quote need not be the first line of the novel. The quote can be from anywhere in the novel which you might have read on Instagram, Goodreads or any where for that matter. And the quote struck you so profoundly that you were motivated to read the entire novel.

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." Jack London, paraphrased in The Call of the Wild. I actually discovered this quote reading Educated.

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." From Dune by Frank Herbret

“You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.” - The Sun Also Rises

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed." The first book in the Dark Tower series

I didn’t remember if a have picked a book based on a quote, but the one that you just shared makes me think in my husband because so many people tell us that we look like siblings, so maybe that book will be the first one. Thanks.

Dressing for the Burial

“No one wants to talk about the hilarity after death— the way the week my brother shot himself, his wife and I fell on the bed laughing because she couldn’t decide what to wear for the big day, and asked me, “Do I go for sexy or Amish?” I told her sexy. And we rolled around on the mattress they’d shared for eighteen years, clutching our sides. Meanwhile, he lay in a narrow refrigerated drawer, soft brown curls springing from his scalp, framing his handsome face. This was back when he still had a face, and we were going to get to see it. “Hold up the black skirt again,” I said. She said, “Which one?” And then she said, “You look so Mafia Chic,” and I said, “Thank you,” and it went on until we both got tired and our ribs hurt and now I don’t even remember what we wore. Only that we both looked fabulous weeping over that open hole in the ground. …”

Bonfire Opera. Poems by Danusha Lameris

Not a fiction, but when I saw The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins in a shop, I opened this book and saw this quote:

“As a child, my wife hated her school and wished she could leave. Years later, when she was in her twenties, she disclosed this unhappy fact to her parents, and her mother was aghast: ‘But darling, why didn’t you come to us and tell us?’ Lalla’s reply is my text for today: ‘But I didn’t know I could.

I didn’t know I could.

I suspect – well, I am sure – that there are lots of people out there who have been brought up in some religion or other, are unhappy in it, don’t believe it, or are worried about the evils that are done in its name; people who feel vague yearnings to leave their parents’ religion and wish they could, but just don’t realize that leaving is an option.”

I knew immediately that I wanted to read this book, and I've really liked it.

one cannot be brave who has no fear

 Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name...! - The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle

“Is there any terrestial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness?” After reading that stylistic gem, I knew I had to read THE GOOD SOLDIER.

“It was a pleasure to burn.” - Fahrenheit 451

Basically any quote from David Wong/the John dies at the end series.

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“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

The opening line of the novel The Lovely Bones

"My mother is a fish". I had to find out how that group of words came to pass in that order 😄

"Language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang to make a bear dance, when we would move the stars to pity." Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert.

I don’t remember it verbatim but it was from tender is the flesh:

”The words were there, encapsulated behind the madness.”

Something like that. My friend sent me that quote and I just had to read the book it was from

"In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." Contact by Carl Sagan

"Let there be spaces between your togetherness". The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness." — Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones[ George .R.R. Martin ]

AND

"'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies,' said Jojen. 'The man who never reads lives only one.'" — Jojen Reed, A Dance with Dragons[ George .R.R. Martin ]

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“Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.” (Call me by your Name -André Aciman) “There are some people who’s dread of human beings is so morbid that they reach a point where they yearn to see with their own eyes monsters of ever more horrible shapes.” (No longer human -Osamu Dazai) “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?” (The Body - Stephen King)

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The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest, Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash opening lines.

“Call me Ishmael”. The unpretentious opening made me read Moby Dick. The ending where the narrator says the search ship found another orphan is equally interesting.

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