The first lines of the chapter of the book you are about to read.

It is said that the first few lines of the first chapter a book prod you to read on. And the last chapter makes you want to read another book by the same author.

Here are some classic examples.

Charles Dickens in " The Tale of Two Cities "

1. Beginning.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, 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 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.

2. Beginning.

Sinclair Lewis in " Elmer Gantry "

Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk. He leaned against the bar of the Old Home Sample Room, the most gilded and urbane saloon in Cato, Missouri, and requested the bartender to join him in " The Good Old Summer Time " the waltz of the day.

Blowing on a glass, polishing it and glaancing at Elmer through its flashing rotundity, the bartender remarked that he wasn't much of a hand at this here singing business. But he smiled. No bartender could have done other than smile on Elmer, so inspired and full of gallantry and hell-raising was he, and so dominating was his beefy grin.

3.

Beginning.

Nathaniel West in " The Day of the Locust."

Around quitting time, Tod Hacket heard a great din on the road outside his office. The groan of leather mingled with the jangle of iron and over all beat the tattoo of a thousand hooves. He hurried to the window.

4.

Paula Fox in " desperate Characters "

The End:

Otto shook himself like a wet dog. " No. No. I won't talk to him "

" He won't talk to you, " Sophie repeated into the mouthpiece.

" I've got to talk to him, " charlie cried. " There are a thousand things.. how long can he think he can avoid this ? What about precedent contracts? You put him on " she held out the reciver again. Otto looked down at it. They could both hear Charlie's diminished voice like an insect cry.

" I'm desperate " screeched the round black hole.

" He's desperate. " Otto shouted. His distraught glance suddenly fell upon the ink bottle on Sophie's desk. His arm shot out and grabbed it up and flung it violently at the wall. Sophie dropped the phone on the floor and ran to him. She flung her arms around him so tightly that for a moment he could not move.

The voice from the telephone went on and on like gas leaking from a pipe. Sophie and Otto had ceased to listen. Her arms fell away from his shoulders as they both turned slowly toward the wall, turned until they could both see the ink running down to the floor in black lines.

5. George Eliot's " Silas Marner "

Ending:

Dolly: You were hard done by that once, Master Marner, and it seem's as you'll never know the rights O' it; but that doesn't hinder there being a rights, Master Marner, for all it's dark to you and me.

Silas: No, no; that doesn't hinder. Since the child was sent to me and I've come to love her as myself, I've had light enough to trusten by; and now she says she'll never leave me, I think I shall trusten till I die.

Seen at a little distance as she walked across the churchyard and down the village, she seemed to be attired in pure white, and her hair looked like the dash of gold on a lily. One hand was on her husband's arm, and with the other she clasped the hand of her father Silas.

You won't be giving me away, father, she had said before they went to church; you'll only be taking Aaron to be a son to you.

Dolly Winthrop walked behind with her husband; and there ended the little bridal procession.


6. Jane Austen's " Pride and Prejudice "


Beginning:


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


7. Colleen McCullough's " Tim"


Ending:


They probably thought his calling her Mary was just his way. And no one had ever asked her if he was single or married; hearing he was not the full quid, they simply took it for granted that he was single. Mentally retarded people did not marry. They lived at home with their parents until they were orphaned and then they went to some sort of institution to die.


Tim was waiting in his room, fully dressed and very eager to be gone. Steeling herself to an outward calmness and composure, she took his in hers and smiled at him very tenderly.


" Come on Tim, let's go home," she said.


Colleen Mccullough's " The Thorn Birds "


The bird with thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life to utter another note. But we when we put the thorns in our breasts we know. We understand and we still do it. Still do it.

Beginning:

Judith Guest in " Ordinary People."

To have a reason to get up in the morning , it is necessary to possess a guiding principle. A belief of some kind.

Tolstoy: in " Anna Kerenina "

" Happy families are all alike; Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Pete Dexter: in " The Paper Boy "

" My brother's ward was once a famous man"

Rhian Ellis: in " After Life "

" First I had to get his body into the boat. "

Dodie Smith : in " I capture the castle "

" I write this sitting in the kitchen sink "

Long first lines "

Scott Spencer in " Endless Love "

When I was 17 and in full obedience to my heart's most urgent commands, I stepped far from the pathway of normal life and in a moments time ruined everything I loved - I loved so deeply, and when the love was interrupted, when the incorporeal body of love shrank back in terror and my own body was locked away, it was hard for others to believe that a life so new could suffer so irrevocably. "

John Grieemer in " No one thinks of Greenland "

You'll want to scratch, said the nurse. "
" Don't " said the orderly.

Rose Macaulay in " The Towers of Trebizond "

" Take my camel dear " said aunt Dot as she climbed down from this on her return from High
Mass."

" Moby Dick " Herman Melville
" Call me Ishmael" is the first line of chapter one , is one of the most famous opening lines in American Literature.

" The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.
Opening:
Howard Roak laughed.
He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below hinm.....

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.
" Who is John Galt."

The last line in F.Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The last paragraph in Alaxandr Dumas's " Camille"

I am not the apostle of vice, but I would gladly be the echo of noble sorrow wherever I hear its voice in prayer. The story of Margueritte is an exception, I repeat; had it not been an exception, it would not have been worth the trouble of writing it."