First lines of some of my favorite novels

When starting a novel, I always worry about the first line. So much time is spent on the first line. Here I mention about the first lines of some of my favorite novels.

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.
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami.
- Khaled Hosseini in - A Thousand Splendid Suns

On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apatment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl.
- Jumpa Lahiri in The Namesake

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.
Bill Bryson - in The Lost Continent

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”
-Margaret Mitchell in Gone With The Wind

It was a chill gray day in Savannah, and there was a brisk breeze blowing in from the ocean.
- Danielle Steel - in Message from Nam

When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
- Harper Lee - in To Kill a Mocking Bird.

Anna meets her friend Molly in the summer of 1957 after a separation...
- Doris Lessing - in The Golden Notebook

Raju welcomed the intrusion - something to relieve the loneliness of the place.
- R.K. Narayan in The Guide