QUIZ - Beginnings (Famous Literary Opening Lines)

Test your knowledge on the three Quizzes below focused on Famous Literary Opening Lines.

Level I is what I feel are famous & recognizable first lines.

Level II are medium difficulty but from classic works of Literature.

Level III are more challenging and obscure opening lines.

HINT:  All the Quotes are from books list in my Top 50 Books All-Time post dated January 2nd within this blog. 

Answers will be posted April 30th, 2012.

Let me know how you did on these quizzes in the Comments section, and if you have other suggestions for famous first lines!

Level I  (Easy):

1. Call me Ishmael. 
2. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. 
3. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. 
4. 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. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. 
5. 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. 

Level II  (Medium):

1. Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in dark woods, the right road lost.
2. As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.  
3. Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.
4. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. 
5. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.  

Level III  (Difficult):

1. Howard Roark laughed.
2. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
3. It was a pleasure to burn.  
4. 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.
5. Mama died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. 

GOOD LUCK!!!!