And you thought it was just me...

But in fact, I'm not the only collector of first lines. I have bookmarked several web sites with larger collections, my favorite being the First Line Literacy Test from Cornell. It features hundreds of first lines categorized by decade, genre, age level (children's books and high school classics), and other themes. Each category is presented as a quiz. Some lines are teasingly familiar, others frustratingly obscure, but the answers are always a mouse click away.

There is even a category showcasing some of the longest first lines, including this record shattering 212 word entry by Joyce Carol Oates (almost as long as some of her shorter novels):

It was many years ago in that dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time before Germaine's birth (nearly twelve months before her birth), on a night in late September stirred by innumerable frenzied winds, like spirits contending with one another--now plaintively, now angrily, now with a subtle cellolike delicacy capable of making the flesh rise on one's arms and neck--a night so sulfurous, so restless, so swollen with inarticulate longing that Leah and Gideon Bellefleur in their enormous bed quarreled once again, brought to tears because their love was too ravenous to be contained by their mere mortal bodies; and their groping, careless, anguished words were like strips of raw silk rubbed violently together (for each was convinced the other did not, could not, be equal to his love--Leah doubted that any man was capable of a love so profound it could be silent, like a forest pond; Gideon doubted that any woman was capable of comprehending the nature of a man's passion, which might tear through him, rendering him broken and exhausted, as vulnerable as a small child): it was on this tumultuous rain-lashed night that Mahalaleel came to Bellefleur Manor on the western shore of the great Lake Noir, where he was to stay for nearly five years.

      --Joyce Carol Oates, "Bellefleur"

There is also a brief multiple choice quiz on an Encarta site. I got 11 correct out of 13; I expect readers of this blog to score no lower than 7.

I got a perfect score on a second, easier quiz; the designer states that the average result is 12 out of 15 correct.

Lastly, if you're up for more obscure openers than those two sites, here is another place to try.

There are many other links to be found, I'm sure--just try a Google search on "first lines of novels" or something similar. If you find anything as good as the first link above (as if anyone cares), be sure to let me know.