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Quiz about More Kinda Famous First Lines
Quiz about More Kinda Famous First Lines

More (Kinda) Famous First Lines Quiz


"Call me Ishmael" and "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." were already taken, but you should be able to recognize the opening passages of most of these well-known stories and books.

A multiple-choice quiz by agony. Estimated time: 8 mins.
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Author
agony
Time
8 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
192,970
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
25
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
15 / 25
Plays
2156
Awards
Top 20% Quiz
Last 3 plays: bradez (16/25), Guest 184 (15/25), Guest 199 (7/25).
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Question 1 of 25
1. "He rode into our valley in the summer of '89. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father's old chuck-wagon." Which famous western novel begins with these words? Hint


Question 2 of 25
2. This is the first line of which novel? "On a pitch-black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet." Hint


Question 3 of 25
3. "It was Wang Lung's marriage day." Which novel is this the first line of? Hint


Question 4 of 25
4. "These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket." Which novel begins with these words? Hint


Question 5 of 25
5. "I suppose every boy wants to help his country in some way or other." Which book begins this way? Hint


Question 6 of 25
6. "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years." Which story begins with this line? Hint


Question 7 of 25
7. "'The Signora had no business to do it,' said Miss Bartlett, 'no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!'" Which novel are these the first lines of? Hint


Question 8 of 25
8. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the "Times"." Which novel starts this way? Hint


Question 9 of 25
9. Which book begins with the following lines? "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon." Hint


Question 10 of 25
10. "There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck." Which story begins this way? Hint


Question 11 of 25
11. Which novel begins with these lines? "The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried." Hint


Question 12 of 25
12. "Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns." Which novel begins with these words? Hint


Question 13 of 25
13. Which story begins with these lines? "X - This day when it had light mother called me retch. You retch she said." Hint


Question 14 of 25
14. "A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin." Which novel starts with these words? Hint


Question 15 of 25
15. "It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." Which novel are these the first lines of? Hint


Question 16 of 25
16. Which novel begins this way? "The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards." Hint


Question 17 of 25
17. "The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, 'Why don't you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up'." Which novel is this the first line of? Hint


Question 18 of 25
18. "'Please sir, is this Plumfield?' asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him." Which novel opens this way? Hint


Question 19 of 25
19. Which novel opens with these words? "Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on." Hint


Question 20 of 25
20. "In the hospital of the orphanage - the boys' division at St. Cloud's, Maine - two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision."
Which John Irving novel is this?
Hint


Question 21 of 25
21. "On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. Bridge." Which novel begins with this line? Hint


Question 22 of 25
22. "Lessa woke, cold." Which novel begins this way? Hint


Question 23 of 25
23. "It was my privilege to know the late Jack Crabb - frontiersman, Indian scout, gunfighter, buffalo hunter, adopted Cheyenne - in his final days upon this earth." Which novel has this as its first line? Hint


Question 24 of 25
24. Which novel begins this way? "On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic." Hint


Question 25 of 25
25. Which story begins with these words? "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock..." Hint





Most Recent Scores
Oct 29 2024 : bradez: 16/25
Sep 27 2024 : Guest 184: 15/25
Sep 16 2024 : Guest 199: 7/25
Sep 09 2024 : bigwoo: 15/25

Score Distribution

quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "He rode into our valley in the summer of '89. I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father's old chuck-wagon." Which famous western novel begins with these words?

Answer: Shane

The 1953 movie, with Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Jack Palance and Van Heflin is a faithful rendition of this novel. It was written by Jack Schaefer in 1949.
2. This is the first line of which novel? "On a pitch-black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet."

Answer: Germinal

"Germinal" by Emile Zola (1885). This is the story of Etienne Lantier, or rather a story of mining, of labour, of capitalism, and of politics. It is the thirteenth in his twenty volume series "Les Rougon-Macquart", which is an attempt to explore the effects of heredity and environment on one family. Through following the fortunes of various members of this family, Zola studied every facet of French society.
3. "It was Wang Lung's marriage day." Which novel is this the first line of?

Answer: The Good Earth

Pearl S Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for 1931's "The Good Earth". She also won the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature for her "rich and genuine epic portrayals of Chinese peasant life". "The Good Earth" tells the story of the lives of Wang Lung and his sons, from the Manchu dynasty to Chiang Kai-shek's Republic.
This book is rather out of favour these days, with readers preferring a more "authentic" Chinese voice, but it still tells a powerful story, and is worth reading.
4. "These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket." Which novel begins with these words?

Answer: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The wonderful and more-than-a-little unsettling story of what happens to young Charlie Bucket, his grandfather, and four other children when they find Golden Tickets in their bars of chocolate. All the book choices were by Roald Dahl.
5. "I suppose every boy wants to help his country in some way or other." Which book begins this way?

Answer: Scouting for Boys

This book, by Lord Baden-Powell (1908) was the beginning of the Scouting movement. Revised editions were still used as the basic Scout handbook (at least in Canada) as late as the 1950's; we had one around our house which had been my older brother's.

It's a great read for anyone interested in Scouting - Baden-Powell tells many stories of his adventures as a scout in the Boer War, and the illustrations (by the author) are a hoot. "Tommy Tenderfoot", the skinny, knock-kneed newbie, shows how NOT to stalk game, make a fire, and lay out a bedroll. Current Scout handbooks are a lot more politically correct and environmentally friendly, but not anywhere near as much fun.
6. "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years." Which story begins with this line?

Answer: A Rose for Emily

"A Rose For Emily" by William Faulkner (1930). I read this story in English class, when I was about fourteen. I can still remember the mixture of horrified disgust and "hey, cool" in the class, when we discovered where the smell had been coming from.
7. "'The Signora had no business to do it,' said Miss Bartlett, 'no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!'" Which novel are these the first lines of?

Answer: A Room With A View

"A Room with a View", by EM Forster (1908). A favorite scene of mine from this novel, and one unusual for the period, is the nude swimming party:
"They ran to get dry, they bathed to get cool, they played at being Indians in the willow-herbs and in the bracken, they bathed to get clean. And all the time three little bundles (their clothes) lay discreetly on the sward, proclaiming: 'No. We are what matters. Without us shall no enterprise begin. To us shall all flesh turn in the end.'"
This scene is wonderfully handled in the 1986 Merchant-Ivory film version.
8. "In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the "Times"." Which novel starts this way?

Answer: And Then There Were None

Published under several other names, including "Ten Little Indians", this is many people's favorite Agatha Christie novel. It's got everything: isolated island that none can escape; madman picking off his (or her) victims, one by one; fiendishly clever, but scrupulously fair, plot...
I won't spoil it for you - if you haven't read this one, you really should.
9. Which book begins with the following lines? "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon."

Answer: Lord of the Flies

I suppose William Golding knew what he was writing about in this book that deals with (at least in part) the wild animal not far under the skin of the adolescent boy. He was a schoolmaster from 1941 - 1961, at Bishop Wordsworth's School, Salisbury.
10. "There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck." Which story begins this way?

Answer: The Rocking-Horse Winner

"The Rocking-Horse Winner", by DH Lawrence (1926), an uncomfortable story of a driven small boy, and his luck. VS Pritchett, no slouch in the short-story form himself, says of Lawrence, "to my mind, DH Lawrence's stories are superior to his novels." (introduction, "Oxford Book of Short Stories", 1981). To my mind, too.
11. Which novel begins with these lines? "The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to the burden he carried."

Answer: The Invisible Man

"The Invisible Man" (1897) by HG Wells. A great story, one of the most readable of Wells' 'scientific romances'. "...my limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last...At last only the dead tips of the fingernails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of some acid upon my fingers."
12. "Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns." Which novel begins with these words?

Answer: The Shipping News

"The Shipping News" by E Annie Proulx won the "Irish Times" International Fiction Prize, the 1994 Pulitzer, and the 1993 National Book Award. In my opinion, it deserved them all.
Each chapter is headed by quotes from "The Ashley Book of Knots", which Proulx says she "had the good fortune to find at a yard sale for a quarter". Magic, Newfoundland, love, flipper pie...this book has it all.
13. Which story begins with these lines? "X - This day when it had light mother called me retch. You retch she said."

Answer: Born of Man and Woman

This 1950 story by Richard Matheson is only a little more than two pages long, but it packs one heck of a wallop. Whatever (whoever?) is chained in the basement is beginning to realize its power. The story ends: "If they try to beat me again Ill hurt them. I will."
Stephen King says of this story (along with Jack Finney's "The Body Snatchers") "...they made the break from the Lovecraftian fantasy that had held sway over serious American writers of horror for two decades or more." ("Danse Macabre", 1979)
14. "A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin." Which novel starts with these words?

Answer: Little House on the Prairie

The version of these books (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) that most Funtrivia members will be familiar with is the 1953 edition, (or reissues of these) illustrated by Garth Williams. Mr Williams actually visited Laura and Almanzo before he started work, and retraced the travels of the Ingalls family, in order to get the feel of the places described in the books.

He is also famous for illustrating "Stuart Little", "Charlotte's Web", and many of Margaret Wise Brown's children's books.
15. "It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." Which novel are these the first lines of?

Answer: The Big Sleep

"The Big Sleep' by Raymond Chandler (1939), is the first Philip Marlowe novel, wonderfully atmospheric, with a very convoluted plot. There is a story of the filming of this novel: the screenwriters (one of whom was William Faulkner) realized that they could not figure out who had killed the chauffeur. Howard Hawks, the director, sent a telegram to Chandler: "Who killed Owen Taylor?". Chandler's response? "I don't know".
16. Which novel begins this way? "The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards."

Answer: A Wizard of Earthsea

Long before Harry Potter was dreamed of, Ursula K LeGuin brought us the story of Ged, a young wizard in the island world of Earthsea. This book, the first in a trilogy, came out in 1968.
17. "The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, 'Why don't you go back and sleep? We can ring you if he shows up'." Which novel is this the first line of?

Answer: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

George Smiley, John Le Carre's usual hero, takes a back seat in this story of an agent's last case. Richard Burton played Leamas in the 1965 movie.
18. "'Please sir, is this Plumfield?' asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him." Which novel opens this way?

Answer: Little Men

This was my favorite Louisa May Alcott book. It's the story of Plumfield, the school run by Jo and Professor Bhaer after their marriage. It's a lovely mix of sentimentality and utopianism - a place where love, freedom, and gentle guidance really do bring out the best in children, and save those that may be thought to be lost. No cynics welcome here, thank you.
19. Which novel opens with these words? "Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on."

Answer: Flowers for Algernon

This novel, by Daniel Keyes, was originally a novella (1959). It was later expanded into a novel (1966), and later (1968) became a movie, "Charly". It's the story of a retarded man who is given a treatment that makes him highly intelligent. However, the treatment doesn't last, and finally Charlie is back where he started, not even remembering the experiment: ""Anyway I bet Im the first dumb person in the world who ever found out somthing importent for sience. I remember I did somthing but I dont remember what. So i gess its liek I did it for all the dumb peepul like me. ...tell Dr Nemur not to be such a grouch when pepul laff at him and he would have more frends.

Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you..."
20. "In the hospital of the orphanage - the boys' division at St. Cloud's, Maine - two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision." Which John Irving novel is this?

Answer: The Cider House Rules

This 1985 John Irving novel takes on the subjects of abortion, racism, incest, and family violence, in the typical John Irving, roundabout, way. As it says in the novel, "In Maine, it is considered wiser just to know something than to talk about it".
"The Cider House Rules" was filmed in 1999, directed by Lasse Hallstrom.
21. "On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. Bridge." Which novel begins with this line?

Answer: Crime and Punishment

"Crime and Punishment" (1866) is considered one of Dostoevsky's masterpieces. Although many in England and America were not impressed with the novel, Robert Louis Stevenson particularly admired it: "Henry James could not finish it: all I can say is, it nearly finished me.

It was like having an illness", and it is said to have influenced "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde". ("The Oxford Companion to English Literature", 1985)
22. "Lessa woke, cold." Which novel begins this way?

Answer: Dragonflight

This is the first novel of the "Dragonriders of Pern" series, by Anne McCaffrey. The first section of this novel is derived from the novella "Weyr Search", which won the 1968 Hugo (the annual award of the World Science Fiction Society) for best novella. This was the first Hugo ever won by a woman for fiction.
23. "It was my privilege to know the late Jack Crabb - frontiersman, Indian scout, gunfighter, buffalo hunter, adopted Cheyenne - in his final days upon this earth." Which novel has this as its first line?

Answer: Little Big Man

More Funtrivia members will be familiar with the great 1970 Dustin Hoffman movie than with Thomas Berger's 1964 book. In fact, to many of you, this may be the first you have heard of the existence of the book! It's worth reading though, it has that expansive, off the wall quality of many good 1960's novels - think Kesey, Brautigan, Barth.

The book has all the humour and sprawling storytelling of the movie, and more.
24. Which novel begins this way? "On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic."

Answer: The Talisman

This first collaboration by Stephen King and Peter Straub came out in 1984. It's a story set half in our world, and half in "the Territories". They followed this up with "Black House", in 2001.
25. Which story begins with these words? "The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock..."

Answer: The Lottery

This story, by Shirley Jackson, used to be a standard in high school English classes, and is much anthologized. The strength of the story lies in the juxtaposition of the utterly ordinary characters and setting, and the slowly growing realization of the reader that something very strange is going on here. VERY strange...
Source: Author agony

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor Bruyere before going online.
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