Opening Lines and Covers

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Crime and Punishment: Book covers

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Anna Karenina - What's your favourite cover?

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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.

- Germinal (1885), Zola

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Rushes to live, and makes haste to feel.

- Eugene Onekin (1825), A. Pushkin

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“The point is,” said Anna, as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, “the point is, that as far as I can see, everything’s cracking up.”

- The Golden Notebook (1962) D. Lessing

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When I saw Finn waiting for me at the corner of the street I knew at once that something had gone wrong.

- Under the Net (1954), I. Murdoch

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In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others.

- The Tale of Genji (1021), Murasaki Shikibu

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The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occured in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.

- Cold Comfort Farm, (1932) Stella Gibbons

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I was born in the city of Bombay ..... once upon a time.

- Midnight's Children (1980), S. Rushdie

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How happy I am that I am gone!

- The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), J.W.v. Goethe

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In the Name of Allah, the Compassionating, the Compassionate!

PRAISE BE TO ALLAH * THE BENEFICENT KING * THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE * LORD OF THE THREE WORLDS * WHO SET UP THE FIRMAMENT WITHOUT PILLARS IN ITS STEAD * AND WHO STRETCHED OUT THE EARTH EVEN AS A BED * AND GRACE, AND PRAYER-BLESSlNG BE UPON OUR LORD MOHAMMED * LORD OF APOSTOLIC MEN * AND UPON HIS FAMILY AND COMPANION TRAIN * PRAYER AND BLESSINGS ENDURING AND GRACE WHICH UNTO THE DAY OF DOOM SHALL REMAIN * AMEN! * O THOU OF THE THREE WORLDS SOVEREIGN!

One Thousand and One Nights - Anonymous

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Mother, today there comes back to mind the vermilion mark  at the parting of your hair, the sari which you used to wear, with its wide red border, and those wonderful eyes of yours, full of depth and peace.

- The Home and the World (1916), R. Tagore

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Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf’s cloak. He wondered if he was awake or still sleeping, still in the swift-moving dream in which he had been wrapped so long since the great ride began.

- The Return of the King (1955), J.R.R. Tolkien

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I remember the first time I got a letter that said "After Five Days Return To" on the envelope, and I thought that after I had kept the letter for five days I was supposed to return it to the sender.

- I Remember (1970), J. Brainard

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None of the merry-go-rounds seem to work anymore.

- True Confessions (1977), J.G. Dunne

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Up from the skeleton stone walls, up from the rotting floor boards and the solid hand-hewn beams of oak of the pre-war cotton factory, dusk came.

- "Blood-Burning Moon," from Cane (1923), J. Toomer

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An ordinary young man was on his way from his hometown of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of Graubünden.

- The Magic Mountain, (1927) T. Mann