> As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

> It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

> It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 1984, George Orwell

> There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

> It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

> 124 was spiteful. Full of Baby's venom Beloved, Toni's Morrison

> Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe. Paradise Lost, John Milton

> I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin