《新概念英語》第三冊A Chance in a Million一課中有這麼一段句話：In the nineteenth century, a novelist would bring his story to a conclusion by presenting his readers with a series of coincidences——most of them wildly improbable. 這正是小說的魅力：源於生活，卻高於生活。一部好的小說一定要有一個引人入勝，讓人慾罷不能的開頭。看看下面這十個最經典的小說開頭，是不是讓你瞬間有了抓起書來一口氣讀完的衝動呢?
1.You better not never tell nobody but God。除了上帝，對誰都要守口如瓶，切記。
——The Color Purple《紫色》
2.They shoot the white girl first。他們先開槍打死了那個白人女孩。
——Paradise《天堂》
3.Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu。軍醫孔林每年夏天都要回農村老家跟妻子淑玉商量一次離婚。
——Waiting《等待》
4.If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth。如果你對我的故事充滿好奇，你第一件想要知道的事情一定是我生於何處，童年如何，以及在生下我之前父母的羅曼史，還有David Copperfield是怎樣一個爛人。但是坦白地講，這些我都不想寫。
——The Catcher in the Rye《麥田裡的守望者》
5.The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below。領事正襟危坐在自己的烏木陽臺之上彈奏著那架歷久彌新的斯坦威鋼琴，用升c小調演奏拉赫曼尼諾夫的《序曲》;與此同時，巨大的綠色蜥蜴在下方的泥沼之中蜿蜒逶迤。
——Hyperion《海伯利安》
6.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。多年以後，奧雷連諾上校站在行刑隊面前，準會想起父親帶他去參觀冰塊的那個遙遠的下午。
——One Hundred Years of Solitude《百年孤獨》
7.I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.我曾兩次降生於世：第一次，一名女嬰，在底特律的一個無菸日;第二次，一名少年，在密西根託斯基的一件急診室裡，那是在1974年的八月。
——Middlesex《中性》
8.There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank。擺在我們面前的首要問題顯然是，如何從我們現在所在之處，去往遙遠的河岸。可是，我們連自己現在在什麼鬼地方都不清楚。
——Elizabeth Costello《Elizabeth Costello》
9.It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife。毫無疑問，單身鑽石王老五都渴望有嬌妻相伴。
——Pride and Prejudice《傲慢與偏見》
10.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。那是最美好的時代，那是最糟糕的時代;那是智慧的年頭，那是愚昧的年頭;那是信仰的時期，那是懷疑的時期;那是光明的季節，那是黑暗的季節;那是希望的春天，那是失望的冬天。
——A Tale of Two Cities《雙城記》
（編輯：趙穎茹）