《新概念英语第三册》 A Chance in a Million一课中有这么一段句话：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. 这正是小说的魅力：源于生活，却高于生活。一部好的小说一定要有一个引人入胜，让人欲罢不能的开头。看看下面这十个最经典的小说开头，是不是让你瞬间有了抓起书来一口气读完的冲动呢？

　　1. You better not never tell nobody but God。除了上帝，对谁都要守口如瓶，切记。

　　——The Color Purple《紫色》

　　2. They shoot the white girl first。他们先开枪打死了那个白人女孩。

　　——Paradise《天堂》

　　3. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu。军医孔林每年夏天都要回农村老家跟妻子淑玉商量一次离婚。

　　——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。如果你对我的故事充满好奇，你第一件想要知道的事情一定是我生于何处，童年如何，以及在生下我之前父母的罗曼史，还有David Copperfield是怎样一个烂人。但是坦白地讲，这些我都不想写。

　　——The Catcher in the Rye《麦田里的守望者》

　　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。领事正襟危坐在自己的乌木阳台之上弹奏着那架历久弥新的斯坦威钢琴，用升c小调演奏拉赫曼尼诺夫的《序曲》；与此同时，巨大的绿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。多年以后，奥雷连诺上校站在行刑队面前，准会想起父亲带他去参观冰块的那个遥远的下午。

　　——One Hundred Years of Solitude《百年孤独》

　　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.我曾两次降生于世：第一次，一名女婴，在底特律的一个无烟日；第二次，一名少年，在密歇根托斯基的一件急诊室里，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。摆在我们面前的首要问题显然是，如何从我们现在所在之处，去往遥远的河岸。可是，我们连自己现在在什么鬼地方都不清楚。

　　——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。毫无疑问，单身钻石王老五都渴望有娇妻相伴。

　　——Pride and Prejudice《傲慢与偏见》

　　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。那是最美好的时代，那是最糟糕的时代；那是智慧的年头，那是愚昧的年头；那是信仰的时期，那是怀疑的时期；那是光明的季节，那是黑暗的季节；那是希望的春天，那是失望的冬天。

　　——A Tale of Two Cities《双城记》