First sentences

The theme

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." (A Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul)
"All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy)

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." ("The Metamorphosis", Franz Kafka)
"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong." (The Trial, Franz Kafka)
"Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker." (The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon)

"The Swede. During the war years, when I was still a grade school boy, this was a magical name in our Newark neighborhood, even to adults just a generation removed from the city's old Prince Street ghetto and not yet so flawlessly Americanized as to be bowled over by the prowess of a high school athlete." (American Pastoral, Philip Roth)
"In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin's son, grew up with his friend Govinda." (Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse)
"It's the first day of spring 2001, and Maxine Tarnow, though some still have her in their system as Loeffler, is walking her boys to school." (Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon)

"This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track." (Libra, Don DeLillo)
"I didn't know what email was until I got to college." (The Idiot, Elif Batuman)

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.'" (In Cold Blood, Truman Capote)
"'Beth Hamishpath—the House of Justice: these words shouted by the court usher at the top of his voice make us jump to our feet as they announce the arrival of the three judges, who, bare-headed, in black robes, walk into the courtroom from a side entrance to take their seats on the highest tier of the raised platform." (Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt)

"The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through." (The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen)

"As the captain of the Yale swimming team stood beside the pool, still dripping after his laps, and listened to Bob Moses, the team's second-best freestyler, he didn't know what shocked him more—the suggestion or the fact that it was Moses who was making it." (The Power Broker, Robert Caro)
"Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn." (Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer)
"Gerald Shur thought he was going to vomit." (Witsec: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program, Pete Earley)