Famous First Lines of Novels, Written by Your Phone

There are a lot of negatives to being constantly glued to a palm-sized box of bad news. But thanks to content creator/sandwich maker Barry Kramer, smartphones are somewhat redeeming themselves—because their predictive text function allows you to mess with famous lines, with often hilarious results.

New favorite thing: typing out song lyrics and switching to autocomplete halfway through. You spin me right round baby right round like a big fan of your hair cut Take me down to the paradise city Where the heck is the last week of my schedule

— @razzadoop

Maybe we’re just all very tired, but this is honestly outrageously fun with song lyrics. (Some of our favorites include “sweet dreams are made of this, who is your favorite cat in your life,” “hot town, summer in the city, the only thing that would make my day is going to bed,” and “this is ground control to Major Tom, is there anything you want us to do or whatever?”) In fact, the only thing that could make it more fun is giving it a literary twist.

Here are some famous first lines completed by predictive text, by Electric Lit staff and friends. Try it out—you may be carrying the next great novelist around in your hip pocket.

It was a pleasure to burn my hair today but it’s so much work.

There were two mutes in the town and they were cool.

Lolita, light of my life, eat some cereal.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that God has a good life.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a woman with an arm and the new head on her feet.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me two pieces of a small truck.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and the first time in years the two were not sure of what to say.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is in a big box.

Sing, Goddess, of Achilles’ rage and then you will be fine.

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were supposed to be in the middle of a day of hell.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is that you can get your own place for a while and get a new pair of jeans.

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía had an opportunity to win the game.

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his phone and he snapped a pic of you and the girls and I’m sorry if it seems like you don’t want a relationship.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a glass of wine.

I wish either my father or my mother would have never had a bath.

RFID Machines in British Libraries Are Producing Charming Found Poetry

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when you had to stop by the store to get a beer.

Alice was beginning to get very tired of her and David and then she was just wondering what she would do.

Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see the color of your wedding dress.

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, it would have been a good idea for me to get flights to Ottawa.

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were not true to God.

James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, was wondering how to make a great dinner.

The past is a foreign country; they are not sure about the delivery times.

The sky above the port was the color of my tongue.

“Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as she was going over the budget.

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and her mother in law.