Here are the first and last sentences of well-known books, truncated to three words each. The books were chosen either because their opening line is pretty famous, or their last line–that is, famous enough for me to vaguely remember them. They’re in chronological order of publication.
It was the / have ever known
No one would / among the dead
In my younger / into the past
Last night I / from the sea
What’s it going / all that cal
This is my /death, that’s all
The sky above / saw Molly again
The following three would be too easily guessable from the first or last three words, so you just get the first and last word.
I don’t remember the last line, but i think the first goes, “No-one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched” etc.
To be honest, although i’ve read the book a few times, that line is always more memorable when read by Richard Burton in Jeff Wayne’s rock opera.