Top 46 Best Opening Lines Quotes
#1. From the opening lines of the play Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise
All you need,
To find poetry,
Is to look for it with a lantern.
Wallace Stevens
#2. I really want readers to put themselves into the shoes of each character. So the opening lines are an orienting technique: this is where you are, this is who you are. Go.
Alissa Nutting
#4. Implications of treason are fed like cubes of sugar to the twelve-headed animal which is justice. In ... opening remarks. In the way questions are asked. In support of lines of questioning where cases of treason are cited and the Judge endorses the relevance of the citation.
E.L. Doctorow
#5. On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet.
Emile Zola
#6. I am sixteen when my mother steps out of her skin one frozen January afternoon- pure self, atoms twinkling like microscopic diamond chips around her, perhaps the chiming of a clock, or a few bright flute notes in the distance- and disappears. No one sees her leave, but she is gone.
Laura Kasischke
#7. One burst after another as my wife turned in her sleep. I was a single monkey trying to type the opening lines of my Hamlet,
Billy Collins
#8. Since we possess its hymn, engraved on our hearts in its entirety, there is no need of any woman to repeat the opening lines, potent with the admiration which her beauty inspires, for us to remember all that follows.
Marcel Proust
#9. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was not used to feeling intimidated. It was rather his job in life to intimidate others.
Mark Ellis
#12. The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
Blaise Pascal
#13. The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor.
Daniel Quinn
#14. Seated opposite me in the railway carriage, the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders that she had committed over the years.
John Boyne
#15. I died on a bitter cold night. Beneath a black sky and a bruised winter moon, I tried to fly, hoping my arms might act as wings.
Jennifer Archer
#16. She turned into a tree. It was a Mystery. It must have been. Nothing else made sense, because I didn't understand it.
Jo Walton
#18. Twenty-three stories up and all I could see out the windows was grey smog. They could call it the City of the Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#19. When a naked man shows up on your doorstep with a bear trap clamped around his ankle, it's best just to do what he asks
Molly Harper
#21. We all have been founded by the universe for only one purpose - To competitiveness.
Sushil Singh
#22. The Frenchman beside me had been dead since dawn. His scarred and shackled body swayed limply back and forth with every sweep of the great oar as we, his less fortunate bench-fellows, tugged and strained to keep time to the stroke.
Jeffery Farnol
#23. A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud.
Gary Corby
#24. Like almost every truly horrible thing that has ever happened in the history of our world, the end also began with a kiss.
Dennis Sharpe
#25. When my cousin Anil-da started telling us what he'd heard at the market about the groom's family, at my aunt Moina-pehi's wedding in January 2002, his eyes shone like inky marbles reflecting sunlight.
Aruni Kashyap
#26. It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.
Philip Reeve
#27. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
William Faulkner
#28. Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding,
Bernard Lonergan
#29. The great fish moved silently through the night water.
Peter Benchley
#30. You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.
Christopher Moore
#32. Writing the opening lines of a story is a bit like starting to ski at the steepest part of a hill. You must have all your skills under control from the first instant.
Marion Dane Bauer
#33. Lok was running as fast as he could. His head was down and he carried his thorn bush horizontally for balance and smacked the drifts of vivid buds aside with his free hand.
William Golding
#34. The heavy blade hung high above the prisoners, glinting against the stars, and then the Razor came down, a wedge of falling darkness cutting through the torchlight. One solid thump, and four more heads had been shaved from their bodies.
Sharon Cameron
#35. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked.
Greg Nagan
#36. To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
Kurt Vonnegut
#37. I was looking for a quiet place to die.
Paul Auster
#38. I did it! I stopped time.
[Hampton Green]
Tim Tharp
#39. At three o'clock this afternoon Evelyn Wastneys died. I am Evelyn Wastneys, and I died, standing at the door of an old country home in Ireland...
Mrs. George De Horne Vaizey
#40. There was something wonderful about a blank sheet of notepaper. The lines were there, just waiting to be filled, and the page could turn into anything from a grocery list to the opening of The Great American Novel. The possibilities were endless.
Joanne Fluke
#42. There were no more heroes. Kennedy was dead, shot by an assassin in Dallas. Batman and Robin were dead... Superman was missing...
Robert Mayer
#43. We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.
John D. MacDonald
#44. The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.
Peter S. Beagle
