First Line In Book Quotes

#1. The usual run of children's books left me cold, and at the age of six I decided to write a book of my own. I managed the first line, 'I am a swallow.' Then I looked up and asked, 'How do you spell telephone wires?

Bruce Chatwin

#2. The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can trace it, if we try, back to the first printing-presses ...

Agnes Repplier

#3. To read the report of a discussion in which arguments for and against are presented, in which a subject has been covered from different points of view, with new ideas advanced - this is far more instructive than to read a brief account of the resolution passed on the matter.

Fredrik Bajer

#4. It was lucky that snarking at Luke was habit by now: Elliot remembered a line from a book he'd read once, that habit was second nature, and nature stronger than the first. It was a comfort, to have a natural expression rather than one he had to pin on.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#5. Rules for writing the first line? The last line?
First line: Make them want more.
Last line: Make them want the next book.

Darynda Jones

#6. The villagers marked the time in two ways: before the swamp and after. What came before was good. And all that came after was not.

Melanie Crowder

#7. That you should not be here when something we've both wanted happens is no new thing for me. Today too, as always, you're not here.

Sachin Kundalkar

#8. All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

Ali Smith

#9. My watch buzzed and told me I had ten minutes left to live. I turned my wrist to glance at it. Yep. This sucks.

J.M. Friedman. Succubus in Seattle (Kindle Locations 28-29).

J.R. Thorn

#10. Look. (Grown-ups skip this paragraph.) I'm not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending, I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there's a lot of bad stuff coming. William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Cornelia Funke

#11. Every injustice that has ever been fastened upon women in a Christian country has been "authorized by the Bible" and riveted and perpetuated by the pulpit.

Helen H. Gardener

#12. Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book.

Italo Calvino

#13. I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity.

Rex Stout

#14. Books and novels in particular that grapple with quite a few things are difficult to explain, so I think that first line can come in a substitute for trying to form a longer sense of what the book is about.

Alice Sebold

#15. When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.

Gillian Flynn

#16. A romp in the hay lingers like the first line of a song, but your true love is the one you make a life with and write more than a line about, you write a whole book.

Garrison Keillor

#17. The first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly to do it because it is his will.

Elizabeth Ann Seton

#18. It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.' We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't.

Joel Madden

#19. I write books that way - I put a first line down and say, "Where does this go?"

Carl Reiner

#20. There was nothing in her world except waiting to be allowed to breathe, then breathing until he decided it was time for her to stop breathing again.

Sophie Kisker

#21. Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It it a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you'll believe a word of it.

Jonathan Barnes

#22. Whether a gastronomic tour of Italy, an elegant meal at the home of an Italian acquaintance, or "cooking Italian" back in one's own kitchen, the prospect is mouth-watering.

Claudia Piras

#23. I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.

Charles McCarry

#24. The monster is growing all the time. The numbers (of fighters) and the abilities at the Islamic State's disposal are great and mighty. This worries everyone, and everyone should be worried.

Hassan Nasrallah

#25. Parents have no greater responsibility in this world than the bringing up of their children in the right way, and they will have no greater satisfaction as the years pass than to see those children grow in integrity and honesty and make something of their lives.

Gordon B. Hinckley

#26. Long as me and my team in here,
There's gon' be some weed in the air!

Wiz Khalifa

#27. Before the man could answer V cursed "If I have to hear all that Keanu Reeves, Matrix, I am Neo' kind of shit my head's going to explode."
"Don't you mean Neon?" Butch shot back "Cause he reminds me of the Citgo sign."
Wraths head turned "Shut the fuck up. All of you.

J.R. Ward

#28. Feathers fell from the sky. Like black snow, they drifted onto an old city called Bath.

Stefan Bachmann

#29. I went to a bookstore to try to find a book. The bottom line is, it all comes by trial and error. It was scary and exciting at first you don't know what to expect. But once you look into your child's eyes, you forget about that.

Michael Jordan

#30. Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

#31. We will never know if any other president approached Nixon in paranoia, profanity or potential criminality, since only his conversations were captured, subpoenaed and ultimately released on the front pages of newspapers.

Nancy Gibbs

#32. Once you have kids, you think like a parent. You get a lot more protective.

Trey Parker

#33. I was really the first-line editor of the 'House of Night' series. I didn't write that much of the story, and I didn't know what was happening until my mom finished the book and sent it to me because I wanted to read it with fresh eyes as a general reader would.

Kristin Cast