First Lines Quotes

#1. The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.

John Paul Stevens

#2. The first lines of defence against criminals are the victims themselves.

Michael Badnarik

#3. I was a 2-year-old baby on something, but it's not like I had lines. But I actually had my first lines when I was 4. And then I finished school, and I went to USC for their BFA program in acting.

Troian Bellisario

#4. I tend toward an expansive sentence that has a cold surface and, visible underneath it, a magma of unbearable heat. I want readers to know from the first lines what they will have to deal with.

Elena Ferrante

#5. He read the familiar first lines of the book and felt the calm come over him, like a comforter.

Louise Penny

#6. So here at last were the first lines of the story that was later to come clear, a story of spite and bigotry, too mean and petty to be called tragedy, but tragic for all that.

Mary Stewart

#7. Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health.

Lois Capps

#8. I like my first lines short and declarative. No complicated sentences. Of course, that's not really a Scott thing. It's pretty classic grab-the-reader technique.

Scott Westerfeld

#9. One of my many theories about short stories is that their titles and first lines ought to be memorable, because if not memorable they will not be remembered, and if not remembered the stories will not be reprinted (because no one can find them).

Damon Knight

#10. I really love diving in, head first, with directing and not having to worry about hair, makeup or lines.

Chris Lowell

#11. Along those lines, to get personal for a moment, I think the best way to die would be swallowed by a giant snake. Going feet first and whole into a slimy maw would give your life perfect symmetry.

Joseph Fink

#12. To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.

Kurt Vonnegut

#13. Some seek the light and hold the light in place. Erik Fiskare didn't like being the center of attention, but he liked situations where he had to keep the attention centered.

Suanne Laqueur

#14. 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

#15. Every good laboratory consists of first rate men working in great harmony to insure the progress of science; but down at the end of the hall is an unsociable, wrong-headed fellow working on unprofitable lines, and in his hands lies the hope of discovery.

Ernest Rutherford

#16. So if it resonates with fans - and that's always the bottom line, fans have the final say - then I'm sure we'll see more of it. I'd be honored to do it. I saw the first one today, and I cracked up. I literally laughed out loud. I saw how the sausage was made, and I still laughed.

Phil Morris

#17. On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

Richard Matheson

#18. There was a gap of seven years between the first and second Dracula movies. In the second one as everybody knows, I didn't speak, because I said I couldn't say the lines.

Christopher Lee

#19. The great fish moved silently through the night water.

Peter Benchley

#20. The most difficult thing about writing; is writing the first line.

Amit Kalantri

#21. Boudicca MacDaede was not the most striking of women, but she had a wryness in character and heartiness in form that recommended her to the rough demands of a farmer's daughter and a soldier's sufferance." ~ First two lines of book 1 in the Haanta Series

Michelle Franklin

#22. You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.

Christopher Moore

#23. Sure. Sure you have. I never forget a face.

Stephen King

#24. I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.

Bill Bryson

#25. Hello, my name is Albany, and I have a telepathic connection with my twin sister, along with the ability to read minds.

C.B. Cook

#26. 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

#27. I tried to copy some of his mannerisms at first but it didn't work. And then I just let the spirit of the character grow in me and it just took its rightful place. I started to speak the lines and it felt right.

Derek Luke

#28. I represent an affluent district, but when I worked to form my county's first battered-women's shelter, some nights there were no beds left. Violence against women crosses all economic lines.

Lynn Woolsey

#29. Like life, peace begins with women. We are the first to forge lines of alliance and collaboration across conflict divides.

Zainab Salbi

#30. First the shirt. His chest was so sculpted and beautiful. I could see all the tiny lines chiseled into his abdomen. If he looked this good in the window reflection, I couldn't even imagine how insanely gorgeous he was going to be when I looked directly at him. Next

Vi Keeland

#31. It was shaping up as a beautiful morning. The last thing I wanted to hear about was murder.

Jonathan Kellerman

#32. She should've interviewed Snape," said Harry grimly. "He'd give her the goods on me any day. "Potter has been crossing lines ever since he first arrived at this school ...

J.K. Rowling

#33. First, the front lines. They are not lines, really: the war seems to be going on in many places at once. Wooded

Margaret Atwood

#34. For the first time in history, Congress has 100 women in it. Congratulations. Welcome to modern times, America. It's great having 100 women in Congress. Unless you're in line for the congressional bathroom.

Craig Ferguson

#35. Grow internally first. Strengthen your bottom line first before considering external growth.

Richard Branson

#36. Not for the first time in the history of the universe, someone for whom communication normally came as effortlessly as a dream was stuck for inspiration when faced with a few lines on the back of a card.

Terry Pratchett

#37. Goodnight, child. This is a damn shame. Let's drop it out of the picture." He gave her two lines of hospital patter to go to sleep on. "So many people are going to love you and it might be nice to meet your first love all intact, emotionally too. That's an old-fashioned idea, isn't it?

F Scott Fitzgerald

#38. First: Character is king. There are probably fewer than six books every century remembered specifically for their plots. People remember characters. Same with television. Who remembers the Lone Ranger? Everybody. Who remembers any actual Lone Ranger story lines? Nobody.

Lee Child

#39. 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

#40. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked.

Greg Nagan

#41. The first time it happens, it can be explained. Accident. Experiment. Fluke. Everything was confusing. The lines blurred.
The second time is when it really happens for the first time.

Leah Raeder

#42. We wrote our first blog post before we wrote our first line of code.

Jon Miller

#43. He liked radical politics and had a fondness for chocolate.

Laura Kinsale

#44. With the first line of Mehendi, she forgot her troubles and delved into the beautiful world of checkered patterns and intricate lines.

Sumeetha Manikandan

#45. I did it! I stopped time.

[Hampton Green]

Tim Tharp

#46. The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then, recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction.

J.K. Rowling

#47. My brother and late sister and I were raised in Detroit; it was where the middle class across racial lines, the middle class was able to develop, build a home, have for the first time retirement benefits, have a job, and yes, their kids began to go to college.

Sander Levin

#48. I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute.

Alexandre Dumas

#49. This is your dividing line, by the way, between child and nonchild - when the first trouble happens that Mama can't fix.

Peg Bracken

#50. I started Botox the first year it came out. I was the first one in line, and I have had Botox every six months since then.

Janice Dickinson

#51. Indian summer is like a woman.

Grace Metalious

#52. It was a pleasure to burn.

Ray Bradbury

#53. First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture.

Gustav Stickley

#54. They murdered him.

Robert Cormier

#55. The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor.

Daniel Quinn

#56. It's a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn't leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.

Muriel Spark

#57. The sun peeked over the horizon like the head of a giant radioactive manatee.

Brandon Sanderson

#58. I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

John Dufresne

#59. On Salem's Lot: " My favorite vampire story ever. I first read this 20 years ago, and I can still quote lines from it.
"You have been ill-used, Mr Bryant."
"I will see you sleep like the dead, teacher."
"The boy makes ten of you, false priest."
Fuck twilight. Seriously ...

Jay Kristoff

#60. It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.

Frederick Forsyth

#61. This morning, my mother didn't get out of bed.

Melina Marchetta

#62. Jesus always colored outside of the lines here, extending grace and healing to those well beyond His people group. He often healed people first; they believed second.

Jen Hatmaker

#63. When I saw my first movie, I was fine, but I thought, "Oh, my heavens. It's not about just standing there on my mark and saying these lines. I need to actually act."

Blake Lively

#64. I remember my first commercial. This is really great 'Degrassi' trivia: The character Toby on 'Degrassi,' played by Jake Goldsbie, he and I were in both of our first commercial ever when we were four. It was for Tiger Toys, this old Game Boy-type thing. Both of our lines were, 'Mommy, I can do it!'

Charlotte Arnold

#65. My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

I am a crazy woman... That last part is true.

Brunonia Barry

#66. Poems, for me, begin as a social engagement. I want to establish a kind of sociability or even hospitality at the beginning of a poem. The title and the first few lines are a kind of welcome mat where I am inviting the reader inside.

Billy Collins

#67. A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.

Anthony Hecht

#68. I trained like an animal, but the thing is focus and concentration. When the bell rings it's like when the little red light goes on over the camera. And I can usually nail my lines on the first or second take because I'm right there.

Mickey Rourke

#69. Eventually I found it had been working all along-but didn't show anything on screen until it had the first full page of text. I inserted 30 new lines, and suddenly my toy said 'hEllO woRlD'. An hour later I understood alphabet shifting rather better!

Graham Nelson

#70. His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.

David Morrell

#71. Nature eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty.

John Greenleaf Whittier

#72. Entertainment has a bad name ... The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights.

Michael Chabon

#73. Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

Rick Riordan

#74. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#75. By the time I got to the Fox studio for my first major film, I knew how to hit a mark. I knew how to memorize lines. I knew how to pay attention.

Shirley Temple

#76. The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Blaise Pascal

#77. On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan.

Tan Twan Eng

#78. The first principle of architectural beauty is that the essential lines of a construction be determined by a perfect appropriateness to its use.

Gustave Eiffel

#79. 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

#80. Brother Kendrick Lamar: he's not a rapper, he's a writer, he's an author. And if you read between the lines, we'll learn how to love one another. But you can't do that, I said you can't do that, without loving yourself first.

Kendrick Lamar

#81. Maybe you saw her first? Caught a glimpse between the lines, between the letters, like a ghost in the mirror, a ghost in the wings?

Mark Z. Danielewski

#82. Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City ... Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.

Anatole France

#83. So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!

Josh Bazell

#84. I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful.

Rae Hachton

#85. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Samuel Beckett

#86. I put my pencil upon the paper, doubtfully, and drew little lines, considering my theme. But I would not long hesitate in this manner, for I knew that all creation must be chaos first, and then gestures in the void before it can cast out the completed thing.

Hilaire Belloc

#87. Bad poetry is almost always bad because it attempts to claim for itself the real power of whatever it describes in ten lines: a sky full of stars, first love, or Niagara Falls.

Annie Dillard

#88. When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

Suzanne Collins

#89. The day I turned sixteen years old I had no idea that in a few weeks nearly everyone I cared about would be dead.

Adam Cadre

#90. Sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to ...

Shaun Tan

#91. The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.

Tatiana De Rosnay

#92. First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.

Richard Ford

#93. Never mind reading between the lines, try reading what's on them first.

Teri Louise Kelly

#94. I am damned,' thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die.

Nick Cave

#95. It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.

Lois Lowry

#96. Global consciousness is not an objective belief that can be taught to anybody and everybody, but a subjective transformation in the interior structures that can hold belief in the first place, which itself is the product of a long line of inner consciousness development.

Ken Wilber

#97. There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

Neil Gaiman

#98. Maniac Magee was not born in a dump.

Jerry Spinelli

#99. If you were mine," Anthony said, "I wouldn't leave you alone for a minute."
"I bet you say that to all the girls."
"Don't," he said. "I hate that."
"Oh you can't pretend you haven't used all your best lines on other women first. I know you, Boot. You told me, remember?

Jojo Moyes

#100. I came from a war-torn country and I was a victim of that racism because within tribes, within political lines, people were fighting. The first thing that I like to fight is racism because I know what it means, how it destroys the fabric of my society, of my wellbeing.

Pearl Tan