Top 100 First Sentence Quotes
#3. It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
Richard Bach
#4. Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.
Gideon Defoe
#5. I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.
Charles Krauthammer
#7. I remember hating having to cross over the Broadway Bridge again, having to leave the peninsula neighborhood and go back to my apartment in downtown Boston.
Michael Patrick MacDonald
#8. Although I'm afraid I don't get too many clients these days!
Patrick McCabe
#9. The most difficult thing about writing; is writing the first line.
Amit Kalantri
#10. Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road.
D.J. MacHale
#11. They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway.
Wislawa Szymborska
#12. On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap.
Adam Rapp
#13. Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.
Robert Bloch
#14. I was on my bus, and on my bus I have a yoga swing. Jennifes comes on, and she goes, ' Hi, Woody, I'm J
is that a sex swing?' Her first sentence to me.
Woody Harrelson
#15. Once you have found the right shot to introduce the scene-written your first declarative sentence-then the rest flows. You've found the key to the whole scene.
John Huston
#16. Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.
William Gibson
#17. So now get up.'
Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned toward the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.
Hilary Mantel
#18. It was shaping up as a beautiful morning. The last thing I wanted to hear about was murder.
Jonathan Kellerman
#19. The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.
H.G.Wells
#20. Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.
J.K. Rowling
#21. When I sat down and wrote the first paragraph, I was like, 'Oh, I can go with this.' I didn't do an outline. I didn't do anything. I just wrote sentence by sentence, not knowing where the story was going.
Colleen Hoover
#22. Too many!' James shouted, and slammed the door behind him.
Susan Cooper
#23. On my first evening in the back country, I skipped down the porch steps of the farmhouse-leaving my father inside and the radio playing and my small suitcase decorated with neon flower stickers unpacked-and wandered towards the upside-down school bus I'd spied from an upstairs window.
Mitch Cullin
#24. Today, in the newspapers and magazines, the first sentence is, my restaurant is expensive.
Masa Takayama
#25. Goldenrod Moram had a first name that sounded like it belonged in the middle of a fairy tale, where she would be the dazzling princess in need of rescuing.
Sarvenaz Tash
#26. I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.
Edwin A. Abbott
#27. ... when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence ... in love, never settle ... value yourself first and this will help you to value others ... life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest ... everyone in the world is different, and that's ok ...
Spider Robinson
#28. An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began-began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly-her mother, Rupban, felt an iron fist squeeze her belly.
Monica Ali
#29. I never believed in dharma. karma, reincarnation, or any of that spiritual crap, which caused sort of a problem growing up because my parents are devout Hindus.
Sonia Singh
#30. To slay the sinner is then the first use of the Law, to destroy the life and strength wherein he trusts and convince him that he is dead while he lives; not only under the sentence of death, but actually dead to God, void of all spiritual life, dead in trespasses and sins.
John Wesley
#31. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
C.S. Lewis
#32. At last, the luminous match was struck and the day was lit.
Dorit Rabinyan
#33. Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.
Zadie Smith
#34. I am girl of definitions, of logic, of black and white.
Remember this.
Cecelia Ahern
#35. All the elements in an advertisement are primarily designed to do one thing and one thing only: get you to read the first sentence of the copy.
Joseph Sugarman
#36. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked.
Greg Nagan
#37. Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.
Stephen King
#39. I wonder what kind of sound it would make if I were to smash this glass against the side of his head.
Colleen Hoover
#41. From the air Anguilla looked narrow, flat, and scrubby, but that was only part of the picture.
Melinda Blanchard
#43. Baby, groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall.
Jennifer Weiner
#44. The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Ko Sanh Road.
Alex Garland
#45. When Matussem Ramoud opened his eyes each morning, his wife would still not be there.
Diana Abu-Jaber
#46. When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up.
Albert Brooks
#48. Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that's true.
Gayle Forman
#51. At the age of three my grand aunt proclaimed her independence by categorically refusing to have her feet bound, resolutely tearing off the bandages as fast as they were applied.
Adeline Yen Mah
#53. In a single sentence the moral is: admit that complexity always increases, first from the model you fit to the data, thence to the model you use to think about and plan about the experiment and its analysis, and thence to the true situation.
John Tukey
#55. Wretchedness. It is atrociously unfair, of course, that the Baudelaires have so many troubles, but that is the way the story goes. So now that I've told you that the first sentence will be The Baudelaire
Lemony Snicket
#56. The Rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning.
George Orwell
#58. The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#59. I don't write with a scheme or a plan. I write word to word, so whatever that first sentence is, having said that, one more or less had to say what comes next and next and next. Guilty of no cogitation or forethought.
Padgett Powell
#61. First snow: it came this year late in November.
John Updike
#62. 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
#64. And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.
John Irving
#66. Feathers fell from the sky. Like black snow, they drifted onto an old city called Bath.
Stefan Bachmann
#67. All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall.
Tom Perrotta
#68. Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain.
Sheri S. Tepper
#69. I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.
Orson Scott Card
#71. Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.
Joe Haldeman
#72. The way other people fantasize about surprise inheritances, firts-glance love, and endless white empyreal pastures, Mitchell dreamed of an erupting supervolcano that would bury North America under a foot of hot ash.
Nathaniel Rich
#73. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
Harper Lee
#74. I sort through the letters and pull out what I need for the beginning. They snap easily into place. And even though I thought I would need every letter, I finish the first sentence and realize that it's all I have left to say.
I MISS YOU.
Nina LaCour
#76. When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as he is, refuses to trade in.
Richard Russo
#77. On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes' walk across St. Peter's Square from the Vatican.
Mary Doria Russell
#78. I used to get stuck trying to find the first sentence of a story, then I realised that it was often because I didn't know what problem a character was facing in the story. As soon as I did, I could have the character trying to do something about it or have the problem whack him between the eyes.
Morris Gleitzman
#79. The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.
Steve Almond
#81. If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.
Arthur Brisbane
#82. As soon as I started writing Julia, by which I mean while writing its first sentence, I felt a sudden, reassuring charge of excitement. I knew it was going to work.
Peter Straub
#83. THE Right Honorable Edward Junius Carsington, Earl of Hargate, had five sons, which was three more than he needed.
Loretta Chase
#84. The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
Steve Martin
#86. CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble.
Audrey Niffenegger
#87. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.
Bertrand Russell
#89. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
Dodie Smith
#90. On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the emperor of Japan.
Tan Twan Eng
#91. Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.
Margaret Atwood
#92. The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture.
Jose Saramago
#93. When I finally write the first sentence, I want to know everything that happens, so that I am not inventing the story as I write it - rather, I am remembering a story that has already happened.
John Irving
#94. If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.
Stephen Covey
#96. For the first time I saw her as a dead body under suspended sentence.
Simone De Beauvoir
#97. There once was a woman named Story Easton who couldn't decide if she should kill herself, or eat a double cheeseburger.
Elizabeth Leiknes
#98. The first American word that I learned was cheeseburger. And the first sentence I learned was, "I'm sorry but we don't serve breakfast after 12 o'clock."
Callan McAuliffe
#99. We are both busy people, so let's cut the small talk.
David Mitchell
#100. The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows.
Stanley Fish
