Quotes About The First Page

#1. Fictional characters exist in only two places, neither of which is on the printed page. They exist, first, in the mind of the writer and, second, in the mind of the reader.

Maren Elwood

#2. CONTENTS Cover About the Book Title Page Colour First Reader Dedication Chapter

Jacqueline Wilson

#3. It would absolutely suck if you paid a few bucks for a book only to find that on the first page it said, 'Once upon a time they all lived happily ever after' and the rest of the book was blank.

Simon Travaglia

#4. My background is in tech. I studied computer science, and was working on TechTV, so the first thing I wanted to do was see my favorite motherboard stories hit the front page; you know, like, really geeky stuff.

Kevin Rose

#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

#6. Kennedy invited us into the White House-the first time in the history of the White House picketers had been invited inside. This made front page headlines.

Peter Coyote

#7. The book smelled dusty and old but also carried a sweet tang, a hint of something inviting. She opened to the first page and started to read, pronouncing the words in a reverent whisper.

Shannon Hale

#8. The element of change has been the thing, really. We put out the first one, then the second ... then a third LP totally different from them. It's the reason we were able to keep it together.

Jimmy Page

#9. To his shock, as Saarang turned the first page, the words slowly transformed into small cylinders, except for one-letter words which preferred being spheres, and started rolling toward the vertical edges of the book.

Pawan Mishra

#10. The novels I prefer, are those that make you feel uneasy from the very first page.

Italo Calvino

#11. When I was a playwright earlier in my career - my senior project in high school was my first produced play - I used to put on the title page: 'A tragedy with laughs.'

Jeff Lindsay

#12. On a couple of occasions I've shocked myself. Pet Sematery was appalling when it first came out on to the page.

Stephen King

#13. Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.

Brad Paisley

#14. I'll get a three-page letter and the last paragraph says 'I know you'll never read this, but here's my number.' I love to call those people because the first thing they say is, 'Governor, I didn't mean everything I said in the letter about you.'

Dave Heineman

#15. TRIGGER CITY secures Sean Chercover's place as one of the best crime writers of his generation. It grabs you hard on the first page and doesn't let go, even after you've closed the book.

Tasha Alexander

#16. First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.

T.C. Boyle

#17. The Thames Torso murders almost fell into my lap. After deciding to use a real historical crime as the focus for the book, I went to Google and searched for unsolved murders in Victorian London, and they basically popped out at me about halfway down the first results page.

Sarah Pinborough

#18. The first paragraph of my book must get me my reader. The last paragraph of a chapter must compel my reader to turn the page. The last paragraph of my book must ensure that my reader looks out for my next book.

Ashwin Sanghi

#19. The first draft is all about freedom, and if loyalty is in question, it is only my loyalty to the characters and situations on the page. All the worries about where the material may have sprung from or what so-and-so might think can be dealt with later.

Jill McCorkle

#20. Besides it's not as though the prisoner can truly die, any more than a character in a novel can. You can always flip back to the first page, can't you?

Django Wexler

#21. I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.

Nora Ephron

#22. For the first time in memory, I was unable to sleep not because I was anxious but because I was excited. To live in a damp crowded asshole and sing
if these guys don't know the secret to living, I don't know who does. (The Grieving Owl, page 157)

David Sedaris

#23. When I first pursued this with Universal, they had no idea what to do. But now that we've gone through the whole process and I've signed this 60-page document that says what we can and can't do, I suppose it will be a little bit easier for the next person.

DJ Shadow

#24. It was from a very young age that I fell in love with this wonderful artifact
the turn of the first page is almost like a sacred ritual to me. Whenever I walk into a library, it is never without some degree of reverence.

Lang Leav

#25. The writer and his reader are both complicit in the act of storytelling. The writer must first leave a part of his soul on the page,like a contagion, which the reader then catches.

Cynthia Ogren

#26. He seemed to think we were on the same page. I wasn't even sure we were reading the same book.

Jodie Andrefski

#27. I can tell you that I never begin working on a story until I have a title centered at the top of the first page.

Kevin Brockmeier

#28. A shivery, delicious Southern Gothic with feuding families, dark spirits, ancient curses and caught up in the middle, a young girl learning to live and love for the first time. Atmospheric and suspenseful, Compulsion will draw you in and hold you until the very last page.

Leah Cypess

#29. His small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page, shedding first its capital letters and finally even its full stops:

George Orwell

#30. And if our love was a story book
We would meet on the very first page
The last chapter would be about
How I'm thankful for the life we've made.I Love You...

J. Hampden Jackson

#31. She had discovered with surprise and pleasure that as she turned each page, the book was written, as if for the first time, all over again.

Arturo Perez-Reverte

#32. This union has been divided in like a civil war - brother against brother - sister against sister. And I'm pulling it together. We've already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.

James P. Hoffa

#33. I'm not good at watching stuff that I'm in at all. I should stop. I shouldn't watch something for the first time with a room full of people at Sundance. It's not a good idea.

Ellen Page

#34. The fire first has to be laid before the match can be put to it.

P.K. Page

#35. 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

#36. And i'm thinking, aren't i supposed to be the one who's freaking out here? tiny is going to be the first b-b-b- (i can't do it) boy-f-f-f (c'mon, will) boyf-boyf (here we go) boyfriend of mine that she's ever met.

David Levithan

#37. I always write my first draft in longhand, in lined notebooks. I move around the house, sitting where I like, and watch the words spool out in front of me, actually taking a lot of pleasure in the way they look in my strange handwriting on the page.

Sue Miller

#38. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never
any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#39. I also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.

Vaclav Klaus

#40. Most African Americans, if given a chance, would have chosen to be 'just Americans' ever since the first of us was brought here to Jamestown colony in 1619, a year before the Mayflower landed. But that choice has never been left up to us.

Clarence Page

#41. The first book I ever bought for myself was 'One Fish Two Fish' by Dr. Seuss. My favourite page shows two children carrying an enormous glass jar up some stairs in the dark. In the jar is a tusked beflippered creature floating in brine.

Mini Grey

#42. When I was little, we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We'd play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He'd read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories.

Danica McKellar

#43. I'm Paige," I whispered.
He was serious, for once. "Are you the first page, or the last?"
I didn't answer, not right then.

Christopher Pike

#44. I always turn to the sports page first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures. - Earl Warren

Max Allan Collins

#45. You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?

Debbie Allen

#46. About as close you can get to the perfect cerebral thriller: searingly smart, ridiculously funny, and fast as hell ... I defy anybody to read the first page and not keep going to the last.

Lev Grossman

#47. You can tell if you're going to be into a script within the first five or ten pages - if I'm not completely engaged by page 20, I just have to give up on it.

Aaron Paul

#48. When you meet someone for the first time, that's not the whole book. That's just the first page.

Brody Armstrong

#49. I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.

Viggo Mortensen

#50. If our love was a story book, we would meet on the very first page.

Shayne Ward

#51. My first instinct was to make an excuse or to get bashful or to change the subject...but then I realized I was in good company. I could be honest, and this guy was the one who seemed to be holding back. "Actually, yeah, that was kind of amazing.

Tyler Oakley

#52. Sit down, Montag. Watch. Delicately, like the petals of a flower. Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh?' ... There sat Beatty, perspiring gently, the floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm.

Ray Bradbury

#53. Poetry for me is very easy. It's like a lightning bolt. I feel this calling, and the first line of the poem comes into my head, and I just have to go to the page, to the typewriter, to the computer or whatever and write it.

Gioconda Belli

#54. Lots of people think it was Jimmy Page who had the first fuzzbox. It wasn't, No! it wasn't me either.

Jim Sullivan

#55. Stories never really end ... even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don't end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.

Cornelia Funke

#56. I wrote my first textbook in 1970. It was called 'The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy,' and over the years, many students told me that they enjoyed reading it because there were so many stories in there; often just a paragraph or a page of something that happened in a group session.

Irvin D. Yalom

#57. The presence of the devil is on the first page of the Bible, and the Bible ends as well with the presence of the devil, with the victory of God over the devil.

Pope Francis

#58. I always wanted to be good at something, to be somebody. The minute I got into my first play, which was called 'Excuse My Dust' - I was 17 at the time - I knew that this was what I'd been looking for.

Geraldine Page

#59. First off, the PS2 and PSP can play against each other online.

Tim Page

#60. If I'm in the bookstore, and I see a 700-page novel, my first thought is, 'Ooh, how could you cut this down to size and make a movie out of it?'

Brian Helgeland

#61. The best young writers are convinced they need blurbs from famous writers before an editor will even read the first page of a manuscript. If this is true, then the editorial system that prevails today stinks. And let's start reforming it.

Diane Wakoski

#62. From my Facebook Page: You spend the first 50 years acquiring and the second 50 years getting rid of

Mary R. Woldering

#63. Gay marriage has jumped out of the closet on to the front page. Everyone from the president of the U.S. to retired four-star general Colin Powell is embracing the issue, now supported by most Americans. Still, a few people, like former First Lady Laura Bush appear to be conflicted.

Kitty Kelley

#64. The two things I enjoy the most about writing are the first page of a book and the last. What's in between is very hard work.

Rachel Gibson

#65. Aokpe will always be special because it was the reason Kambili and Jaja first came to Nsukka.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#66. When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.

Jane Smiley

#67. You will, I am sure, agree with me that ... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.

Arthur Conan Doyle

#68. Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write.

Nicholas Sparks

#69. The frail letters on the first page were barely legible; they looked like whispers, if whispers had form.

Susan Meissner

#70. If you haven't got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you'll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William Campbell Gault

#71. Sometimes I get a lyric, and the lyric, you know, comes off the page, and goes into my brain and comes out with a melody. Other times, I may create a melody first.

Carole King

#72. Only a determined and resourceful scholar could establish manuscript precedence - but in the race to masturbate on a printed page Proust definitely came first.

Michael Foley

#73. Some of the best rock riffs ever written were by Jimmy Page, and I can't really name the songs, but some of the stuff he did on his first and second records is beyond brilliant.

Joe Perry

#74. I bring a copy of 'Dracula' with me wherever I go, the book. It's my favorite book in the world, it's absolutely incredible. My great-great grandfather was the guy who printed the first edition, so he's the first person to ever put 'Dracula' on the written page.

Jack Reynor

#75. But then he stops at the door frame and says, It's 9:24. Telling me the time is a small act of betrayal-and therefore an ordinary act of bravery. It is maybe the first time I've seen Peter be truly Dauntless.

Veronica Roth

#76. I'm always a little bit cautious around invented terminology because so much science fiction is off-putting to the uninitiated. You open up the first page, and it's full of all these made-up words.

Alastair Reynolds

#77. The great thing about making an ensemble show is it becomes modular. It might work on the page to cut from one scene to another, but on the screen, it's more powerful to take that second scene and move it first or move it later.

Noah Hawley

#78. I like writing a lot more than I used to. I used to find it scary but now I've got used to it once it gets going. I used to find it hard to start. Fear of the blank page. The first thing you write down won't bear any relation to what's in your head and that's always disappointing.

Victoria Wood

#79. I finish the book so I can see how it's going to end. I write that first sentence, and if it's the right first sentence, it leads to the right second sentence and three years later you have a 500-page manuscript, but it really is like going on a trip, going on a journey. It's a voyage.

Tom Robbins

#80. Sleeping in Eden is intense and absorbing from the very first page. Written in lovely prose, two seemingly different storylines collide in a shocking conclusion.

Heather Gudenkauf

#81. Finally, do not try to understand every word or page of a difficult book the first time through. This is the most important rule of all; it is the essence of inspectional reading.

Mortimer J. Adler

#82. The first thing that goes into shooting a scene is understanding whats on the page.

Debbie Allen

#83. Doing the movies and meeting the people, and I like the stories of the movies. I like names a lot, too. When I do an audition, there is a script and it has a first page that has the names of all the characters. I'm like, Let me see that real quick, I wanna see what my name is gonna be.

Dakota Fanning

#84. When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.

Nora Ephron

#85. People are put off by the perception of science fiction, and it doesn't help if you've got references to quantum this and quantum that on the first page, and people think, 'This isn't for me,' and chuck it. I'm probably a pretty bad offender, given how far in the future some of my stuff is.

Peter F. Hamilton

#86. First, you must be certain that you are ready for knowledge. There are many things that we bury in our minds for a reason. Are you sure that you want to go digging up the past?"- Elsie (Marked Book #1) page 226

A.N. Meade

#87. Augustine was struck by the fact, when they first met, that Ambrose read to himself, a habit unknown to the classical world: 'His eyes scanned the page, and his mind penetrated its meaning, but his voice and tongue were silent.' There were other impressive things about Ambrose.

Paul Johnson

#88. This idea that the person who kisses you first gets, with that kiss, a little piece of your soul. And they have a hold over you. Most people don't ever use it against you. But some people do.

Morgan Matson

#89. Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.

Jimmy Page

#90. I wouldn't say I see things visually first, but what I do think is important, for a lot of screenwriters, is to not just think about the words on the page, but also the world as a whole and the vibe of the movie, rather than a sequence of scenes written on the page.

Evan Daugherty

#91. For the first time in my life, my future was a blank page. It was perfect. And beyond scary.

S.T. Bende

#92. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet - so deadly sad - that to read one line of it would dissolve any courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by.

Charlotte Bronte

#93. The hardest thing is to write about people. First and foremost, you have to encounter their humanity. That is the only way you can make them live as characters on the page.

Philip Kerr

#94. Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.

Mason Cooley

#95. For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page.

George Saunders

#96. I calculated that if I wrote five pages a day, which seemed very doable, I would have an 1,800-page first draft when the deadline rolled around. Though completely unwritten, I was very impressed with how long my first draft would be.

Michael Showalter

#97. For the first time in our history, every spectrum of black thought is in the same room on the same page with a cause bigger than our persons, bigger than our organizations, and the cause is
to ease the suffering of the masses of our people.

Louis Farrakhan

#98. I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.

Henning Mankell

#99. My only requirement for that first story was that there had to be a fight or an explosion on every page. Naturally, no one wanted to publish it, but I liked the character, did a few stories to keep my hand in.

Phil Foglio

#100. With one sentence and two steps, forever began. Till Page walked through my door for the very first time.

Aly Martinez