A First Date Quotes & Sayings

There are few things more disconcerting than realizing the first date you thought went so well was in fact a dud. — Mallory Ortberg

The first of Sam and Rosie's children was born on the twenty-fifth of March, a date that Sam noted. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Look at us talking blood and gore like we're on a date sharing our first sexual experience. — Hannah

Defense leaders should be searching for ways to reform out-of-date procurement processes, to collapse layers of Pentagon bureaucracy, and to restrain the growth in personnel and benefits costs. A critical first step in that process should be to conduct a full Pentagon audit to determine how DOD spends taxpayer dollars. — Pete Hegseth

When I first started drawing the earliest incarnation of 'Optic Nerve,' I hadn't even been on a date; I hadn't had a romantic relationship of any kind yet, so in a way, I was almost writing science fiction. — Adrian Tomine

My phone buzzes. It's from Karou: a list of conversation openers that I won't be needing. - a) Hi. I'm Zuzana. I'm actually a marionette brought to life by the Blue Fairy, and the only way I can gain a soul is if a human falls in love with me. Help a puppet out? - b) Hi. I'm Zuzana. The touch of my lips imparts immortality. Just sayin'. - c) Hi. I'm Zuzana. I think I might like you. — Laini Taylor

Emily told us. "I would never go on a first date somewhere in my town because I know all the waiters. I know all the bartenders. I know everybody. — Aziz Ansari

I did not have a date to the prom. I went to my junior prom alone, and my senior prom, I was doing my first movie. I went in a limousine with, like, a bunch of people to my junior prom. It was a group date. — Zooey Deschanel

Other people can smell nervousness and insecurities like a shark smells blood. These things can be cute on a first date but never when you're asking people to trust you in business or with the largest financial decision of their lives. The first secret of this book is that the only way to conquer those nerves is by being your true self. — Fredrik Eklund

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and make sense of my life. I harbored the hope, I'm now embarrassed to admit, that like a girl in a Lifetime movie, I would look into someone's eyes and find a reflection of my inner life. But sometime between my teenage years and the first years in New York, that idea had pretty well evaporated. I'd grown up. — Diane Meier

I knew immediately that this was not going to work out. Hunter is the kind of guy who dates women who wear high heels and a cocktail dress on a first date. I can't even walk in heels, and I generally believe that someone has to earn the right to see my legs. — Lisa Lutz

I order six shots.
I drink the first shot with lemon and salt and talk about Isha for 120 seconds.
I drink the second shot with lemon and salt and talk about Isha and our love for 90 seconds.
I drink the third shot with lemon and talk about future plans with wedding for 60 seconds.
I drink the fourth and blabber for 30 seconds.
I drink the fifth, I speak in a language no one can understand for ten seconds or less. I fall down.
When I open my eyes, I see Diwa helping me sit in the car and put on the seat belt. I am knocked out. — Saravana Kumar Murugan

Dennis's superior mental health was obvious from the first date, like a cleft palate. The other thing about him was that he had shapely, muscular legs. His calves were so sculpted they looked artificial, like silicone implants. This is a look I'm fond of. In fact, if I had been born a girl there is no doubt in my mind that my chest cavity would have been stuffed with two softball-sized orbs of silicone before my eleventh birthday. In this way my own mental health is somewhat like a cleft palate. — Augusten Burroughs

I'm - sorry about being a lousy date," Alec muttered.
"What are you talking about?" Magnus asked. "You're a fantastic date. You've only been here ten minutes, and I already got half of your clothes off. — Cassandra Clare

And the third is from him: "Second date?"
I immediately text him back: "Hell yeah!"
Then I collapse on my bed and enjoy that "butterflies in the stomach" feeling. I've felt the butterflies before from time to time, but this is the first time I haven't sort of wanted to attack them with a flyswatter. — Adam Selzer

I suppose it is a bit of a date that we're having at the moment. As is usually the case you don't get married on a first date, you've got to go out a few times before you make any big decisions. — Aidy Boothroyd

Any man who doesn't believe in carrying weapons on a first date is not a man worth knowing. — Seanan McGuire

Man, first I'm shot, now I'm going to be a friggin' zombie. At this rate, I'll never live to have my first date or a driver's license. Ah, gah! I've come too far to die a predestrian virgin. Bubba, you can't let me die ... I only have seventeen more months and three days to my sixteenth birthday! (Nick) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

My first date ever, I was kind of nervous, so I was like, 'I'm going to bring Brady to this walk on the beach with this girl,' and she was like, 'Oh my gosh, I have a King Charles Cavalier, too.' I'm like, 'Money, perfect, amazing.' — Charlie Puth

First date, it's always fun to go somewhere or do something, like go see a band ... not make it too formal. — Behati Prinsloo

The goal of a marketing interaction isn't to close the sale, any more than the goal of a first date is to get married. No, the opportunity is to move forward, to earn attention and trust and curiosity and conversation. — Seth Godin

Okay", I breathed. "Then what will it take?" I was completely out of my element. Begging a girl to go on a date with me. This was fucked up."
"Miss it."
I stared into her cold, blue eyes and knew I'd just met the kind of girl books are written about. — Tarryn Fisher - Thief

I've never really had a first date! Well, I had kind of a first date. I went out with this kid. We went ice skating, but it was not fun. It was so terrible that I told him my curfew was a lot earlier than it really was. — Keke Palmer

I have some vows for you first," he spoke to Mia. "I may not be your real daddy, but I vow to be one in all the ways that matter. I vow to be a shoulder for you to cry on when you're sad. I vow to hold you in my arms and hug you whenever you need it. I vow to protect you always, in any way you may need. I vow to hunt down any guy that thinks he can date you - you're going to be single for life Mia, just accept it. But most importantly, I vow to love you with all my heart and take care of you always. — Micalea Smeltzer

I enjoy dating. I love first dates. I think they're incredibly fascinating studies in human psychology. When you sit down across from someone on a first date and things are going alright, you talk objectives. We want to win each other over, so how do you win someone over? You have to put the best foot forward. — Chris Pine

The ultimate first date? Something that is completely out of the ordinary - go crazy, because first dates are always a little awkward, so do something a little extreme. — Gina Carano

According to my file, I was abandoned on the steps of the children's home in Telbury with a birth certificate tucked inside the shawl. The certificate stated my name, date of birth, and place of birth - which was Aldabury Maternity Hospital - and my birth mother's name and address. All I have is my first name and date and place of birth. Everything else regarding my birth mother on the certificate seems to be false. — Lorna Peel

Somewhere between us hating each other back then, you became my first real friend, my first and only best friend, and I didn't realize it until last summer, but you've actually been my first everything." "You were my first kiss, my first date that I actually enjoyed, and the first woman I fell in love with - the first woman I actually made love to..." he said. "And you're still the only person I can talk to twenty times a day - whether it's via letter, email, text, or phone call, and still feel like it's not enough. — Whitney G.

Cowriting is very personal. A great song is an honest song, so you have to be able to open up to the person in the room. It's like a blind date. I know in the first five minutes if it's gonna be weird. — Liz Rose

Watching a movie for the first time is a flirt. Rewatching it, is a date. — Guillermo Del Toro

This is a special date but that was a special time — Anamika Mishra

Against Amerigo Vespucci no such charges of immorality, cruelty, and bigotry can be brought as against Columbus, and the sole accusation against him, of falsifying the date of his "first" voyage, has not been sustained by the evidence. — Frederick A. Ober

An ideal first date should involve things like a candle-lit dinner, soft music, and a binary anal defibrillator, with a guest appearance by Renaldo. — Jarod Kintz

Lula hauled herself up off the floor and put her hand to her neck. "Do I got holes? Am I bleeding? Do I look like I'm turning into a vampire?"
"No, no, and no," I told her. "He doesn't have his teeth in. He was just gumming you."
"That's disgustin'," Lula said. "I been gummed by a old vampire. I feel gross. My neck's all wet. What's on my neck?"
I squinted over at Lula. "Looks like a hickey."
"Are you shitting me? This worthless bag of bones gave me a hickey?" Lula pulled a mirror out of her purse and checked her neck out. "I'm not happy," Lula said. "First off I don't know if I got vampire cooties from this. And second, how am I gonna explain a hickey to my date tonight — Janet Evanovich

I wanted to challenge myself to write a story about a young woman who takes a huge risk emotionally and physically by having sex on her first date with a guy she's infatuated with," says Elizabeth Famous, "and somehow she manages to handle what she got herself into, maturing as a person in the process. — Elizabeth Famous

I just can't stop thinking about you. Don't get me wrong. It hasn't always been good thoughts. I mean, at first, you seemed like such a snob and then ... everything changed. I was thinking maybe ... we could ... we could got out. Together. On a date. I mean ... I want to go out with you. I'd like to go out with you. — Cecilia Gray

The Weirdos

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients' theories of light, how it streams at all angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. — Ottessa Moshfegh

I've dated girls and I always wait for that one right time to kiss. I don't kiss on the first date, so I'll take a girl out to dinners, and we'll go bowling, and I make sure to charm them before I do it. — Kellan Lutz

Yes you can let a guy bite you but not on the first date! he has to pay for dinner ! But you can bite him on the first date at no cost that is quite normal — Amy Mah

Yes, we could talk to you for days on end about all the bad first dates. Those are stories. Funny stories. Awkward stories. Stories we love to share, because by sharing them, we get something out of the hour or two we wasted on the wrong person. But that's all bad first dates are: short stories. Good first dates are more than short stories. They are first chapters. On a good first date, everything is springtime.
And when a good first date becomes a relationship, the springtime lingers. Even after it's over, there can be springtime. — David Levithan

Months later, when we went on our first date, I tried to seem put together, I wore a shawl she had given me. And her ring. I thought everything was behind me: death, and dying, and sickness. I didn't know I was changing my life - that I would have done anything, that what was left of me would become so ruthless to survive. — Ada Limon

He noticed that she threw away the crumbled bus ticket on the street as soon as she got down. He picked it up and put it in his pocket along with his own a memorabilia of their first date together, just like a strand of her hair he would find later on his shirt and the broken pen cap that she would go on to search in the laboratory and so many other such small things which he would collect. — Faraaz Kazi

They danced slow circles in the sand, Javier singing the words to the Spanish version of the song, the melancholy music putting a strange ache in his chest, an ache he saw reflected in her eyes. Was she feeling what he was feeling? — Pamela Clare

If you took me to Coachella for our first date, it would probably be a done deal. It would be a sure thing. — Eva Mendes

One of the problems with the first date is that you know very little about a person, so you overweight those few things that you do know,' the anthropologist and dating guru Helen Fisher told me. 'And suddenly you see they've got brown shoes, and you don't like brown shoes, so they're out. Or they don't like your haircut, so they're out. But if you were to get to know each other more, those particular characteristics might begin to recede in importance, as you also found that they had a great sense of humor or they'd love to go fishing in the Caribbean with you. — Aziz Ansari

My perfect first date? Maybe a concert or a football game. That would be my ideal first date, but would the girl like it? I don't know. — Chace Crawford

The lady in the latrine, Julie DuBois, and I were on our first date after three weeks of shameless flirting. I'm about forty, Julie's about thirty - a PhD in English lit, a professor at American University, learned, tenured, brilliant, blonde, blue-eyed - and, not that it matters, also quite attractive. I had been looking forward to this date for a week; I really wanted to get Julie's take on Marcel Proust's persistent use of subordinate clauses, a literary mystery I can never seem to get out of my mind - and yes, Julie was having trouble believing that, too. But men who date women for their looks alone are pigs. — Brian Haig

Harrison knew how to date. He made plans to go to dinner at restaurants where they could drink margaritas and hear each other talk. He took her to movies and then to a diner for grilled cheese. He always paid. He called when he said he would, and held the door for her. The first night she stayed at his apartment, he woke up early and came back with two cups of coffee. — Jennifer Close

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard. — Shawn Wayans

Tale a rain check on that date?' I said, turning to Perkins. 'In the Magic Industry,it's kind of "Spell First, Fun Second".'
'I kind of figured that,' he replied, 'so why don't we make this assignment the date?' Intimate candlelit dinners for two are wildly overrated. I could even bring some sandwiches and a Thermos of hot chocolate.'
'Okat,' I said, touching his hand, 'you're in. A sort of romantic uncandlelit "recapturing a dangerously savage beast for two" sort of date - but no dressing up and we split the cost.'
'Game on. I'll go and make some sandwiches and a Thermos.'
And with another chuckle, he left. — Jasper Fforde

The best type of date is when it's an unexpected thing. It could be starting as a friendship or a first meeting where you meet and then you end up talking for 15 hours in a row. That's kind of where you're so in sync that it's just cohesive and it's fun. — Nolan Gerard Funk

America's objective in the Middle East is to create democracy in the same way that my goal on a first date to feed women. — Dov Davidoff

I think people are having less of an investment in relationships. It used to be that you meet someone, you go on four or five dates and you gradually get to know them and trust them at the same time, and you learn a little bit about them. Now, it could be one date - maybe even before that first date - you go on Facebook have all the information. — Ashton Kutcher

Angela had done a marvelous job, I tell you. The puke was everywhere except the toilet. The walls, the floor, the sinks - even on the ceiling, though don't ask me how she did that. So there I was, perched on all fours, cleaning up the puke at the homecoming dance in my best blue suit, which was exactly what I had wanted to avoid in the first place. And Jamie, my date, was on all fours, too, doing exactly the same thing. — Nicholas Sparks

To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician) ... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries. — Randy Sandke

A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself. — Saul Bellow

Cook another feast,' Bruenor grumbled. 'Suren the elf has his eye fixed on another wedding.
Drizzt let it go at that. Maybe there was a ring of truth in Bruenor's words for some distant date. No longer did Drizzt limit his hopes and desires. He would see the world as he could and draw his choices from his wishes, not from limitations he might impose upon himself. For now, though, Drizzt had found something too personal to be shared.
For the first time in his life, the drow had found peace. — R.A. Salvatore

Lucia opened the door. "They say not to discuss politics and religion on the first date."
"Well, then." I gave her a huge smile. "We're screwed. — Jennifer Lane

If you think back to the first sporting event you went to, you don't remember the score, you don't remember a home run, you don't remember a dunk. You remember who you were with. Were you with your mom, your dad, your brother, on a date? — Mark Cuban

Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, "Dear God, Meg, you're glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That's so adorable." Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Sam held one of the mice up by its tail over the box and then hesitated. "Her, you want to have a go?"...
If Sam thought she was going to squeal at the sight of nature in the raw, he had a lot to learn.
Bella fed the owlet, cheering as he gulped down his food with a greedy intensity that bode well for the little guy's future recovery. And she grinned to herself when she heard Sam mutter under this breath. "This has got to be the weirdest first date in history. — Deborah Blake

Love is so unpredictable. Sometimes you'll know a man for years and then one day, boom! Suddenly you see him in a different way. And other times, it's that first date, that first moment. That's what makes it so great. — Sarah Dessen

Something went klunk. Like a nickel dropping in a soda machine. One of those small insights that explains everything. This was puberty for these boys. Adolescence. The first date, the first kiss, the first chance to hold hands with someone special. Delayed, postponed, a decade's worth of longing
while everybody around you celebrates life, you pretend, suppress, inhibit, deprive yourself of you own joy
but finally ultimately, eventually, you find a place where you can have a taste of everything denied. — David Gerrold

I am overweight. But to me, it's fat. I don't have Body Dysmorphic Disorder. When I look in the mirror I don't plunge into a depression and stick my finger down my throat or carve FAT in my arm with a pickle fork. I can appreciate when I look good aside from the weight. Sometimes I might say, Oh, I'm having a good face day.And a few times, after checking my appearance in the mirror before a date, I'd say, Okay. I'd date me. And I know if I ever could get the extra tonnage off, I'd be the first one to parade around in my underwear, or have no qualms about getting naked with a hottie, while the lights were still on in the room. — Kelli Jae Baeli

I think the boy should pay. 'Cuz that's just the way it works on a first-date. But if he doesn't offer, then I will pay ... and then just not go out with him again. — Pixie Lott

I like a man who can come out and say he's nervous on the first date. I think that would be really cute. — Sarah Shahi

And then she is kissing me, right here on the sidewalk on a foggy summer night. Violet is kissing me, and everything is perfect. The kiss doesn't end. We are not two girls on a polite first date, bestowing a customary good-night peck.
No.
We are kissing like girls who have ached for each other for years who never even spoke but somehow exchanged I love yous anyway. — Nina LaCour

There is no golden rule of dating, except to make sure that it engages both of you; too many people go to a cinema for a first date and of course don't say a word, that's a bad thing! — Steven Hill

I pity the woman who will love you
when I am done. She will show up
to your first date with a dustpan
and broom, ready to pick up all the pieces
I left you in. She will hear my name so often
it will begin to dig holes in her. That
is where doubt will grow. She will look
at your neck, your thin hips, your mouth,
wondering at the way I touched you.
She will make you all the promises I did
and some I never could. She will hear only
the terrible stories. How I drank. How I lied.
She will wonder (as I have) how someone
as wonderful as you could love a monster
like the woman who came before her. Still,
she will compete with my ghost.
She will understand why you do not look
in the back of closets. Why you are afraid
of what's under the bed. She will know
every corner of you is haunted
by me. — Clementine Von Radics

He gave her his phone number, in a peculiar reversal of dating procedure. She might have considered kissing him, even after the horrible first date, but he just didn't seem to know what to do. However, Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked. — Steve Martin

I haven't been on a first date over five years.
Five. Years.
Which means, I haven't been on one since 2006.
Let me take you back to that time: 2006.
Tom Cruise and Kathie Holmes celebrated the birth of their little "TomKitten."
The Wii came out - and YouTube was flooded with videos of people throwing those little white remotes into their TVs.
Britney and Kevin call it quits, shocking America to its very core.
Facebook was still just a college campus thing - if you wanted to stalk someone, you had to buy a zoom lens and some night vision goggles.
It was a simpler time. — Elodia Strain

At first I thought he was walking a dog. Then I realized it was his date. — Edith Massey

The first time I asked a girl on date, well, I actually wrote out something like a flow chart of how the conversation might go — Kawakami Hiromi

Content is not mere facts, drummed into tender little minds under the relentless pounding of rote learning. Content--even the date of the Quebec Act, Confederation, or the Battle of Vimy Ridge, or the name of the first prime minister-- is cultural capital, a basic requirement of life that every Canadian needs to comprehend the daily newspaper, to watch the TV news or a documentary, or to argue about politics and cast a reasonably informed vote. In an increasingly complex and immediate world, cultural capital must also include some knowledge of Europe, Africa, and Asia, too. — J.L. Granatstein

I tilt my head sideways so I can look him straight on. "What firsts have we already passed?" "The easy ones. First hug, first date, first fight, first time we slept together, although I wasn't the one sleeping . Now we barely have any left. First kiss. First time to sleep together when we're both actually awake. First marriage. First kid. We're done after that. Our lives will become mundane and boring and I'll have to divorce you and marry a wife who's twenty years younger than me so I can have a lot more firsts and you'll be stuck raising the kids." He cups my cheek in his hand and smiles at me. "So you see, babe? I'm only doing this for your benefit. The longer I wait to kiss you, the longer it'll be before I'm forced to leave you high and dry."
Hoover, Colleen (2012-12-18). Hopeless (pp. 165-166). Colleen Hoover. Kindle Edition. — Colleen Hoover

A music director cannot and should not be chosen on the basis of a first date. It is not so difficult to make a good impression with a single appearance, usually containing some of a conductor's party pieces, works they have performed successfully many times before. — Leonard Slatkin

I want you to start a brand-new section in your notebooks and call it Mr. Browne's Precepts." He kept talking as we did what he was telling us to do. "Put today's date at the top of the first page. And from now on, at the beginning of every month, I'm going to write a new Mr. Browne precept on the chalkboard and you're going to write it down in your notebook. Then we're going to discuss that precept and what it means. And at the end of the month, you're going to write an essay about it, about what it means to you. So by the end of the year, you'll all have your own list of precepts to take away with you. — R.J. Palacio

She ordered white wine, and I ordered Schweppes tonic water without the booze. The drinks came, and I took a hit.
The first thing she said was, "I don't know how you can drink that stuff straight?"
"You mean without the liquor to kill the taste?"
"Yeah, it's so bitter."
"That's what I like about it. It's bitter like me. We match."
"You mean you're a grumpy old man?"
"Right. Can't help it. That's what happens when you get old."
"Well, I'm an optimist."
"I'm an optimist too, just a grumpy optimist. — Robert Hobkirk

Burning up the phone until there's nothing left to say, so I lay here and just listen to you breathe. Girl you know it's only been a week since our first date-back when you were just a stranger to me. I've never let another in so soon. — Toby Keith

When I first came to Hollywood I was told to go out with an agent because it was good for my career. So I went to a party with him because it was good for my 'career.' Well, he thought the whole thing was a big date. Needless to say, I was very upset. — Salma Hayek

I'm going to have to start you off easy. Can't pull out the big guns on the first night. I'd just set myself up for failure on the second date."
Putting her hands on her hips, she tilted her head. "Is that what you did last night in bed? I thought you were holding out on me."
"What the hell, Ash!"
She burst out laughing.
"That is not what you are supposed to tell a man! Repeat after me: I ruined you for all men, all the while fulfilling your every fantasy. — Aly Martinez

Cabel smiles and hangs up. "Guess what."
What," Janie says.
We can go out on our first date."
Woo hoo!"
And guess what else- You're buying."
Me? Why?"
Because you lost the bet."
Janie thinks for a moment. Punches Cabel in the arm. "You did not fail five quizzes or tests!"
I did. I have proof. — Lisa McMann

First you point your pea shooter at me; now you want more beer. Hell of a first date. — D. Scott Meek

When we sleep together, he holds me like he loves me. I've noticed this: when it's the first date, and you fuck, the guy holds you much better than he does the next few times. The first date, you're sort of a stand-in for whomever he loved last, before he fully realizes you're not her, so you get all this nice residue emotion. — Aimee Bender

I wonder if Perry snores. I'm not going to ask; first dates can be so awkward.
Fuck it.
"Hey, do you snore? I hate to ask, because I know how awkward it is to bring up on the first date."
Perry spit-laughs a gob of drool.
"You're unbelievable."
"So, yes?"
"No, I do not snore."
"You look like a snorer. — Edmond Manning

Is it just me or is Sunday a bizarre night for a first date? All wrong, like Saturday morning or Monday at 2 p.m. — Helen Fielding

Very intense first summer out, to be 18 years old and never having gone on a date, never having smoked a cigarette, never had a drink, even a sip of beer, never kissed a girl, all of those things. It made for a fairly intense first year out. — Peter Jurasik

Most people aren't sure what's going to happen on a first date. Given that ambiguity, every woman must be totally aware at every moment that she is responsible for every choice she makes ... protect yourselves. See trouble coming. — Camille Paglia

Why couldn't Mr. Darcy, in the first half hour of the movie, simply walk up to Elizabeth and say, "Hey, I like you. Do you want to go out on a date? And, by the way, I'm filthy rich." I'll tell you why. Because that would defeat the purpose of a chick flick, which is to entertain women and torture men. — David E. Clarke

They were growing up in the golden age of comic books. Comic strips, or "funnies," had begun appearing in the pages of newspapers in the 1890s. But comic books date only to the 1930s. They'd been more or less invented by Maxwell Charles Gaines (everyone called him Charlie), a former elementary school principal who was working as a salesman for the Eastern Color Printing Company, in Waterbury, Connecticut, when he got the idea that the pages of funnies that appeared in the Sunday papers could be printed cheaply, stapled together, and sold as magazines, or "comic books." In 1933, Gaines started selling the first comic book on newsstands; it was called Funnies on Parade. — Jill Lepore

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups. — Jane Goodall

Elizabeth Taylor taught me that if you do your hair and makeup first then take a hot bath right before you leave, it brings out your inner glow and takes away the powdery look from makeup. I do that right before every date. — Jennifer Love Hewitt

My mom gave me a good piece of advice. She said never marry a man thinking you can change him, and I think that starts from your first date when you're in the seventh grade onwards. Women are fixers so we have to just not fix. Don't fix. — Jennifer Garner

I told you, I just think we should slow down. I mean, we haven't even had a real date yet and I
- "
"Ohhhh." Jesse nodded to himself. "That's what this is. I get it."
"What?"
"First date. Girls like dates. I'm such an idiot, I should have thought of that."
This was backfiring spectacularly. — Robin Benway

No bikinis on a first date." He nods. "I'm sure that's a rule. Or should be. For my sisters anyway. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil." "A which?" "Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million years. — Mark Twain

And in some ways, to me, that's one of the inspiring and powerful things about the Great Migration itself. There was no leader, there was no one person who set the date who said, 'On this date, people will leave the South.' They left on their own accord for as many reasons as there are people who left. They made a choice that they were not going to live under the system into which they were born anymore and in some ways, it was the first step that the nation's servant class ever took without asking. — Isabel Wilkerson

It is the perfect wrong time for Jeremy to do to Mirabelle what she had done to him - call him up for a quick fix - because;, in a sense, she is now betrothed. Her first date with someone who treated her well obligates her to faithfulness, at least until the relationship is explored. — Steve Martin

It's the opening line of a football game returned for a touchdown. Or fumbled.

It's what orange juice is to breakfast, the first minutes of a blind date, a salesman's opening remarks.

It sets the tone, lights the stage, greases the skids for everything to follow.

It's the most important part of everything you'll ever write because if it doesn't work, whatever follows won't matter. It won't get read.

It's your opening paragraph. And enough can't be said about its importance.

Seduction. That's basically what leads are all about--enticing the reader across the threshold of your book, novel or article--because nothing happens until you get 'em inside.

And you literally have only seconds to do it because surveys show that eight out of ten people quit reading whatever it is they've started after the first fifty words. — Lionel Fisher

Miss Manners herself, while never rude, is given to pulling a fast pinch in the way of a handshake on those who believe in kissing on, not even the first date, but the first sighting. — Judith Martin