Opening Sentence Quotes & Sayings

Indian summer is like a woman. — Grace Metalious

I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare. — Colm Toibin

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method. — James Thurber

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. — H.G.Wells

It was Wang Lung's marriage day. — Pearl S. Buck

To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did. When God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but
merely opening your hands to receive something better. Concentrate on
this sentence ... 'The will of God will never take you where the Grace of
God will not protect you. — Jose N. Harris

Sam LeClaire was a good-looking son of a bitch. — Rachel Gibson

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. — J.K. Rowling

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. — Lois Lowry

I want to see all oppressed people throughout the world free. And the only way we can do this is by moving toward a revolutionary society where the needs and wishes of all people can be respected.' With these words the radical philosophy professor Angela Davis paraphrases Isaiah's ancient messianic dream of the lion that will peacefully lie down with the lamb in a completely good world. But what the Biblical prophet perhaps could not know is contained with a clarity that leaves nothing to be desired in the opening sentence of an address of the French Senate to Napoleon I: Sire, the desire for perfection is one of the worst maladies that can affect the human mind. — Paul Watzlawick

Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. — Ernest Hemingway,

When a naked man shows up on your doorstep with a bear trap clamped around his ankle, it's best just to do what he asks — Molly Harper

There is a delicate-looking plant native to North America called bleeding heart. — Josh Aterovis

Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book. — Richelle E. Goodrich

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. — J.R.R. Tolkien

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. — Charles Dickens

Call me Ishmael. — Herman Melville

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. — Rick Riordan

Hook your editor with a strong opening sentence to bring attention to your writing. — W. Terry Whalin

They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide us with ointment and bandages for our wounds and remove the foreign ideas the glass beads of fantasy the bent hairpins of unreason embedded in our minds. — Janet Frame

She turned her attention back to the book, and reread the sentence one more time, but this time she simply skipped the words she did not know. As often happens when one reads in this way, Violet's brain made a little humming noise as she encountered each word - or each part of a word - she did not know. So inside her head, the opening sentence of chapter twelve read as follows: "'Hypnosis is an hmmm yet hmmm method hmmm and should not be hmmmed by hmmms,'" and although she could not tell exactly what it meant, she could guess. "It could mean," she guessed to herself, "that hypnosis is a difficult method and should not be learned by amateurs," and the interesting thing is that she was not too far off. — Lemony Snicket

There is, then, a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing on tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. — Virginia Woolf

This morning, my mother didn't get out of bed. — Melina Marchetta

The bed woke Kali up with a soft caress, dressed her in her favorite comfy robe, and gently deposited her, standing vertically, in one-sixth gravity. — @hg47

The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon. — William Golding

They murdered him. — Robert Cormier

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked. — Greg Nagan

If my opinion runs more than twenty pages," she said, "I am disturbed that I couldn't do it shorter." The mantra in her chambers is "Get it right and keep it tight." She disdains legal Latin, and demands extra clarity in an opinion's opening lines, which she hopes the public will understand. "If you can say it in plain English, you should," RBG says. Going through "innumerable drafts," the goal is to write an opinion where no sentence should need to be read twice. "I think that law should be a literary profession," RBG says, "and the best legal practitioners regard law as an art as well as a craft. — Irin Carmon

First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. — Richard Ford

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. — Shirley Jackson

There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus. — Joshilyn Jackson

As he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows, the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning sobs. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

This guy is an epic douche. Kick his shiny ass, Atticus, Oberon said.
I compartmentalized his comment and resolved to enjoy it later. I glared at this would be usurper and said in my most authoritative voice, "Aenghus Og, you have broken Druidic law by killing the land around us and opening a gate to hell, unleashing demons on this plane. I judge you guilty and sentence you to death."
Amen, Atticus! Testify! — Kevin Hearne

The rig began shaking like caffeine withdrawal." --Opening sentence of THE FURY.

"The duct-taped Buick swam north on Rush Street, hunting whores like a lesser white shark." --First sentence of Chapter One, THE FURY — Shane Gericke

On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colors. — Jack Vance

The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth. — George Orwell

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. — Rafael Sabatini

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. — Neil Gaiman

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

As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers. — Michael Cunningham

Buckmester County was in a time warp. — Monika Barbara Potocki

No one dared do it before, not in front of the King (opening sentence) — Gordon Thomas

I think with one exception I've never changed an opening sentence after a book was completed. — William Gibson