Opening Sentences Quotes & Sayings

Awakened by a thousand dogs, a passing truck, the tailspin of a poisoned mosquito (or, perhaps, merely the silence of my dreams), I had, before remembering who and where I was, seen only that green sun suspended in the firmament of my room (her uterus bottled in preserving fluids) and, through seconds that became millennia, millennia aeons, felt the steadfastness of my orbit around that cold glow of love, a marvelous fatal steadfastness, before my pupils dilated and shadows and unease once more defined reality, the steel box naked but for a mattress and insomnious bugs where I had lived, in a coma of heartbreak and drunkenness, the six months since Primavera's death. — Richard Calder

The problem is once you've written the opening paragraph and worked out how the rest of the story will go in your head, there's nothing in it for you. I write in longhand using disposable fountain pens on the right-hand side of the notebook for the first draft, then I rewrite some of the sentences and paragraphs on the left-hand side. — Colm Toibin

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. — Charlotte Bronte

Ernst was still in the Eastern Zone, about ninety kilometres from Berlin, when the truck emerged so inexplicably out of nowhere that it seemed to have been created by the rain itself. — Mordecai Richler

Dorothy Parker once said: I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid." Upon delivering this Dot bon mot, with much waving of sparkly rings and jingly bracelets, Constance Langtry comments that she'd add a fourth: "Deft tongue. And I don't mean a good talker. — Marie Wilson

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

Science knows the qualities of electricity, but not its real essence. — Mahmoud Mohammed Taha

I've been asked to direct pilots for a lot of shows. — M. Night Shyamalan

How many times have you opened a book, read the first few sentences and made a snap decision about whether to buy it? When it's your book that's coming under this casual-but-critical scrutiny, you want the reader to be instantly hooked. The way to accomplish this is to create compelling opening sentences. — Nancy Kress

They murdered him. — Robert Cormier

If you're going to read this, don't bother. — Chuck Palahniuk

On opening sentences: "If in the first chapter a hurricane is going to blow down an oak tree which falls through the kitchen roof, there's no need to first describe the kitchen." — James Thayer

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

There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl. — Julio Cortazar

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

Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond. — Richard Carlson

The proper education of the young does not consist in stuffing their heads with a mass of words, sentences, and ideas dragged together out of various authors, but in opening up their understanding to the outer world, so that a living stream may flow from their own minds, just as leaves, flowers, and fruit spring from the bud on a tree. — John Amos Comenius

At 9:15 on Thursday morning, June 4, while Jordan Delreese was bludgeoning his two young children to death, I was sitting in Dr. Hamburger's consulting room at the Sunny Isles Geriatric Clinic with my father, who was just then at a loss for words. — John Dufresne

Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today. — Meredith Willson

You gotta trust someone sometime. They're either gonna f**k you over or they're not. Can't live in fear, and all that, or you'll miss out. — Darien Cox

To progress in life you have to look beyond your hidden feelings. — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn's for an oyster supper. — Michael Cox

When you supply yourself with the proper vitamins and minerals, you enable the body to heal itself. — Joseph P. Kauffman

4. The whole Icarus-flying-too-near-the-sun-and-plummeting-out-of-the-sky thing? That's real. Same with the Sirens who lure you to death with their irresistible song, and the odalisque so beautiful anyone who looks at her dies. And remember: as badass as Grendel was, Beowulf hadn't seen anything until he went up against Grendel's mother. I know, I know - I thought they were just myths too. But the fact is, sometimes, if you don't want to meet a tragic end, your only option is to avert your gaze, tie yourself to the mast with cotton in your ears, or ascend a little less close to the Vault of Heaven. — Todd Hanson

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

Like a horseman who reins in a wild stallion that has borne him, will he, nill he, across several counties; or a ship's captain who, after scudding before a gale through a bad night, hoists sail, and gets underway once more, navigating through unfamiliar seas- thus Dr. Daniel Waterhouse, anno domini 1685, watching King Charles II die at Whitehall Palace. — Neal Stephenson

Not to every young girl is it given to enter the harem of the Sultan of Turkey and return to her homeland a virgin. — Dorothy Dunnett

Most of our tension with others are because they show the reality of us and we can't accept it. People are best mirror. — Ali Rezavand Zayeri