Fabulous Opening Line Quotes

To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor. ~ Deanna Raybourn

Jeff: You know, you don't have to do this.
Walter: Yeah, I could get a real job.
Jeff: What would you do?
Walter: I wanna be a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Walter: What the hell's so funny?
Jeff: At Wal-Mart, what would be your opening line?
Walter: Oh.
Walter: Welcome to Wal-Mart. Get your shit and get out!
Walter: Have a nice day! ~ Jeff Dunham

Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true.
I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all wroked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this momment. My fingers colosed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry.
"Ok," I whispered into the pounding noise.
I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone.
"The will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies."
Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song.
I didn't need a voice. I had a bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me.
Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, They were my words. And all the world would hear them. ~ Leander Watts

He'd never killed a woman in cold blood before, but now was as good a time as any. ~ Ronie Kendig

The main line of the Yugoslav Attack has become just too vast for most players to study in depth, and anyone intending to venture into such tricky waters needs to have an intimate knowledge of all the hidden reefs. ~ John Nunn

I've always heard that women secretly want their father. So I used to walk around in a 1950s business suit, with a hat and a pipe. My opening line would be, 'You should be getting to bed now.' ~ Conan O'Brien

The opening line of her last column was: You know you really don't fit in with the other housewives you meet when the only way you can contribute to a discussion about babies is by saying, "Yes, that's what my mother used to do." It went on to talk about how a woman could climb Everest, teach schoolchildren in Cambodia and win the Booker Prize but some people would still think she had good news only when she produced progeny. ~ Shweta Ganesh Kumar

I hate people who sneak into first class to use the bathroom. I'm sitting there, in 4F, sipping Cristal and admiring my new line of jewelry for QVC, and suddenly, busting through the curtain and rushing toward the bathroom is some doughy soccer mom holding her crotch and yelling, "Emergency, emergency!" No, it's not!!! Opening the main hatch and pushing you out at thirty thousand feet for disturbing me is an emergency. ~ Joan Rivers

I am on warp-speed headed directly for the sun; I am Icarus." (opening line of 'Girl on a Bar Stool', new / CreateSpace version) ~ Tim Roux

Frankly, just between you and me, I'm ending up even worse than I started ... ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

The realisation that, depending on where we changed from one note to the next in a melodic line, the music could subtly influence the entire meaning of a scene in so many ways was like a door opening to this amazing new world for me. ~ Steven Price

Randy stared into the glass he held in his hand, gazing into its cobra eyes. A double shot of thirty-year-old single malt whisky. You can't be an alcoholic when you only drink top shelf. Right? ~ Ted Magnuson

Jack...why is there a dragon in our backyard? ~ Kyoko M.

As for suspense, I like to write books that draw you into the hero's plight from the opening pages, where people put their lives on the line for something - a belief, a family member, the truth. ~ Andrew Gross

I remember being little and wondering if I smoothed this line away would I be able to see inside you, like it was a door or some kind of opening to your insides. Dumb, huh?"
"Sweet," he said, softly. "Little girl sweet. Never dumb."
Her eyes traveled up to his and locked there.
"When I got older I wondered what it would be like to kiss it. ~ Peggy Jaeger

Just for a while": Death's opening chat-up line in His great seduction, before he drugged you with soporific comforts, distracted you with minor luxuries and ensnared you with long-term payment plans.
Join the Rat Race "just for a while."
Concentrate on your career "just for a while."
Move in with your girlfriend "just for a while."
Find a bigger place, out in the burbs "just for a while."
Lie down in that wooden box "just for a while. ~ Christopher Brookmyre

A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!'
And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it is good. ~ Christopher Isherwood

I need a drink. Now."

After tossing - fine, throwing - my purse and keys on the couch, I march straight into the kitchen. No more delays; it's time to forget tonight. It's been yet another night like all the other first dates that never meet a second one. When you begin to lose count, that's when it's really time for a drink.

Adrian stands there, leaning against the counter in an unbuttoned dress shirt and dark wash jeans. He glances at me as I walk in. "How was your date?" he asks, taking a swig of his scotch.

I brush past him on my mission, opening the cupboard and moving a couple bottles around. I reiterate, "I need alcohol."

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him hiding a smile before he says, "That bad?"

My face twitches as I ignore his line of questioning. It is more like a statement he wants me to clarify, even though he already knows the answer. Instead, I ask, "I have vodka left, don't I?" I stand on my tiptoes in hopes of spotting something in the very back. Nothing.

He waltzes over and looks with me, his chin almost touching my shoulder. "I think you polished that one off after last week's date." His voice is low right next to my ear, very nearly causing a shiver. ~ Lilly Avalon

I woke up one morning with this song in my head, and the opening line of the song is, 'My name was Richard Nixon, only now I'm a girl.' ~ Bruce Cockburn

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

Well ... " He leans across the basket to place the necklace over my head. It falls in line atop my key. He drags my hair free, smoothing the strands to cover both chains. "I thought this could be symbolic. It's made of the same kind of metal, looks vintage like the key. Together, they prove what I've always known. Even when we used to come here as kids." "And what's that?" I watch him, intrigued by how the tunnel's opening tints one side of his smooth complexion with bluish light. "That only you have the key to open my heart. ~ A.G. Howard

Human nature was smothered by society; healthy instincts were smothered by laws. They were training us to be assembly-line robots; that's why they lined the school desks up in rows and trained kids to respond to opening and closing bells. The monotonous human assembly line squelched the life out of individual experience. ~ Dave Cullen

It felt like the opening line to life's little joke: an immigrant with a law degree walks into a tire factory to work a blue-collar job in a small town. ~ Phuc Tran

Signs imply ways of living, possibilities of existence, they are the symptoms of an overflowing (jaillissante) or exhausted (épuisée) life. But an artist cannot be content with an exhausted life, nor with a personal life. One does not write with one's ego, one's memory, and one's illnesses. In the act of writing there's an attempt to make life something more personal, to liberate life from what imprisons it...There is a profound link between signs, the event, life, and vitalism. It is the power of nonorganic life, that which can be found in a line of a drawing, a line of writing, a line of music. It is organisms that die, not life. There is no work of art that does not indicate an opening for life, a path between the cracks. Everything I have written has been vitalistic, at least I hope so, and constitutes a theory of signs and the event. ~ Gilles Deleuze

In her tight-fitting Persian dress, with turban to match, she looked ravishing. ~ Henry Miller

April is the cruelest month.' So begins T.S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece, a 434-line poem titled 'The Waste Land.' Until my employment as a trail maintenance worker, this had simply been a line on a page, albeit a line fraught with metaphorical import and potential. Now I saw it for what it was - a big fat lie - because Eliot grew up in St. Louis and no one forgets what a Missouri summer is like. If the Nobel laureate had been truthful with himself, the opening verse would start out, 'June's a bitch. ~ Michael Gurnow

One day someone will say to me: "Is it autobiographical?" And I shall reply: "Only the bit where I die." To die has always been my sole ambition. Everything else is transitory." (opening line to 'Blood & Marriage') ~ Tim Roux

The United States had a long bipartisan tradition of negotiating with even its worst enemies, from John Kennedy
'Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate
to Richard Nixon's opening with China, to Ronald Reagan's famous 'walk in the woods' with MIkhail Gorbachev. Obama's position was firmly in line with longstanding diplomatic practice. George W. Bush's post-9/11 policy
'You are either for us or against us'
was the exception, and a bad one. It removed subtlety from international affairs. ~ Mark Bowden

I see a direct line between Kennedy and Richard Nixon and the opening to China and the detente with the Soviet Union. ~ Robert Dallek

No. 2's infamous opening line is a double gambit: the Village does not really want information, of course, only obedience. (From their point of view, information is an exchange-value, not a use-value). In fact, it is No. 6 who truly wants information: information on who No. 1 is, where the Village really is, which side runs it, and how it might be possible to escape. ~ Dennis Redmond

There was this movie that I would watch with her all the time, some stupid chick flick, and it had this opening line that would always make her catch her breath. 'I remember it hurt. Looking at her hurt', and I now realize that it was true. Every day I looked at her, it hurt. Hurt so much, because she was dying, and I couldn't help her. ~ Runaway Bunny

I wonder if I can get pizza in Avalon. ~ Stacey O'Neale

Anyone who shows up for a midnight opening-night screening of the latest, shiniest geek flick must be a diehard nerd. I mean, you'd have to be a killer-huge fan to wait in line for hours for the newest Star Wars or Marvel Universe film, right? ~ Sam Maggs

Charity in the theatre usually begins and ends with people who have a play opening the week following one's own. Their unlikely benevolence is not so much a purity of heart as the knowledge that they face a firing line with rifles aimed in exactly the same direction. ~ Moss Hart

Telling it all after the fact ... easier said than done! ... much easier! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

I looked past him, to the sea framed in the arched opening of the wall, to the line formed where the water met the sky. The world was not round, I realized. The world was a plate.
'Please,' he whispered. 'Don't.'
Unlike Rurick, Plesec did not die confused. ~ Rick Yancey

As a little girl, I'd have given up my Barbie Dreamhouse to have a miniature purple dragon - as an adult, I didn't find it nearly as exciting. ~ R.L. Naquin

From east to west, in fact, her gaze swept slowly, without encountering a single obstacle, along a perfect curve. Beneath her, the blue-and-white terraces of the Arab town overlapped one another, splattered with the dark-red spots of the peppers drying in the sun. Not a soul could be seen, but from the inner courts, together with the aroma of roasting coffee, there rose laughing voices or incomprehensible stamping of feet. Father off, the palm grove, divided into uneven squares by clay walls, rustled its upper foliage in a wind that could not be felt up on the terace. Still farther off and all the way to the horizon extended the ocher-and-gray realm of stones, in which no life was visible. At some distance from the oasis, however, near the wadi that bordered the palm grove on the west could be seen broad black tents. All around them a flock of motionless dromedaries, tiny at the distance, formed against the gray ground the black signs of a strange handwriting, the meaning of which had to be deciphered. Above the desert, the silence was as vast as the space.

Janine, leaning her whole body against the parapet, was speechless, unable to tear herself away from the void opening before her. Beside her, Marcel was getting restless. He was cold; he wanted to go back down. What was there to see here, after all? But she could not take her gaze from the horizon. Over yonder, still farther south, at that point where sky and earth met in a pure line - over yonder it suddenly s ~ Albert Camus

Does the cosmos contain keys for opening my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. ~ Jean-Dominique Bauby

In the next poem, Hamilton has suddenly metamorphosed into a jaded rake, who begins with a shocking, Swiftian opening line: 'Celia's an artful little slut. ~ Ron Chernow

Wallace had read the Tractatus, of course (he wrote to Lance Olsen that he thought its first sentence was "the most beautiful opening line in western lit"). He knew that Wittgenstein's book presented a spare and unforgiving picture of the relations among logic, language, and the physical world. He knew that the puzzles solved and raised by the book were influential, debatable, and rich in their implications. But as a flesh-and-blood reader with human feelings, he also knew, though he had never articulated it out loud, that as you labored to understand the Tractatus, its cold, formal, logical picture of the world cold make you feel strange, lonely, awestruck, lost, frightened-a range of moods not unlike those undergone by Kate herself. The similarities were not accidental. Markson's novel, as Wallace put it, was like a 240-page answer to the question, "What if somebody really had to live in a Tractatusized world?" Pronouncing the novel "a kind of philosophical sci-fi," Wallace explained that Markson had staged a human drama on an alien intellectual planet, and in so doing he had "fleshed the abstract sketches of Wittgenstein's doctrine into the concrete theater of human loneliness. ~ James Ryerson

To me, imagination is about breaking down the walls of a reality of multiple interpretations, and truly opening up your mind to assemble one clear interpretation. Once you have tasted imagination, reality will no longer be enough for you. The line between reality and dreams will become blurred, and then clear, because the line will cease to exist. Once you reach the point of living in imagination, you will truly be free. ~ Lionel Suggs

In times of struggle, there are as many reasons not to read as there are to breathe. Don't you have bigger things to do? Reading, let alone re-reading, is the terrain of milquetoasts and mopey spinsters. At life's ugliest junctures the very act of opening a book can smack of cowardly escapism. Who chooses to read when there's work to be done?

Call me a coward if you will, but when the line between duty and sanity blurs, you can usually find me curled up with a battered book, reading as if my mental health depended on it. And it does, for inside the books I love I find food, respite, escape, and perspective. ~ Erin Blakemore

Easy enough to fight when the monster kept its distance, easy enough to draw the line. But when the moster was literally outside the door, that's when your actions mattered. The hard choice wasn't opening the door. The hard choice was keeping it closed. ~ Carla Buckley

The opening line from a journal can be the beginning of a song. ~ Judy Collins

I can find almost anything funny, thank God, so you search for the black, lacy slip that encases the corpse. You know, shift the angle. God may take away, but he often leaves you with a terrific opening line for the next adventure. I would suggest taking it. Move on; change the angle; look at it in a different way tomorrow. ~ Tennessee Williams