First Paragraphs Quotes

Risk is important to me as a writer, reader, and editor. I love stories that take a premise or style that seems unlikely to succeed, whose first paragraphs risk a raised eyebrow or groan, and whose last paragraphs are then all that much sweeter a triumph. Basically, I love being proved wrong. ~ Caitlin Horrocks

Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions. ~ Ruth Rendell

My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die. ~ Peter Carey

Like so many aspiring writers who still have boxes of things they've written in their parents' houses, I filled notebooks with half-finished poems and stories and first paragraphs of novels that never got written. ~ Ally Carter

In the early 1600s, for nearly two decades, Virginia and Bermuda were the only English colonies in the New World. Here, for the first time, English, Indians, and Africans had to learn to live together. After four hundred years, there is still much to learn. ~ Virginia Bernhard

When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself. ~ Edward Steichen

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell my children that, they just about throw up. ~ Barbara Bush

To get the job done preaching must be committed to two goals: first it should be passionate and second, fascinating. ~ Calvin Miller

Lego was our fourth film, because we did two Cloudys, so yeah there's a little bit of shorthand that's involved and then you can anticipate things- because for me it's like, I get a script for a movie and I go, "Wow that's a pretty good script", then you sign on and a couple months later they show you the first cut and you're like, "Whoa, how did that happen?" ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

I mean, come on. If they really wished you were there, they'd have invited you in the first place, right? It's kind of mean, if you really think about it. It should say: 'Greece: Where nobody's all that upset you're not here. ~ Jennifer E. Smith

Every human being who is born into this universe is like a child who has been given a key to an infinite Library, written in cyphers that are more or less obscure, arranged by a scheme - of which we can at first know nothing, other than that there does appear to be some scheme. ~ Neal Stephenson

Prophase, he agreed, writing it neatly in the first space on our worksheet. He swiftly switched out the first slide for the second, ~ Stephenie Meyer

I first started acting in primary school, just doing little plays. And from the moment I began, something just went 'click' inside me. Suddenly I wasn't shy anymore. Instead I felt confident and happy. I can remember the enormous sense of relief it gave me. I loved the feeling of making people laugh. ~ Sally Hawkins

Well, Mr. Frankel, who started this program, began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you *play* with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches - if it's an even number you do this, if it's an odd number you do that - and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.

After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn't paying any attention; he wasn't supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly - while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.

Absolutely useless. We *had* tables of arc-tangents. But if you've ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the *delight* in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing. ~ Richard P. Feynman

Your first leader is your dad. 'course he controls your food and shelter, so, he's not really a leader, he's more of a fascist dictator. But dictators have dreams too. Your dad doesn't. He gave them up when he had you. So remember that next time you say, I don't want to cut the lawn. Just shut up and mow the grass and save the lip for your teachers. ~ Christopher Titus

Yeah, he's in pain except between the first and ninth innings ~ Dave Bristol

The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You don't lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality, or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment. ~ Naomi Wolf

Remember to delight yourself first, then others can be truly delighted.
This was my mantra when I published my first book in 1990, and still holds true. When we focus on the song of our soul and heart, then others will be touched similarly. Sometimes people wonder or worry whether people will like or approve of their creative expression. It's none of your business. It's your business to stay present and focused for the work of your deepest dreams. It might look crooked or strange, or be very odd-but if it delights you, then it is yours, and will find it's way into other hearts. ~ SARK

My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean ... For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood. ~ Bertrand Piccard

However, I must say that I am very happy to see that we have such a positive result for our first referendum in our history and that gives me more confidence in Taiwan's democracy. ~ Chen Shui-bian

Pulling a crystalline, cogent rule out of the murk of the court's First Amendment, public forum, and Establishment Clause doctrine is an act of creation too complicated for mere mortals. ~ Dahlia Lithwick

We climbed this hill. Each step up we could see farther, so of course we kept going. Now we're at the top. Science has been at the top for a few centuries now. And we look out across the plain and we see this other tribe dancing around above the clouds, even higher than we are. Maybe it's a mirage, maybe it's a trick. Or maybe they just climbed a higher peak we can't see because the clouds are blocking the view. So we head off to find out - but every step takes us downhill. No matter what direction we head, we can't move off our peak without losing our vantage point. So we climb back up again. We're trapped on a local maximum. But what if there is a higher peak out there, way across the plain? The only way to get there is to bite the bullet, come down off our foothill and trudge along the riverbed until we finally start going uphill again. And it's only then you realize: Hey, this mountain reaches way higher than that foothill we were on before, and we can see so much better from up here. But you can't get there unless you leave behind all the tools that made you so successful in the first place. You have to take that first step downhill. ~ Peter Watts

If you fell head first into a pigsty, you'd try to convince everybody you did it on purpose. ~ Robert Jordan

They don't want to have a good time, they merely want to slump into middle age as quickly as possible. After the frightful battle of getting her man to the altar, the woman kind of relaxes, and all her youth, looks, energy, and joy of life just vanish overnight. It was like that with Hilda. Here was this pretty, delicate girl, who'd seemed to me - and in fact when I first knew her she was - a finer type of animal than myself, and within only about three years she'd settled down into a depressed, lifeless, middle-aged frump ~ George Orwell

My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test. ~ Ellen Goodman

As any war veteran will tell you, there is a vast difference between preparing for battle and actually facing battle for the first time. You can be told that reading Victor Hugo will sap your will to live, but you can't understand what it means until you've read a few chapters and your eyes are glazed over and someone has to revive you with a defibrillator. ~ Kevin Hearne

We can control the future, my boy, just as we wind up the mechanism in a clock. Say to yourself: I will win that race
I will come first
and you wind up the future like clockwork. The world has no choice but to obey! Can the hands of that old clock in the corner decide to stop? Can the spring in your watch decide to wind itself up and run backward? No! They have no choice. And nor has the future, once you have wound it up. ~ Philip Pullman

She started three wars the first week. ~ Julie Garwood

The first scene I ever appeared in, it was the first scene I ever shot [during my] first day on set. I walk up to my mom with a plastic bag over my head and she says that her clothes better not be on the floor, not that a plastic bag is not a safety hazard or anything. I think it's a really cute scene and also just a very vivid memory. ~ Kiernan Shipka

I had a toothache during the first game. In the second game I had a headache. In the third game it was an attack of rheumatism. In the fourth game, I wasn't feeling well. And in the fifth game? Well, must one have to win every game? ~ Siegbert Tarrasch

Whether we like it or not, Islam has entered its third phase of conquest, towards the 'Universal Caliphate'. The first two phases happened in the Seventh to the Eleventh centuries, as well as in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth centuries. It is a question of a groundswell that the governments of Islamic countries, which are pro-Western out of temporary calculation, cannot disguise for long. Islam's principal weapon is its demographic vigour, in the face of Western countries that are experiencing depopulation. This confrontation will cover the planet and will usually take the form of civil war, with episodes of classic war. ~ Guillaume Faye

Our fall is always first a failure to give thanks. ~ Ann Voskamp

Sylvia's first impression of Allegra was that no one had ever before had such a beautiful baby.
Jocelyn's first impression of Grigg was that he had nice eyelashes and a funny name, and didn't interest her in the slightest.
Prudie's first impression of Bernadette was that she was startling to look at and dull if you listened, which you hardly ever had to do.
Bernadette's first impression of Prudie was that, in all her long years, she had rarely seen such a frightened young woman.
Grigg's first impression of Jocelyn was that she appeared to think sharing an elevator with him for a few floors was some sort of punishment.
Allegra's first impression of Sylvia was blurred with her first impression of the larger world. For me? she'd asked herself back when she had no words and no way to even know she was asking. And then, when Sylvia, and then, when Daniel had first looked into her eyes - More for me? ~ Karen Joy Fowler

In the year 3,000,002,012 the Andromeda Galaxy may collide with our Milky Way. At first this sounds miserable, like a collision of two bird flocks. But galaxy members fly farly, not tip to tip. In a galactic collision the stars do not actually collide - as with crisscrossing marching bands, only the interstices collide. (Oh to be like a galaxy, to mingle without wrecking. But then we would have to be composed of so much more sky.) The spaces between stars are so wide that thousands of galaxies have to converge before the stars will crash. ~ Amy Leach

I heard 'naked' and 'full of hot air.' I try not to let that be my first impression of anyone. ~ Kathy Bryson, Fighting Mad

Probably the first time I left Italy was to travel by train to Lourdes. I went with my mother and my grandmother - who was a very religious person - so it was a pilgrimage of sorts. I remember it as a very intense, but beautiful experience. ~ Andrea Bocelli

Poverty is not a vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know that drunkenness too is not a virtue and that's even truer. But destitution, dear sir, destitution is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul , but in destitution-never-no-one. For destitution a man is not chased out of society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, for in destitution I am the first to humiliate my self. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here are the basic rules of LNTC, as I understood it:

Leave no evidence that you ever left the comfort of your bed to struggle through the woods with the sole intention of eating starch and beans and lying on your back on a rocky and downward-sloping campsite while you stare at the ceiling of your tent and listen to the sounds of a variety of carnivores as they rustle around outside. Leave no evidence that you are scared witless, that every movement terrifies you, even the most quiet scratching that you will realize in the morning must have been chipmunks. Leave no evidence that you are afraid you didn't dig your glory hole deep enough and that you used twice as much toilet paper as everyone else. Leave as little evidence as possible to indicate that you are the most incompetent camper to ever set foot on the trail.

Needless to say, it was my first time camping. ~ Erin Saldin

On the first movie we got good reviews, but we were still dealing with genre stuff. It's going away. Judge the movie - is it a good one or a bad one? We know we made a great movie and it's being judged for just being a good film. ~ Avi Arad