Opening Line Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die. ~ Salman Rushdie

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

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

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

On this Sunday morning in May, this girl who later was to be the cause of a sensation in New York, awoke much too early for her night before. One minute she was asleep, the next she was completely awake and dumped into despair. It was the kind of despair that she had known perhaps two thousand times before, there being 365 mornings in a calendar year. ~ John O'Hara

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

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

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

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

There are just long gaps where I can't find a point of insertion, I can't find a good opening line, I can't find a mood that I want to write into. But once I do, once a line falls out of the air, or I get a little inkling of a subject and I recognize that, it's like the sense that a game has started. ~ Billy Collins

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

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

They know what the "perfumes" are going to say because they
always say the same thing, but they pretend to believe them anyway.
(a)"I could change your life."
(b)"A lot of women would like to be in your shoes."
(c)"You're young now, but what will become of you in a few
years' time? You need to think about making a longer-term
investment."
(d)"I'm married, but my wife ... " (This opening line can have
various endings: " ... is ill," " ... has threatened to commit
suicide if I leave her," etc.)
(e)"You're a princess and deserve to be treated like one. I didn't
know it until now, but I've been waiting for you. I don't believe
in coincidences and I really think we ought to give this relationship a chance. ~ Paulo Coelho

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

They shoot the white girl first. ~ Toni Morrison

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

A few days after I began my short story, I returned to his desk and handed him my updates. He pushed his wire-rimmed reading glasses way down on his nose and focused on the two pages. "Okay, you got a beginning; you got yourself a middle and an end. You got a wing-dinger opening line. But you don't have an establishing paragraph. Do you know what that is?"
He didn't wait for me to answer.
"It's kinda like an outdated road map for the reader," he said. "It gives the reader a general idea of where you're taking him, but doesn't tell him exactly how you intend to get there, which is all he needs to know. ~ John William Tuohy

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

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

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

It was one-thirty a.m. when all hell broke loose. ~ Kyoko M.

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

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

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

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

PARKER spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle, ...
Beat that for a PC opening line ... not ~ Richard Stark

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

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

There was more than one Cabeswater. Or more than one of whatever it was. How many? He didn't know. How alive was it? He didn't know that, either. Did it THINK, was it an alien, did it die, was it good, was it right? He didn't know. But he knew there was more than one, and this one stretched its fingers out as hard as it could to reach the other. The enormity of the enormity of the world grew and grew inside Adam, and he didn't know if he could hold it. He was just a boy. Was he meant to know this? They had transformed Henrietta already by waking this ley line and strengthening Cabeswater. What would a world look like with more forests woken all over it? Would it tear itself apart with crackling energy and magic, or was this a pendulum swing, a result of hundreds of years of sleep? How many kings slept? ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Definition of inertia: 'The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line. ~ Isaac Newton

The picket line is the best place to train organizers. One day on the picket line is where a man makes his commitment. The longer on the picket line, the stronger the commitment. A lot of workers think they make their commitment by walking off the job when nobody sees them. But you get a guy to walk off the field when his boss is watching and, in front of the other guys, throw down his tools and march right to the picket line, that is the guy who makes our strike. The picket line is a beautiful thing because it makes a man more human. ~ Cesar Chavez

The world has experienced a revival of an old faith in the everlasting moral force of justice. At no time in history has there been a more important Conference, or a more necessary meeting, than this one in San Francisco, which you are opening today. ~ Harry S. Truman

I am looking at opening a school of social engineering. The McAfee School of Social Engineering has a nice ring to it. Beyond that, it is hard to say what life will bring my way. ~ John McAfee

I love dark humor that crosses the line and makes you say, 'That's so wrong!' And that's 'Family Guy' to me. ~ Elena Satine

I think it's important for bands to rough it. Whether you're in a van or a bus, it's still tough. You still have to stand in a two hour catering line with flies everywhere in the heat, and you still have to lug your gear. ~ Hayley Williams

I like to quote Homer Simpson: 'I'm like a chocoholic except for alcohol.' I come from a long line of alcoholics. It's funny because when I first started making records, I was at the tail end of a period of sobriety, so I somehow got this reputation as Captain Sober. ~ Moby

It was daylight and I drove everyone home - I was driving a Mini with John and Cynthia and Pattie in it. I seem to remember we were doing eighteen miles an hour and I was really concentrating - because some of the time I just felt normal and then, before I knew where I was, it was all crazy again. Anyway, we got home safe and sound, and somewhere down the line John and Cynthia got home. I went to bed and lay there for, like, three years. ~ George Harrison

I get a call, and it's Howard Bingham, and he's got the champ on the line.Muhammad Ali didn't remember me from being a kid, but he was going, "Yeah, you're in bed, and you want your mama with you ... " It really helped so much. He spent 15 or 20 minutes on the phone with me. That's a memory that I'll always cherish. ~ Mickey Rourke

I'd never considered myself to be that ambitious or driven before, yet I stood there waiting for us to roll out through the start line knowing that taking part wasn't enough. I wanted to be a racer, not just a finisher. ~ David Millar

I would drink and drink and then at 3 o'clock in the morning take anything that was put in front of me. And I'd sometimes be disappointed when conventional things were put in front of me. Like, I'd do a line of something and be disappointed to find it was just cocaine. ~ Moby

The deepest human intuition is not the immediate grasping of the classical-physics-type character of the external world. It is rather that one's own conscious subjective efforts can influence the experiences that follow. Any conception of nature that makes this deep intuition an illusion is counterintuitive. Any conception of reality that cannot explain how our conscious efforts influence our bodily actions is problematic. What is actually deeply intuitive is the continually reconfirmed fact that our conscious efforts can influence certain kinds of experiential feedback. A putatively rational scientific theory needs at the very least to explain this connection in a rational way to be in line with intuition. ~ Paul Davies

The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in Scotland. The blue slates and the grey stone are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, dislike the interior of an old-fashioned pewed and galleried church, with its little family settlements on all sides, the square box outside, with its bit of a spire like a handle to lift it by, is not an improvement to the landscape. Still, a cluster of houses on differing elevations - with scraps of garden coming in between, a hedgerow with clothes laid out to dry, the opening of a street with its rural sociability, the women at their doors, the slow waggon lumbering along - gives a centre to the landscape. It was cheerful to look at, and convenient in a hundred ways. ("The Open Door") ~ Mrs. Oliphant

There's a thin line between collectivity and chaos ... ~ Rita Mae Brown

In the mid-1980s, operating problems took [nuclear] plants off-line so often that, on an annual basis, they operated at only about 55 percent of their rated total generating capacity. Today, as a result of several decades of experience and an intense focus on performance ... nuclear plants in the United States operate at over 90 percent of capacity. That improvement in operating efficiently is so significant in its impact that it can almost be seen as a new source in electric power itself. ~ Daniel Yergin

These tears are proof that there is love in the world. Tears are only bitter when we cry selfishly for ourselves. When we deny and forget the sweet love that tears are made of. When we let sorrow turn to anger. When people cry for each other, it is a good thing. Always remember that you are a human being, connected to all other human beings. When you cry for others you are opening your heart to God, who must see what we do and weep for us, too, for the suffering we cause to one another and to ourselves. ~ Nafisa Haji

The greatest activity of which man is capable: Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty. ~ Albert Einstein

Those who have to ask if faith is true are opening up a discussion they may not be ready for. ~ Richelle Mead

This year had been one for the books. And by that, Jason meant a book that got doused in gasoline, set on fire, and kicked over a cliff. ~ Katherine McIntyre

You're better off believing in God they'd warn you, just in case. Because you'd hate to arrive at the gates of heaven a nonbeliever and find out the Christians had been right all along. It was a pretty ingenious line of thinking. It almost made me want to go to church. Not enough to actually go, but still. ~ Drew Magary

There is something very easy about women's friendships that you don't see as often with men. We all know examples of this, when women will just call each other up or drop a line, not with anything specific to say. ~ Laurie Graham

This book is written from a changing town in Virginia, but this class of mine, these people
the ones who smell like an ashtray in the checkout line, devour a carton of Little Debbies at a sitting, and praise Jesus for a truck with no spare tire
exist in every state in our nation. Maybe the next time we on the left encounter such seemingly self-screwing, stubborn, God-obsessed folks, we can be open to their trials, understand the complexity of their situation, even have enough solidarity to pop for a cheap retread tire out of our own pockets, simply because that would be the kind thing to do and surely would make the ghosts of Joe Hill, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mohandas Gandhi smile. ~ Joe Bageant

As actors, we were fighting that tooth and nail because of fear, because language is a crutch and dialogue is a crutch, and it's so easy to just have a great writer write you a line. ~ Charlize Theron

When you begin with the finish line in mind, you miss all the fun stuff along the way. The better approach is to tweak and grow, tweak and grow. ~ Sophia Amoruso

We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects." In writing this line I meant to say that we must not simply "accept" imperfection when it is revealed to us - we must celebrate it. This, I assure you, is the true sign of friendship. ~ Ron Perlman

You are not the one who experiences liberation; you are the clearing, the opening, the emptiness, in which any experience comes and goes, like reflections on the mirror. And you are the mirror, the mirror mind, and not any experienced reflection. ~ Ken Wilber

Wilson has some fancy name for it, but
I call lit macanaccady. Anything I can't analyze in the eating
line I call macanaccady and anything wet that puzzles me I call
shallamagouslem. ~ L.M. Montgomery

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and bent to look out the window. It was amazing how heavy a 1.6-pound pistol could get
if you weren't relaxed. He knew better and chided himself, but forgot the pain the moment he saw the target building.


The neon dragon dancing on the roof glinted off the puddles in sparks of yellow and red. Outside the Dragon's Door the line
stretched back around the block. Steele set the pistol on the ledge and checked the Rolex Submariner on his wrist. It was
11:25. He pulled a magnifier from the inside pocket of his Manning and Manning jacket and pressed it to his eye.


"I'm on target," he said.

"Uploading the feed, stand by, ~ Sean Parnell

The Vampire Lestat here. ~ Anne Rice

A slut is someone, usually a woman, who's stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We're messy. We don't behave. In fact, the original definition of "slut" meant "untidy woman." But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line. ~ Jaclyn Friedman

The straightest line between a straight distance is two points. ~ George Carlin

I'm not sure how to order."
"Easy," Josh says. "Stand in line. Tell them what you want. Accept delicious goodies. And then give them your meal card and two pints of blood."
"I heard they raised it to three pints this year," Rashmi says.
"Bone marrow," Beautiful Hallway Boy says. "Or your left earlobe. ~ Stephanie Perkins

After the 11 September attack," March editorializes one morning, "amid all that chaos and confusion, a hole quietly opened up in American history, a vacuum of accountability, into which assets human and financial begin to vanish. Back in the days of hippie simplicity, people liked to blame 'the CIA' or 'a secret rogue operation.' But this is a new enemy, unnamable, locatable on no organization chart or budget line
who knows, maybe even the CIA's scared of them. ~ Thomas Pynchon

For several months they'd been drifting toward political involvement, but the picture was hazy and one of the most confusing elements was their geographical proximity to Berkeley, the citadel of West Coast radicalism. Berkeley is right next door to Oakland, with nothing between them but a line on the map and a few street signs, but in many ways they are as different as Manhattan and the Bronx. Berkeley is a college town and, like Manhattan, a magnet for intellectual transients. Oakland is a magnet for people who want hour-wage jobs and cheap housing, who can't afford to live in Berkeley, San Francisco or any of the middle-class Bay Area suburbs. [10] It is a noisy, ugly, mean-spirited place, with the sort of charm that Chicago had for Sandburg. It is also a natural environment for hoodlums, brawlers, teenage gangs and racial tensions.

The Hell's Angels' massive publicity -- coming hard on the heels of the widely publicized student rebellion in Berkeley -- was interpreted in liberal-radical-intellectual circles as the signal for a natural alliance. Beyond that, the Angels' aggressive, antisocial stance -- their alienation, as it were -- had a tremendous appeal for the more aesthetic Berkeley temperament. Students who could barely get up the nerve to sign a petition or to shoplift a candy bar were fascinated by tales of the Hell's Angels ripping up towns and taking whatever they wanted. Most important, the Angels had a reputation for defying police, for successfully ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I'll prove who I am, Kingsley, after I've seen my son, now back off if you know what's good for you!"
Harry had never heard Mr. Weasley shout like that before. He burst into the living room, his bald patch gleaming with sweat, his spectacles askew, Fred right behind him, both pale but uninjured.
"Arthur!" sobbed Mrs. Weasley. "Oh thank goodness!"
"How is he?"
Mr. Weasley dropped to his knees beside George. For the first time since Harry had known him, Fred seemed to be lost for words. He gaped over the back of the sofa at his twin's wound as if he could not believe what he was seeing.
Perhaps roused by the sound of Fred and their father's arrival, George stirred.
"How do you feel, Georgie?" whispered Mrs. Weasley.
George's fingers groped for the side of his head.
"Saintlike," he murmured.
"What's wrong with him?" croaked Fred, looking terrified. "Is his mind affected?"
"Saintlike," repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up at his brother. "You see…I'm holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?"
Mrs. Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Color flooded Fred's pale face.
"Pathetic," he told George. "Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humor before you, you go for holey?"
"Ah well," said George, grinning at his tear-soaked mother. "You'll be able to tell us apart now, anyway, Mum. ~ J.K. Rowling

Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open. ~ George Jean Nathan

I used to think that destiny was fluid, because isn't that the point of every Disney movie and Saturday-morning cartoon? You make your own choices. You decide how life goes. I always thought that your fate line would change if something happened, bam, something goes wrong and the line on your palm goes all wonky to reflect that. Nope. It still looks fine. ~ Amy Zhang