Opening Sentence Quotes

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

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

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

From the opening sentence, it is clear that we are in the presence of a writer with a distinctive voice and uncanny ability to capture the bewilderment and burgeoning anger of a boy struggling to remain true to himself while navigating the hypocritical system he finds himself trapped in … what makes Boy on a Wire much more than a bleak coming-of-age story is Doust's sharp wit. "Justice not only prevails at Grammar School, it is rampant." If you know an angry teenager, give this to him.' - The Age ~ Jon Doust

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

What we feel and how we feel is far more important than what we think and how we think. Feeling is the stuff of which our consciousness is made, the atmosphere in which all our thinking and all our conduct is bathed. All the motives which govern and drive our lives are emotional. Love and hate, anger and fear, curiosity and joy are the springs of all that is most noble and most detestable in the history of men and nations.

The opening sentence of a sermon is an opportunity. A good introduction arrests me. It handcuffs me and drags me before the sermon, where I stand and hear a Word that makes me both tremble and rejoice. The best sermon introductions also engage the listener immediately. It's a rare sermon, however, that suffers because of a good introduction.

Mysteries beg for answers. People's natural curiosity will entice them to stay tuned until the puzzle is solved. Any sentence that points out incongruity, contradiction, paradox, or irony will do.

Talk about what people care about. Begin writing an introduction by asking, "Will my listeners care about this?" (Not, "Why should they care about this?")

Stepping into the pulpit calmly and scanning the congregation to the count of five can have a remarkable effect on preacher and congregation alike. It is as if you are saying, "I'm about to preach the Word of God. I want all of you settled. I'm not going to begin, in fact, until I have your complete attention."

No sermon ~ Mark Galli

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

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

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

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

Esperanza leaned around the side of the truck. As they rounded a curve, it appeared as if the mountains pulled away from each other, like a curtain opening on stage, revealing the San Joaquin Valley beyond. Flat and spacious, it spread out like a blanket of patchwork fields. Esperanza could see no end to the plots of yellow, brown, and shades of green. The road finally leveled out on the valley floor, and she gazed back at the mountains from where they'd come. They looked like monstrous lions' paws resting at the edge of ridge. ~ Pam Munoz Ryan

The first decade of the twenty-first century was a crazy bookend to the twentieth, opening with a second Pearl Harbor and ending with a second Great Crash, with a second Vietnam wedged in between. Now we seem caught in the coils of a second Great Depression. ~ David Frum

Ink was black, in inkwells and bottles, in the past. It would get all over your fingers because it would run and flow relentlessly. This inevitable messiness was the flip side of writing. I always felt caught between two kinds of black: that of the dirty and dirtying substance and that of the signs that miraculously emerged from it through the magic of wayward fountain pens, which, when dipped too deep in the inkwell, had a strong tendency to cover the paper with what used to be called "inkblots." Oh, the miracle of a clear and possibly elegant sentence emerging from the sticky ink and wending its way between the blots! It is the black of meaning wrung from the black of matter. (…) Isn't the most profound education the one that was afforded me at my childhood elementary school, the one that divides the ink sharply between thought become Letter and drive turned into splotches and blots? How will those who begin with the darkish gray on the palish gray of computer screens manage? Without the slightest inkblot? Won't they think that thought is just another variation of formlessness, that the intellect is just a thin additional coat of gray over the gray of drive, and drive a mere stripping of the gray of the intellect? Everything in the world is the result of a creative and careful dosing of black as it is projected onto the formidable invariability of white. Anyone who hasn't experienced this, and sooner rather than later, will never learn anything. ~ Alain Badiou

When I started graduate school we did this publishing class where we learned about submitting and read interviews with editors from different magazines. A lot of them said they got so many submissions that unless the first page stuck out or the first paragraph or even the first sentence they'll probably send it back. So part of my idea was that if I have a really good first sentence maybe they'll read on a bit further. At least half, maybe more of the stories in Knockemstiff started with the first sentence; I got it down then went from there. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

Nas looked at Vik from across the room, and when he felt her eyes on him and lifted his head, she lowered her glance. It wasn't the first time in the past two weeks that I saw them do this. It also didn't escape Lev's notice that Viktor had stopped coming around. They hadn't spoke in that time.
Something had happened between them, and Nas was not opening up, probably because it was still too painful to talk about.
All I knew was that Nas was miserable and Vik had developed the temper of a T-Rex with itchy balls.
Relationships were collapsing around us, but Lev and I were going stronger than ever. ~ Belle Aurora

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil. ~ Thomas Carlyle

So they bring our poor Andreas into the vestry, and unfortunately he's no longer capable of speech, all he can do is reach for the left inside pocket of his jacket where he has the money he owes the little creditress, and he says: 'Miss Thérèse!' - and he sighs once, and he dies.
May God grant us all, all of us drinkers, such a good and easy death! ~ Joseph Roth

Opening up to perceive and interact with subtle energies can drastically change your life; it can help you find clarity, bring peace into your life, empower yourself and others, and create effective change within our world. ~ Mat Auryn

I tell you one thing that makes me feel I haven't wasted my life, and that is I've got some grandchildren. You can't overestimate the kind of opening to the future that gives a person, I think. ~ Helen Garner

Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

---Sleeps through the washes of the morning's colors and the warm brilliance of sunrise. She sleeps in a world where she remembers, perfectly, every detail about her husband, this day, that sentence, another touch. She will remember it all in the deepest sleep, and lose it again the moment her eyes open and she wonders how late it must be for the sun to already be so high and then remembers, in the next instant, what happened the day before. ~ Ashley Hay

Ninety-nine per cent of opening bands stink. ~ Gene Ween

We are all children in the dark, finding our way together to the light. Many define the light before the light is reached and fix on their defining. There in the dark they clamor for others to embrace their defining, demanding its elevation, and giving it names they claim as sacred. But all are still in the dark, distracted by so many claims to the one way out, all unseen, and fix their take with fear and penalty if not likewise elevated as the one and only way. Whereas I leave it open to what the opening will reveal. Layered writing is my tool to enable the opening to widen, and it is our consciousness, not our physical form that has trouble squeezing through the passageway to the way out of the dark, while so many call out in the dark they know the way, rather than allowing the way to reveal itself. Watch the silent ones, calm in demeanor, who are experienced at leaving ways open, in order to find it. They listen and feel their way, in different ways and on different levels. These have no following to create the clamor, nor seek the glamour the clamor brings. They are simply wise because they leave it open to what the opening may become, rather than what they have been fed from birth, they birth in solitude what might be, allowing layers of ways to formulate and in that way follow in their minds and hearts a revealed and reveled light yet unseen. ~ Tom Althouse

I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind & my eyes, refusing to be stamped & stereotyped. The thing is to free ones self; to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded. (Diary 4: 187) ~ Thomas C. Caramagno

Especially important are the political implications of the idea that the new possibilities opened by a certain act are part of its content - this is the reason why, to the consternation of many of my friends (who, of course, are no longer my friends), I claimed apropos the US 2016 presidential elections that Trump's victory would be better than Clinton's for the future of progressive forces. Trump is highly dubious, of course, but his election may open possibilities and move the liberal-Left pole to a new more radical position. I was surprised to learn that David Lynch adopted the same position: in an interview in June 2018, Lynch (who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary) said that Trump 'could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.' While Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. 'Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this. ~ Slavoj Zizek

I vividly remember going to Google Docs, opening a document at the same time other students were working on it, and seeing their differently colored cursors moving around the screen, typing new words and making edits in real time. It was an epiphany. ~ Ian Lamont

Let the whole world knock on that door. I'm not opening it. ~ Emm Cole

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. ~ J.D. Salinger

There are some closed doors we're so frightened of opening that we don't see them any more. We've pushed furniture in front of them; we've jammed the lock. Children are the only ones who might crouch down on all fours to stare at the red glow coming from under the door, as they wonder what lies behind it. But Vango had always been afraid of the glow. ~ Timothee De Fombelle

I always make sure there's an opening in my room - an inch at the door, or maybe even at the window. My grandmother taught me that if one dies during sleep, the soul needs an exit, or it will be forever trapped in the room. ~ Tablo

I'm just opening the doors. And a lot of this is new to me - thinking about it, and letting go again and again and again, trusting that if I'm meant to continue working as a musician, it'll happen. If I'm not, then pull out the life support. ~ Jane Siberry

What you get is the opening of your mind. I'm not preaching any new religion; I'm ritualizing everyday activities. You drink the water. You count the rice. You sit in Crystal Cave. You lie in Levitation Chamber. You push yourself to a new level. ~ Marina Abramovic

If ever I feel I might be able to tackle it, I'd love to try holding a spear or something in the theater, or opening a door, or anything, just to try it, you know, because it must be some marvelous magic thing. ~ Hayley Mills

When he's sliding down my body and planting greedy kisses on my inner thighs. "Better than ice cream," he rasps against my sensitive flesh, his tongue coming out to tickle my clit. "So much sweeter, baby." Then he captures the little bud between his lips and sucks hard enough to make me cry out. "Oh my God," I choke. My fingers tangle in his hair, keeping him trapped between my thighs. "Keep doing that." His laughter vibrates through my body. He continues to suckle me while one finger teases my folds, circling my opening until finally, slowly, slipping inside. I gasp in delight and rock against him. He's rocking, too, I realize. He's all but fucking the mattress as he licks and sucks and groans. ~ Sarina Bowen

Any chance of an appointment? I know it's a bit unusual and nervy, but I have been given a death sentence and have to get my affairs in quick order. ~ Virginia Aird

Every now and then I could see myself - truly see myself - and a sentence would come to me, thundering like a god into my head, and as I saw myself then in front of that tarnished mirror what came was the woman with the hole in her heart. ~ Cheryl Strayed

You struggle because you're locating all of the magic in your life outside of yourself. When you are loved, then you are lovable. When you are left behind, you are unlovable. When you "arrive" at some point of success and fame as a writer, you will be worthy. Until then, you are worthless.

As long as you imagine that the outside world will one day deliver to you the external rewards you need to feel happy, you will always perceive your survival as exhausting and perceive your life as a long slog to nowhere. Instead, you have to savor the tiny struggles of the day: The cold glass of water after a long run. The hot bath after hours of digging through the dirt. The satisfaction of writing a good sentence, a good paragraph. You MUST feel these things, because these aren't small rewards on the path to some big reward; these tiny things are everything. Savoring these things requires tuning in to your feelings, and it requires loving yourself instead of shoving your nose into your own question marks hour after hour, day after day.

You are not lost. You are here. Stop abandoning yourself. Stop repeating this myth about love and success that will land in your lap or evade you forever. Build a humble, flawed life from the rubble, and cherish that. There is nothing more glorious on the face of the earth than someone who refuses to give up, who refuses to give in to their most self-hating, discouraged, disillusioned self, and instead learns, slowly and painfully, ho ~ Heather Havrilesky

Be careful," Aunt Blythe said. "The floor's riddled with dry rot."
Forgetting her own warning, she plunged ahead, opening trunks and boxes, poking and pawing through things, reminiscing. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

If the Baron meets with a parcel of negro ships carrying whites into slavery to work upon their plantations in a cold climate, should we therefore imagine that he intends a reflection on the present traffic in human flesh? And that, if the negroes should do so, it would be simple justice, as retaliation is the law of God! If we were to think this a reflection on any present commercial or political matter, we should be tempted to imagine, perhaps, some political ideas conveyed in every page, in every sentence of the whole. Whether such things are or are not the intentions of the Baron the reader must judge. ~ Rudolf Erich Raspe

A few years ago I was involved with a man and when we stopped seeing each other I worried about what it meant to him. Will he remember me the way I remember him? Did I make a lasting impression on him the way he did on me? At some point I thought about that little sentence describing one woman's passion vs. a man's dalliance and seeing how well her passion served her in other ways, and I chose not to care. I don't care what he did or didn't feel. What he does or doesn't remember. I am a person and I count. It meant something to me, therefore it meant something. I will now take my passion and do what I damn well please. How extraordinary to be the passionate one. ~ Samara O'Shea

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups. ~ Ada Calhoun

I was about thirteen when I started letting boys feel me up. ~ Rebbecca Ray

Maybe I can do some writing then. The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliché from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones – Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless. For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hold up in a cheap furnished room and write? You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.("Mad House") ~ Richard Matheson

During my first semester of medical school, I cannot know how the emotional difficulty of the actions we perform on our cadavers will help us prepare for the agonizing moments we will observe in the lives of the living. ~ Christine Montross

The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence. ~ Susan Sontag

...The best guess we have, is we are on some kind of space craft. As for why, we don't know anything other than what that alien said – the Earth was destroyed. And we're on a lifeboat." Sarcasm dripped from her lips with the last sentence. ~ A.B. Shepherd

Barrons' head whipped around and he stared at me. You said nothing of this to me?
You said nothing to me about my mother? What do you know about her? About me?
His dark gaze promised retribution for my oversight.
So did mine.
I hated this. Barrons and I were enemies. It confused my head and hurt my heart. I'd grieved him as if I'd lost the only person who mattered to me, and now here we were, adversaries again. Were we destined to be eternal enemies?
One of us is going to have to trust the other, I told him.
Your first, Ms. Lane.
That was the whole problem. Neither of us would take the risk. I had a lengthy list of reasons why I shouldn't, and they were sound. My daddy could take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing my side. Barrons didn't inspire trust. He didn't even bother trying.
When hell freezes over, Barrons.
Same bloody page, Ms. Lane. Same bloody -
I turned my gaze away in the middle of his sentence, the ocular equivalent of flipping him the bird.
Ryodan was watching us, hard.
"Butt out," I warned. "This is between him and me. All you need to do is keep my parents safe and - "
"Little hard to do when you're such a fucking loose cannon. ~ Karen Marie Moning

If the techs are on it we're fine, but Briamiv and his buddy could fuck up a full stop at the end of a sentence. ~ China Mieville

And then, suddenly, there's something else. When you least expect it. Suddenly there's an opportunity, an opening, a person or people you couldn't have imagined, and - elation!-it feels as though you've found the pot of gold, when you'd thought all the gilt was gone from this world forever. It's enough, for a time - maybe even for a long time - to make you forget that you were ever angry, that you ever knew what anger was at all. ~ Claire Messud

How you are in this place that has been sealed since the time of Caesar Augustus?" one of the archaeologists demanded in amazement.
"I was looking for my sister," Dan quipped.
"Your sister?"
"Oh - here she is." Dan reached through the opening and hauled out an equally grubby Amy. ~ Gordon Korman

If I see a phrase that strikes me as ugly, I'll delete it. Or, if I find a way to say something a bit more freshly than it was expressed originally, I'll do it. Ultimately, you want to try to leave behind the best possible paragraph or sentence. ~ Tim O'Brien

He began to suffocate slowly in the more and more rarefied atmosphere of remoteness and solitude. For now it was his wish no longer, nor his aim, to be alone and independent, but rather his lot and his sentence. The magic wish had been fulfilled and could not be cancelled, and it was no good now to open his arms with longing and goodwill to welcome the bonds of society. ~ Hermann Hesse

It was floating. Waiting.
It had no sense of how long It had been in this state. Its awareness had retreated into a tiny core at the center of Its being, away from the searing torment of separation, Its very essence ripped apart. Never had It known such sensation. So It had retreated, further and deeper, wrapping Itself in a cocoon of Light; waiting only for a call, for an opening, that It might be reunited with Its Beloved. Waiting until ...
Something stirred within. Suddenly, there is a reaching, a pulling. Its awareness opens and It is caught in a field of gravity. It plunges down, irresistibly down toward the blue planet, unable to control or navigate. ~ J. Valor

Copywriting probably did make me a commercial writer. Nobody wants to read advertising copy, so you have to keep it punchy; you almost have trick them into reading it. You have to make every sentence work. ~ Liane Moriarty

I am, and that is all I know at times,
My being shaped by forces known and not.
But whereas words are made to bend to rhymes,
My feet are bound to steps that I have wrought.

I feel myself expanding into this
Beautiful niche I could not see before
But I always sensed-and now I cannot miss
Myself: I am unlimited and more

Is opening to me, the more I open
To this sweet fear, like falling from a cloud,
My heart's inertia clear and calm, unspoken
But heard. It says to me: "You are allowed."

And I am free at last to feel this way
To take this step: to wonder, love and stray. ~ David Griswold

The great fish moved silently through the night water. ~ Peter Benchley