First Sentence Quotes

“It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“I bear a deep red stain that runs from my left shoulder down to my right hip, a trail left by the herbwitch's poison that my mother used to try to expel me from her womb.”
― Robin LaFevers, Grave Mercy

“Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man.”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked.”
― Greg Nagan, The 5-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics: Great Books For The Short Attention Span

“He- for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it- was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. ”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.”
― Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

“They murdered him.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.”
― George Orwell, Coming up for Air

“The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture.”
― José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

“Too many!' James shouted, and slammed the door behind him.”
― Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

“Die Welt ist gierig, und manchmal verschwinden Menschen in ihrem Schlund, ohne jemals wieder gesehen zu werden.”
― Christoph Marzi, Lycidas

“Who was blowing on the nape of my neck.”
― David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

“Celestina Giuliani learned the word "slander" at her cousin's baptism.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Children of God

“A squat gray building of only thirty-four stories.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I know what you want to hear, doctor, but I'm sorry, you're not going to pry some sordid confession out of me.”
― Barbara Mujica, Frida

“Die meisten Lügen sind wahr und spinnen sich von ganz allein, kaum jemand kannte diese Wahrheit besser als Colin Darcy. Wenn man erst einmal der Melodie der Worte zu lauschen beginnt, dann pfeift man sie bald selbst. Und wenn Lügen wie kunstvolle Lieder sind, dann gehörte Helen Darcy, Colins Mutter, zu jenem seltenen Menschenschlag, der allzeit eine beschwingte Melodie auf den Lippen trägt.”
― Christoph Marzi, Fabula

“My lifelong involvement with Mrs Dempster began at 5:58 o'clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.”
― Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

“My sister Kwan believes she has yin eyes. ”
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

“Baby," groaned the guy-Ted? Tad?-something like that-and crushed his lips against the side of her neck, shoving her face against the wall of the toilet stall.”
― Jennifer Weiner, In Her Shoes

“On December 7, 2059, Emilio Sandoz was released from the isolation ward of Salvator Mundi Hospital in the middle of the night and transported in a bread van to the Jesuit residence at Number 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, a few minutes' walk across St. Peter's Square from the Vatican.”
― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

“Her first name was India-she was never able to get used to it.”
― Evan S. Connell, Mrs. Bridge

“When Matussem Ramoud opened his eyes each morning, his wife would still not be there. ”
― Diana Abu-Jaber, Arabian Jazz

“The house in which the fourteen sisters of Emilio Montez O'brien lived, radiated femininity.”
― Oscar Hijuelos, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien

“Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“It's not that I was an outright nitwit of a child.”
― Augusten Burroughs, You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

“Thunder sounded, very near, and the child woke.”
― Donna Woolfolk Cross, Pope Joan

“It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“The night before I left my mother, I wrote a letter. ”
― Esmeralda Santiago, The Turkish Lover: A Memoir

“Although I'm afraid I don't get too many clients these days!”
― Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto