First-sentence Quotes

“The family landed in the Western Hemisphere in the person of Roger Blake Wolfe, who arrived with a price on his head.”

— James Carlos Blake

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

— Leo Tolstoy

“It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwest state.…

— Ray Bradbury

“When a naked man shows up on your doorstep with a bear trap clamped around his ankle, it's best just to do…

— Molly Harper

“It's not that I was an outright nitwit of a child.”

— Augusten Burroughs

“Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“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…

— Robertson Davies

“I don't know if I killed my dad or not.”

— Jeanne Willis

“See the child.”

— Cormac McCarthy

“There is no man so unsuited for the task of speaking about memory as I am, for I find scarcely a trace…

— Geoff Ryman

“At last, the luminous match was struck and the day was lit.”

— Dorit Rabinyan

“A squat gray building of only thirty-four stories.”

— Aldous Huxley

“I might be the villain of this story.”

— Rebecca Makkai

“This morning, my mother didn't get out of bed.”

— Melina Marchetta

“Everyone thinks it was because of the snow. And in a way, I suppose that’s true.”

— Anonymous

“At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring.”

— Charles Frazier

“I didn't suspect the day Grandfather came out and got me and my sister, Lula, and hauled us off toward the ferry…

— Joe R. Lansdale

“They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide us with ointment and…

— Janet Frame

“At school I was careful not to look like I watched everything, but I did.”

— Amanda Davis

“All right, don't scoff, mock or disbelieve: we live in mortal fear of not-quite-twins.”

— Kamila Shamsie

“Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was just too much to pick from. I guess, really,…

— Gail Giles

“Our story opens where countless stories have ended in the last twenty-seven years: with an idiot—in this case, Rebecca Atherton, head of…

— Mira Grant

“There once was a woman named Story Easton who couldn't decide if she should kill herself, or eat a double cheeseburger.”

— Elizabeth Leiknes

“There is a delicate-looking plant native to North America called bleeding heart.”

— Josh Aterovis

“Harry was bleeding.”

— J.K. Rowling