51 Memorable First Sentence Quotes

Opening lines hold a special power in literature. They draw readers in, set the tone, and leave a lasting impression that often defines the entire work. The art of crafting a memorable first sentence is a skill perfected by only a few, creating enduring beginnings that resonate through time. In this journey, we explore 51 of the most unforgettable first sentence quotes, each a testament to the writers' ability to captivate and intrigue from the very start. Whether you're an avid reader, a writer seeking inspiration, or simply looking for thought-provoking words, this curated collection promises to celebrate the brilliance of opening lines that continue to echo in our minds.

1. “There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.” - Joshilyn Jackson

2. “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” - C.S. Lewis

3. “In the midst of a thick forest, there was a castle that gave shelter to all travelers overtaken by night on their journey: lords and ladies, royalty and their retinue, humble wayfarers.” - Italo Calvino

4. “Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain.” - Sheri S. Tepper

5. “Women have always been spies.” - Harriet Rubin

6. “Jerrie Cobb reached down and pulled the heavy layers of arctic clothing over her navy blue linen dress. ” - Martha Ackmann

7. “We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.” - Margaret Atwood

8. “I held her feet in my hands.” - Geoff Nicholson

9. “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

10. “That night Flora wanted to eat watermelon.” - Dorit Rabinyan

11. “Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.” - Christopher Moore

12. “The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. ” - dan savage

13. “I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one.” - Orson Scott Card

14. “Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.” - William Gibson

15. “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

16. “I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria.” - John Fowles

17. “Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. ” - Isabel Allende

18. “Twelve years after Robin's death, no one knew any more about how he had ended up hanged from a tree in his own yard than they had on the day it happened.” - Donna Tartt

19. “Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?” - Donna Tartt

20. “On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

21. “Thunder sounded, very near, and the child woke.” - Donna Woolfolk Cross

22. “All the June Saturday afternoon Sam Pollit's children were on the lookout for him as they skated round the dirt sidewalks and seamed old asphalt of R Street and Reservoir Road that bounded the deep-grassed acres of Tohoga House, their home.” - Christina Stead

23. “We were on our way to the colmado for an errand.” - Junot Diaz

24. “In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life.” - Haruki Murakami

25. “The house in which the fourteen sisters of Emilio Montez O'brien lived, radiated femininity.” - Oscar Hijuelos

26. “At last, the luminous match was struck and the day was lit.” - Dorit Rabinyan

27. “We came to Macun when I was four, to a rectangle of rippled metal sheets on stilts hovering in the middle of a circle of red dirt.” - Esmeralda Santiago

28. “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 Garcia Marquez

29. “Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.” - Gunther Grass

30. “Feast or famine. My plate is suddenly full.” - David Wong Louie

31. “All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall.” - Tom Perrotta

32. “The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture.” - José Saramago

33. “In the time it takes for her to walk from the bathhouse at the seawall of Fortune's Rocks, where she has left her boots and has discreetly pulled off her stockings, to the waterline along which the sea continually licks the pink and silver sand, she learns about desire. ” - Anita Shreve

34. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

35. “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.” - James Crumley

36. “Nothing ever happens to me.” - Mary Stewart

37. “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” - Neil Gaiman

38. “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

39. “Die Welt ist wie Wasser, scharlachrot und sanft gefärbt mit hellem Himmel. Und manchmal sind die Träume, die sich tief in den vergessenen Liedern unserer Kindheit verbergen, wie die Pfade in den Tiefen Wäldern, von jenem schweren Dunkel, das allein zu betreten man sich scheut, weil was dort schlummert, nur selten ist, was man zu finden erhofft.” - Christoph Marzi

40. “Die Stunde, in der das Mädchen ohne Namen seine Geschichte verlor, war die letzte des Tages.” - Christoph Marzi

41. “There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

42. “Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.” - Adam Rapp

43. “Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was just too much to pick from. I guess, really, we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn't realize it until the day we killed him.” - Gail Giles

44. “In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands lost their lives, a young Spaniard called Jeronimo Rugera was standing beside one of the pillars in the prison to which he had been committed on a criminal charge, and he was about to hang himself.” - Heinrich von Kleist

45. “I was about thirteen when I started letting boys feel me up.” - Rebbecca Ray

46. “The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.” - George Orwell

47. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. It was the future, and everything sucked.” - Greg Nagan

48. “Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.” - Rick Riordan

49. “This morning, my mother didn't get out of bed.” - Melina Marchetta

50. “My story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man—in this case, my adoptive brother and best friend, Shaun—holding a gun to the base of my skull as the virus in my blood betrayed me, transforming me from a thinking human being into something better suited to a horror movie.” - Mira Grant

51. “The greatest tragedy that can befall a man is never to know who he really is.” - James Carlos Blake