72 Opening Line Quotes

In the world of literature, first impressions matter immensely. An opening line can captivate a reader, set the tone for the story, and leave an indelible mark on our memories. Whether it’s the beginning of a classic novel or a contemporary masterpiece, the power of a well-crafted opening cannot be overstated. Here, we’ve curated a collection of the top 72 opening line quotes that showcase the brilliance, creativity, and sheer magic of writers who masterfully draw us into their worlds from the very first sentence. Prepare to be inspired, intrigued, and reminded of why we fall in love with books time and time again.

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

2. “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” - Rafael Sabatini

3. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” - George Orwell

4. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” - Jane Austen

5. “It was a pleasure to burn.” - Ray Bradbury

6. “If you're going to read this, don't bother.” - Chuck Palahniuk

7. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” - Charles Dickens

8. “You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't.” - Christopher Moore

9. “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.” - H.G. Wells

10. “Call me Ishmael.” - Herman Melville

11. “It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” - Lois Lowry

12. “Who is John Galt?” - Ayn Rand

13. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” - Shirley Jackson

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

15. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” - Charles Dickens

16. “The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.” - Blaise Pascal

17. “Two households, both alike in dignity,In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.From forth the fatal loins of these two foesA pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;Whole misadventured piteous overthrowsDo with their death bury their parents' strife.The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,And the continuance of their parents' rage,Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;The which if you with patient ears attend,What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.” - William Shakespeare

18. “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” - Charlotte Brontë

19. “That's why I love spiders. 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.” - Diana Wynne Jones

20. “I am a vampire, and that is the truth.” - Christopher Pike

21. “If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads.” - P. L. Travers

22. “Listen. The Sanctuary of the Redeemers on Shotover Scarp is named after a damned lie for there is no redemption that goes on there and less sanctuary” - Paul Hoffman

23. “My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.” - Alice Sebold

24. “To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.” - Kurt Vonnegut

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

26. “The Summer had died peacefully in its sleep, and Autumn, as soft-spoken executrix, was locking life up safely until Spring came to claim it.” - Kurt Vonnegut

27. “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” - James Joyce

28. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” - Natalie Babbitt

29. “In the beginning we were a group of nine.Three are gone, dead.There are six of us left.They are hunting us, and they won't stop until they've killed us all.I am Number Four.I know that I am next.” - Pittacus Lore

30. “You're surprised at all the blood.He looks over at you, eyes wide, mouth dropping open, his face almost as white as his shirt.He's surprised, too.” - Charles Benoit

31. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” - J.K. Rowling

32. “Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won” - William Shakespeare

33. “A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud.” - Gary Corby

34. “When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.” - Richard Stark

35. “Seated opposite me in the railway carriage, the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders that she had committed over the years.” - John Boyne

36. “I did it! I stopped time.[Hampton Green]” - Tim Tharp

37. “It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.” - Philip Reeve

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

39. “I was looking for a quiet place to die.” - Paul Auster

40. “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” - Franz Kafka

41. “The first time I read the ad, I choked and cursed and spat and threw the paper to the floor.” - Daniel Quinn

42. “This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may seem strange to start a story with and ending, but all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.” - Mitch Albom

43. “If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most Ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and which arises out of the need and distress pertaining essentially to life, should be purposeless and purely accidental. Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

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

45. “Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer.” - Betty Smith

46. “Indian summer is like a woman.” - Grace Metalious

47. “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house.” - Mark Haddon

48. “There is no lake at Camp Green Lake.” - Louis Sachar

49. “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.” - Carson McCullers

50. “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?” - Erich Segal

51. “I get the willies when I see closed doors.” - Joseph Heller

52. “They murdered him.” - Robert Cormier

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

54. “The great fish moved silently through the night water.” - Peter Benchley

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

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

57. “It was Wang Lung's marriage day.” - Pearl S. Buck

58. “Congratulations. The fact that you're reading this means you've taken one giant step closer to surviving until your next birthday.” - James Patterson

59. “I am a vampire. Blood does not bother me.” - Christopher Pike

60. “The baloney weighed the raven down, and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door.” - Peter S. Beagle

61. “Grandfather recently died. He died alone on a trip away from home in a town where no one expected him to be” - Téa Obreht

62. “Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.” - Alexander McCall Smith

63. “It was dusk - winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at work, wrapped in sacking because of the bitter cold, and keeping together in groups for fear of the wolves, grown savage and reckless from hunger.” - Joan Aiken

64. “A mile below the lowest cloud, rock breaches water and the sea begins.It has been given many names. Each inlet and bay and stream has been classified as if it were discrete. But it is one thing, where borders are absurd. It fills the space between stones and sand, curling around coastlines and filling trenches between the continents.” - China Miéville

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

66. “Did you wish upon a star and take the time to try to make your wish come true?Did you try to paint the sunrise and find the gift of life within?Did you write a song just for the joy of it?Or write a poem just to feel the pain?Did you find a reason to ignore the petty injustices, the spoken barbs, or the envies, jealousies and greed that crossed your path?Did you wake up this morning and whisper inside, “Today, I’ll find every reason to smile, and ignore the excuses to frown.”Today will be the day I’ll whisper nothing snide, I’ll say nothing cruel. I’ll be kind to my enemy, I’ll embrace my friends, and for thisone day, I’ll forget the slights of the past.Today will be the day I’ll live for the joy of it, laugh for the fun of it, and today, I’ll love whether it’s returned, forsaken, or simplyignored.And if you did, then your heart has joined the others who have as well, uniting, strengthening, and in a single heartbeat you’ve createda world of hope.” - Lora Leigh

67. “She'd be lucky if she got out of this alive . . . and she'd never been lucky in her life.” - Dorian Paul

68. “If a lioness spends her hours pacing back and forth in a cage of gold with the finest meats at her disposal, does that make her any less of a prisoner? If that same feline’s fangs are filed down to blunt, un-tearing teeth and her roar is silenced, can she still be called a lioness?” - Kristen Reed

69. “The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman's days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to his existence.” - Jane Austen

70. “There are only two kinds of people in our town. The stupid and the stuck."” - Kami Garcia

71. “On a pitch black, starless night, a solitary man was trudging along the main road from Marchiennes to Montsou, ten kilometres of cobblestones running straight as a die across the bare plain between fields of beet.” - Émile Zola

72. “To say the least, it was inconsiderate of Diana’s almost-dead husband to show up at her engagement party.” - Robin Lee Hatcher