Comments on: The Best First Sentence in Fiction

By: Nancy

Nancy — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:34:29 +0000

John Updike describing the home run hit by Ted Williams in Fenway Park on September 28, 1960 – his last time at bat.

“It was in the books while it was still in the sky.”

By: Fastauntie

Fastauntie — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:47:58 +0000

“The bishop was feeling rather seasick.”

– Norman Douglas, South Wind

“You’ve missed the point completely, Julia: There were no tigers.”

– T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (OK, it’s a play, not a novel, but certainly fits the criteria of being utterly irresistible, something unquestionably curious, and absolutely tantalizing.)

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:34:27 +0000

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”

Stephen King, The Gunslinger

By: Lawrence D Thompson

Lawrence D Thompson — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 22:26:46 +0000

HOW can you leave out poor Gregor Samsa? In Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature.”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1
Great fiction that one.

And sorry, but I HAVE to put in this last line:

“Let’s go exploring!”
Calvin and Hobbes
Bill Watterson
December 31, 1995

P.S. Dear Calvin, You and Hobbes are dearly and severely missed.

By: Gaylan

Gaylan — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:15:54 +0000

So its the last sentence, not the first….but:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

By: BJ

BJ — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:52:17 +0000

“Call me Ishmael.”–Moby Dick
“Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler’s pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.” –Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

By: fm

fm — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 20:01:26 +0000

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.”
Douglas Adams–Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three.”
Dianna Wynne Jones–Howl’s Moving Castle

By: Michael A. Kechula

Michael A. Kechula — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:20:09 +0000

I know you are asking for the best openers we’ve ever read in sci-fi, but I’d like to offer one of my own from my 317-word flash fiction tale, “A Buck A Head.” The editor of a British Magazine startled me when he said it was one of the best he ever read. For what it’s worth, here it is:

A DOLLAR A HEAD

Fed up with goddam aliens carving my corn fields into crop circles, I lay in wait in the dark with a machine gun and 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

By: Karim

Karim — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 19:30:18 +0000

Great chioce Hana Levin. “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is amazing. I actually had that opening in mind whe I clicked on this page.

By: adlaremse

adlaremse — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:47:14 +0000

”In my first memory, I am three years old and I am trying to kill my sister.” from My sister’s keeper by Jodi Picoult.
OR
”There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

By: LiLi

LiLi — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:28:16 +0000

“Sometime During your life-in fact, very soon-you may find yourself reading a book, and the book’s first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains.”

And:

“If sometime in your life you were going to give a gold medal to the least delightful person on earth, you would have to give it to her, Carmelita Spats, and if you didn’t give it to her, she’s the kind of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway.”

-Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill & The Austere Academy, respectively

By: McMama

McMama — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:49:32 +0000

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” ~Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger”

By: Dan Pounds

Dan Pounds — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:30:40 +0000

First sentence of The Walk by Robert Walser:

” I have to report that one fine morning, I do not know for sure any more what time it was, as the desire to take a walk came over me, I put my hat on my head, left my writing room, or room of phantoms, and ran down the stairs to hurry out into the street.”
(Translation in Serpent’s Tail edition 1992, probably by Christopher Middleton.)

By: Lucy

Lucy — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 04:23:22 +0000

“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”

-M. T. Anderson, Feed

By: Courtney Mundhenc

Courtney Mundhenc — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:28:14 +0000

Thank you for all your help, it really means a lot!

By: Courtney Mundhenc

Courtney Mundhenc — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:25:07 +0000

IN a novel i mean

By: Courtney

Courtney — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:23:59 +0000

Whats a good first sentence?

By: daniel

daniel — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:10:49 +0000

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-le-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Le. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

By: Catherine

Catherine — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:25:43 +0000

My favorite, which comes from Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life, is: My sweat smells like peanut butter.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:06:52 +0000

The beginning sentence that had impressed me for years is from ‘WINTER MOON’ by Dean Koontz, which starts as follows:

Death was driving an emerald green Lexus.

By: Steven

Steven — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:17:42 +0000

http://www.openingsentences.com is a site where people can nominate and vote for their favorite sentence

By: Oceanlake

Oceanlake — Mon, 26 May 2008 05:07:23 +0000

The one I remember; I doubt I need to tell you author or title:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

By: Ruth

Ruth — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:30:21 +0000

Dodie Smith- I capture the castle:
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink”

Daphne Du Maurier- Rebecca

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again”

By: Ian

Ian — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 19:24:49 +0000

This one is mine;
“My freinds who know me well have become accustomed to strange things happening to me. However, there are some occasions which are so unusual that they leave even them,shaking their heads in desbelief and wondering how I get myself into such predicaments.”
Just Ian
An Anthology Of Autobiographical Anecdotes
(it opened all 13 chapters)

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 02:16:18 +0000

It was to be this:
“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me”. George Orwell, England your England

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:27:50 +0000

The best? But of course!

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in posession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

By: Michael Coe

Michael Coe — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:11:06 +0000

When Keri Hart came face-to-face with love, not even her high-society mother’s wishes for her to “marry up, never down, and God forbid a Yankee” could change the way she felt about Ryan Mitchell.

By: Erik Evenson

Erik Evenson — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:44:14 +0000

Here’s a good first line, especially considering the title of the piece:
“This is true.”
–Tim O’Brien, How to Tell a True War Story

By: TheWrinkledCzar

TheWrinkledCzar — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:08:58 +0000

A little surprised no one has mentioned them, perhaps because they’re so obvious but special mention must always be given to Slaughterhouse Five’s “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time” (technically not the first sentence I guess, but cited as such by Vonnegut himself). Melville’s “Call me Ishmael” will always be a classic, as will Chuck Dicken’s “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being recieved, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Ponder that for a while. I know I will.

By: Alex Durstein

Alex Durstein — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 21:47:12 +0000

Technically it’s two sentences, but…

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfasionable end of the western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is a utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
~Douglas Adams: The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy