Authors and readers know that the first line of any novel is important. I started keeping track of the first lines of each book I read as a way to remember each novel and to highlight just how fantastic some of these first lines really are. Here is what made up my list in 2016.
- “Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78.“
- “ ‘I believe the question, then,’ says Vasily Yaroslav, ‘ is one of intent.’ “
- “Somewhere around mile three on the trek up the hill Pitry Suturashni decides he would not describe the Javrati sun as ‘warm and relaxing,’ as all the travel advertisements say.“
- “Imagine a landscape.“
- “ ‘This was not the first bomb threat, correct?’ “
- “Sully pulled the thin wad of bills from his pocket and counted.“
- “I can hear the sound of her crunching up the path.“
- “First light.“
- “Goddamned freezing cold.“
- “Evening crept its way into the cabin, and she went to get the knife.“
- “I buy violets for Amy.“
- “When I found my husband at the bottom of the stairs, I tried to resuscitate him before I ever considered disposing of the body.“
- “At last! It’s the day we’ve all been waiting for, dear readers: the opening of the latest and greatest Trial of the Century, and I don’t mind telling you it’s as hot as blazes inside this undersized Connecticut courtroom.“
- “When Sara Hill’s body washed up on shore, the police concluded – logically, given the lack of injuries – that she must have accidentally fallen overboard and drowned.“
- “The night I arrived at Oxford, I learned that my dorm room was built in 1361 and had originally been used to quarantine victims of the plague.“
- “I am a girl of definitions, of logic, of black and white.“
- “It happened for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon, a warm spring day in the flatlands near Hollywood, a light breeze moving east from the ocean and stirring the black-eyed pansy petals newly planted in our flower boxes.“
- “In March 1793 Gilbert Stuart crossed the North Atlantic for the express purpose of of painting President George Washington, the supreme prize of any age for any ambitious portrait artist.“
- “Josianne’s gift is a simple square box, its sides about as long as her forearm.“
- “Walking to school over the snow-muffled cobbles, Karou had no sinister premonitions about the day.“
- “If you asked me how it began, I could truthfully say that the first time, it was an accident.“
- “If you live around New Orleans and they think a hurricane might be coming, all hell breaks loose.“
- “Suzannah Ruggieri blew into Valentine, Inc., like a category five hurricane.“
- “Although it had been over sixty years since the occupation — and more than four thousand miles separated her from Rosmarina — Nona Vinka was convinced that the reprisal would take place that afternoon.“
- “Robert’s familiar rap on the door came as I was studying a miniature portrait of myself.“
- “My entire life is a lie.“
- “How big was the hand?“
- “She didn’t know what woke her, and no matter how many times she relived that night, no matter where the nightmare chased her, she never would.“
- “Her name is Melanie.“
- “ ‘Wake up, genius.’ “
- “Later, after supper and evening prayer, and bath if it was bath night, and then the final negotiations to conclude the day (Please, Sister, can’t we stay up a little longer? Please, one more story?), when the children had fallen asleep at least and everything was very still, Amy watched them.“
- “Detective Inspector Ray Stevens stood next to the window and contemplated his office chair, on which an arm had been broken for at least a year.“
- “She did not leave the school until an hour after the last child had gone home, but for all that she was departing early.“
- “There are children playing soccer on a field at Gettysburg where the Union Army lost the first day’s fight.“
- “They finally found the body on a Sunday night, sometime between 60 Minutes and Married With Children.“
- “The bus smelled of mildew, machine oil, and sweat.“
- “Okoloma was one of my greatest childhood friends.“
- “In hindsight, I should have known right away that something wasn’t quite right.“
- “In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or a schloss.“
- “The exorcist is dead.“
- “A private plane sits on a runway in Martha’s Vineyard, forward stairs deployed.“
- “The ground yielded easily under her blade, unlocking a black smell of earth.“
- “Bailey Chen was taking care of some serious business.“
- “Pip stands behind her mother in the tiny bathroom.“
- “It begins with the Ford idling up the narrow drive, the sweet drone of honeysuckle thickening the August air.“
- “He stood in the corner shop with rainwater dribbling off his anorak, looking for the cheapest box of beers.“
- “When Gram calls, I ignore it.“
- “Vlad Dracul’s heavy brow descended like a storm when the doctor informed him that his wife had given birth to a girl.“
- “Irene passed the mop across the stone floor in smooth, careful strokes, idly admiring the gleam of wet flagstones in the lantern-light.“
- “There wasn’t much in the world Cooper McQueen cared about more than a good bourbon.“
- “Kellie Scott frowned, her fingers hesitating over her keyboard.“
- “I’m thinking of ending things.“
- “The first one on the production team to die will be the editor.“
- “At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor…twelve-foot ceilings…two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help…Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund.“
- “I didn’t set out to lose myself.“
- “I was lost, hopelessly, irretrievably lost.“
- “The house was over a hundred years old, and the solid stone walls were at least a meter thick, which meant that she probably didn’t need to insulate them, but she wanted to be be absolutely sure.“
- “They were on the road later than they intended.“
- “The first inkling that something was wrong was waking in darkness to find the cat pawing at my face.“
- “We don’t take a horse-drawn cab to his office.“
- “From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester’s Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down.“
- “The heat came with the devil.“
- “Annie is not at all happy with the way that Gus is smiling in the photo.“
- “ ‘So,’ said the young priest.“
- “Four hundred years spent sowing terror and discord across the globe, and now I was forced to use a communal shower.“
- “They are quite clear about it.“
- “I am not of this world.“
- “I sat up high, oak branch ‘tween my knees, and watched the tattooed man stride about in the snow.“
- “It was such an incredible amount, 5,700,000 kroner.“
- “A dead bolt has a very specific sound.“
- “He followed her through the woods behind the house.“
- “I love Thursday nights.“
- “I know what you’re thinking.“
- “Like most fast-talking, opinionated New Yorkers, I have an affinity for sarcasm.“
- “ ‘This is a story that begins with a barbecue,’ said Clementine.“
- “Antoinette Martin stood in the kitchen, staring at the alarm above the back door.“
- “Lifting the flowers, letting them drop.“
- “The first time Caesar approached Cora about running north, she said no.“
- “The boy was beautiful.“
- “The champagne bottle knocks against the marble kitchen counter, making me jump.“
- “William Tillman was born in Milford, Delaware, about 1834.“
- “We were driving east on Route 15 when the world first learned of the coming storms.“
- “The Ouija board was Lily’s idea.“
- “It was a pity about the poison in her wine-glass, Irene reflected.“
- “Nori keeps asking me where I’m going, what I’m doing, where Mam is.“
- “Annie Bell awoke in the blue darkness before dawn, her nightdress in a damp tangle at her knees.“
- “ ‘Do you have everything you need, Mackenzie?’ Mum asked, watching me stuff clothes in a bag.“
- “In the town of Martinsburg on the lower tip of the Valley, a seventeen-year-old rebel named Belle Boyd sat by the windows of her wood-frame home, waiting for the war to come to her.“
- “Dear Mr. M, I’d like to start by telling you that I’m doing better now.“
- “A young queen stands barefoot on a wooden block with her arms outstretched.“
- “I’ve always been good at playing a part: the mysterious seductress for the sleazebag, the doe-eyed innocent for the protector.“
- “Walter the cook killed himself in his little bedroom downstairs, just a few hours after saying good-night.“
- “I claw at the thick, inky, black veins that have spread through my arm and arch over my shoulder.“
- “Whatever Mum’s saying’s drowned out by the grimy roar of the bus pulling away, revealing a pub called The Fox and Hounds.“
- “Escape: That was what Gemma dreamed of, especially on nights like this one, when the moon was so big and bright it looked like it was a set piece in a movie, hooked outside her window on a curtain of dark night sky.” OR “On very still nights sometimes we can hear them chanting, calling for us to die.“
- “I am running.“
- “Representation is important.“
- “We were discouraged from having pets — or, for that matter, husbands or even boyfriends, and the same went for the men, none of whom were married as far as anybody knew.“
- “Beyond the sunrise, halfway to the moon, and so very far away it would make your feet weep to think about it, lies a land vast in size and deep in sadness.“
- “We were made, once.“
- “I placed my thumb and forefinger on the icy flesh, spreading it taut above the breastbone as Uncle had showed me.“
- “Ghosts didn’t have much substance.“
- “I disembarked a train at the little log depot at Gordon Bay, Oregon, and a sudden force – a charging bull – immediately slammed me to the ground.“
- “For an instant, like a single beat of wings, Annika scented the sea, heard the voices lifted in song.“
- “The first time I lay with the post boy was on a Sunday, and I broke three commandments to do it.“
- “The scythe arrived late on a cold November afternoon.“
- “The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.“
- “She fell in love with a puppet.“
- “My wife and I began searching for a house in 2008, precisely when the real estate market was crashing, just as those first waves of foreclosures and short sales were hitting the market.“
- “Everyone believed Diabolics were fearless, but in my earliest years, all I knew was fear.“
- “If all the Saturdays of 1982 can be thought of as one day, I met Tracey at ten a.m. on that Saturday, walking through the sandy gravel of a churchyard, each holding our mother’s hand.“
- “In February, when the snow comes down hard, little globes of light are left along Route 110, on the side of the road that slopes off when a driver least expects it.“
- “Arden Lindsey realized too late that she was shouting.“
- “Kelsea Glynn sat very still, watching the troop approach her homestead.“
- “Dawn came quickly on the Mort border.“
- “Like most small children, I learned my home address so that if I got lost, I could tell a grown-up where to take me.“
- “For a brief period, Kelsea had made a practice of opening her eyes whenever the wagon hit a bump.“
- “I admit, I had seen a ghost or two.“
- “When we got the letter in the post, my mother was ecstatic.“
- “The Angeles air was quiet, and for a while I lay still, listening to the sound of Maxon’s breathing.“
- “This time we were in the Great Room enduring another etiquette lesson when bricks came flying through the window.“
- “When Laura was two, the twins decided to kill her.“
- “It was May, 1968 and there was a woman on a train.“
- “Two days after a snowshoeing couple literally stumbled across Joy’s body in the woods at the edge of the pond, the police came to ask Harper questions.“
- “A man who couldn’t die had little to fear.“
- “My sister decided we had to go see her estranged husband in Reno.”
- “It started with a phone call, deceptively simple and easy to ignore.“
- “If she ever had to talk about it, which she never would, Katie would have to go back, back years before it happened.“
- “It’s not that I never think about Paul.”
- “Running away sucked.”
- “If you have your choice about how to be turned into vampire, I strongly suggest that you do not post an ad on the supernatural version of Craigslist offering cash to any creature of the night willing to bite you.”
- “Micah Henry Shughrue awoke into a darkness so thick it was like all nights folded together.”
- “Everyone in the county presumed that my mother’s body was decaying — becoming porridge — at the bottom of the Gale River.”
Comments
- I love this idea. I've randomly noted first lines but never ... by SuziQoregon
- That's why I love making this list. It forces me to stop and ... by Michelle
- Oh, there are some GREAT opening lines on this list! by Lisa
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