A Celebration of
Great Opening Lines
in World Literature

“The Story of a Poker Steer,“ in Cattle Brands: A Collection of Winter Camp-Fire Stories (1906)

“Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” in The Partisan Review (June, 1938)

This is the opening line—the brilliant opening line, I might add—to a prose poem Agee originally entered in a Partisan Review short story contest. The judges named it a runner-up in the competition, with the two entries from Delmore Schwartz and Mary King splitting the $100 First Prize. There’s a lot of history behind this famous line, which I will have more to say about at a future time. Stay tuned.

“The Clock That Struck Thirteen,” in Di Yidishe Folksbibliotek [The Jewish People’s Library] (1900)

Almost a half century before George Orwell penned a famous opening line about a clock that struck thirteen (to be seen here), the 41-year-old Aleichem began a short story in exactly the same way. There is no evidence Orwell was inspired by the earlier appearance, but he was certainly a well-read person, and there is always a possibility that he might have seen the work at some point in his life.

In The Best of Sholem Aleichem (1979) Irving Howe and Ruth Wisse described the opening words of the short story this way: “A wonderfully appropriate and homey image for the sense of collapsing order.”

“Thumbelina” (1835)

“The Little Mermaid” (1837)

“Old Love”, in A Quiver Full of Arrows (1980)

“The Luncheon”, in A Quiver Full of Arrows (1980)

Some opening lines are memorable not because they’re so beautifully written, but because they perfectly capture a common human experience. The narrator, an unnamed English author, continued: “I racked that section of my brain which is meant to store people, but it transmitted no reply. I realized I would have to resort to the old party trick of carefully worded questions until her answers jogged my memory.”

“Slow Days, Fast Company,“ the title story of Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. (1977)

“Jealousy,“ in Black Swans: Stories (1993)

This is the first sentence of an epigraph to the story. It continued: “Something we used to say about life in general, feeling sophisticated and amusing in bars, back in the days when we thought how you behaved was the fault of other people.“

The opening words of the story, written by an L. A. woman who bears a striking resenblance to the author are as follows: “The dictionary I own does not define jealousy as pain. It uses words like ’resentment, ’envy, ’mental uneasiness from suspicion,’ and the effete ’mood.’ Nowhere does it have a word that lies in the gutter weeping into that serious intensity of red-hot black days and nights of raging hell that my friend Proust and I mean by jealousy.“

“Breakfast Wine,” in There Are Little Kingdoms: Stories (2007)

In a 2023 Guardian article, Irish writer Liz Nugent included this opener in her list of “Top 10 First Lines in Fiction.” About it, she wrote:

“A whole world and three distinct characters have been created in this one sentence. Our narrator is aware of the fact that he is an alcoholic, but does Thomas know that the narrator is? Does he know that he is? Where is poor Mr Kelliher going to find a third alcoholic to keep his doors open? A small bar in a country town depending on alcoholics sounds like a sad and desperate place. What a fantastic setup for a story. I promise you that what follows does not disappoint.”

“On Angels,“ in The New Yorker (Aug. 1, 1969)

The narrator continued: “They were overtaken suddenly by a fundamental question. One can attempt to imagine the moment. How did they look at the instant the question invaded them, flooding the angelic consciousness, taking hold with terrifying force? The question was, ’What are angels?’“

And why, you might ask, this was such a terrifying question? The narrator explained in the following paragraph: “New to questioning, unaccustomed to terror, unskilled in aloneness, the angels (we assume) fell into despair.“

“An Imperfect Conflagration,” in The Wasp (March 27, 1886)

This is one of the most impressive opening sentences in all of American literature, and perhaps the very best employing the rhetorical device of understatement. In the first paragraph, the narrator continued:

“This was before my marriage, while I was living with my parents in Wisconsin. My father and I were in the library of our home, dividing the proceeds of a burglary which we had committed that night. These consisted of household goods mostly, and the task of equitable division was difficult. We got on very well with the napkins, towels and such things, and the silverware was parted pretty nearly equally, but you can see for yourself that when you try to divide a single music-box by two without a remainder you will have trouble. It was that music-box which brought disaster and disgrace upon our family. If we had left it my poor father might now be alive.”

In writing the opening words to “A” is for Alibi (1982), Sue Grafton’s debut novel featuring investigator Kinsey Millhone, Grafton may have been inspired by Bierce’s opener above. See the Grafton entry here.

“My Favorite Murder,” in the San Francisco Examiner (Sep. 16, 1888)

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,“ in The San Francisco Examiner (July 13, 1890); reprinted in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)

The narrator continued: “It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff.”

In a May 10, 2012 article in The New York Review of Books (titled “One of America’s Best”), Michael Dirda wrote: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” has been called—by Kurt Vonnegut, himself a kinder, gentler Bierce—the greatest short story in American literature. Surely, no first-time reader ever forgets the shock of its final sentences.” I won’t say anything more about the ending here, but the entire short story may be found here.

“The Aleph,“ in The Aleph and Other Stories (1949)

In a 2017 interview with Joe Fassler of The Atlantic magazine, writer Michael Chabon said about the opening line: “We learn the narrator is in love with a woman who has just died. We witness his heartbreak in the incredible first sentence, one that would definitely be in contention if I had to choose a favorite opening line.” He went on to explain his thinking this way:

’When I first read that sentence, it sounded amazing to me. I loved its language and its pacing, though I had never actually experienced the phenomenon it’s trying to capture: the sense, after somebody you love had died, of how things plod on in such a banal way. In this one sentence, Borges captures the complete indifference of the universe to the people you love. It’s definitely one that, over the years, I’ve tried to model various of my own first sentences after.“

"The Coffin," in Dark Carnival (1947)

What reader cannot be thinking, "What is this last invention?" And, if you're a sophisticated reader, you may be musing, "I think I can guess what it is."

“The Jar,“ in Weird Tales magazine (Nov. 1944); reprinted in Dark Carnival (1947)

In a 2015 blog post, writer Tyler Miller describes this opening line as “a doozey,“ and a perfect example of Bradbury’s gift for “taking the ordinary and making it truly disturbing.“ Miller writes more fully: “The accumulation of prepositional phrases takes what should otherwise be a simple everyday object and shifts it further and further into the world of the strange and unnatural: in a jar, in the tent, of a sideshow, on the outskirts. The words sideshow and outskirts in particular suggest to the reader that whatever is in that jar is definitely out of the norm. And it’s gonna seriously disturb the complacency of that little, drowsy town.“

“A Need for Gardens,” in Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970 (1971)

In his 2007 writing guide Hooked, writer and writing teacher Les Edgerton offered this and a number of other terrific opening lines “that grab the reader and pull him in with a firm yank into the story.” About this one, he wrote:

“The one word that makes this an opening that begs the reader to read further is again. They were burying the lion again. Even without this word, it would have been difficult to not read on…but when we learn that this isn’t the first time they’ve buried this lion in the back yard, why wouldn’t we want to plunge ahead and find out who they are, why they’re burying a lion, why in the back yard, and why on earth again? A single, incongruent word like this can make the difference between a ho-hum opening and an intriguing one.”

Having hooked readers in the first sentence, Brautigan’s narrator confidently reels them in as he continued:

“As usual, it was a hastily dug grave, not really large enough to hold the lion and dug with a maximum of incompetence and they were trying to stuff the lion into a sloppy little hole.

“The lion as usual took it quite stoically. Having been buried at least fifty times during the last two years, the lion had gotten used to being buried in the back yard.”

“Perhaps,” in The Green Shoe Sanctuary website (June 30, 2021)

I have a soft spot in my heart for alternate history tales, but, frankly, most of them do not have great opening lines. This short story by Brook is a delightful exception—and the story’s second paragraph is as exceptional as the first:

“Many afternoons, Alberto would play his violin in public, typically on the carless Borgo Stretto, busking for change which he would collect and donate monthly to a local animal rights group. He was particularly fond of the Ippoasi sanctuary, which he and Maria periodically visited. Maria spent many of her afternoons writing science fiction stories, which she would mail to friends around the world. It was quite a change from their Nobel Prize-winning days.”

“Knock,“ in Thrilling Wonder Stories (December 1948)

These four paragraphs serve as the introduction to a short story about university professor Walter Phelan, who believes that he and possibly one other person—a single woman—are the only survivors of a cataclysmic event two days earlier in which “the human race had been destroyed.“ The second line, which was presented in italics in the original story, has gone on to achieve an iconic status in the literary world, with many saying it amounts to one of history’s best “short-short” stories (or, as some like to call them, “One-Line Novels”).

As the story begins, the narrator suggests that the second line comes from a horror story, but Brown clearly wrote it himself, and he chose to use it in the opening lines of this short story. Without giving away anything about the plot, that second, italicized line also became the final line of the story. The underlying idea that forms the basis for the tale is not original to Brown, and he may have been inspired by the following passage in Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s Ponkapog Papers (1903): “Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!“

“The Thing in the Forest,” in The New Yorker (June 3, 2002)

GUEST COMMENTARY from Mary Dalton, a Chicago-area writer, editor, and blogger (“Art of the Tale”). “So begins (and ends) A.S. Byatt’s darkly brilliant WWII tale about Penny and Primrose, two English girls who meet on a train as they are evacuated from London to a country estate and ultimately encounter a grotesque creature known in folklore as the Loathly Worm.”

In the story’s opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “The two little girls were evacuees, who had been sent away from the city by train, with a large number of other children. They all had their names attached to their coats with safety pins, and carried little bags or satchels, and the regulation gas mask. . .they were like a disorderly dwarf regiment, stomping along the platform.”

About the opening words, Dalton writes: “I love how the author juxtaposes benign details like safety pins and bags with things like gas masks. There’s a lot of black humor in this story, along with traditional fairy tale elements, such as children facing danger alone. But she also poses a serious question: ‘What can better help us make sense of terror: modern psychology or storytelling?’”

About the author, Dalton concluded: “Byatt often explores the intersection of history and narrative in her work, and ‘The Thing in the Forest’ underscores the impact of both. Her choice to end the tale with her opening line brings to mind the words of Isak Dinesen: ‘I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story, or tell a story about them.’ ‘The Thing in the Forest’ seems to suggest that our ability to cope—or even survive—may depend on which path we choose.”

“Pitch Memory,” in Emperor of the Air: Stories (1989)

To my mind, this is a superb opening paragraph: economical (at 40 words), but long enough to provide grounding and texture, and with a lovely little twist at the end.

“Red Wind,“ in Dime Detective magazine (Jan. 1, 1938)

These opening words represent the first appearance of LA private investigator Philip Marlowe, and what a first impression he makes. In the short story, Marlowe continued: “On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.“ The short story went on to make a second appearance in Chandler’s 1950 anthology, The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

Regarding this opening, mystery writer Erin Hart (Haunted Ground and other Nora Gavin/Cormac Maguire novels) wrote in 2013: “And of course, no one can out-do Raymond Chandler for striking just the right hard-boiled tone for his time and place.“

“The Swimmer,“ in The New Yorker (July 18, 1964)

“A Vision of the World,“ in The Stories of John Cheever (1978)

In response to a 2013 query from the The Atlantic’s Joe Fassler, the American writer Ethan Canin offered this as a “favorite first line,“ saying about it: “When I was in college, this particular opening did something powerful to me. I remember reading it aloud to a friend, marveling at the ennui of the first sentence and the dark draw of the second. It comes fairly late in Cheever’s opus, and I think he was growing grim by then. I can see those rings.“ The Stories of John Cheever— in which this story appeared— went on to win the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

“The Story of an Hour,“ in Vogue magazine (Dec. 6, 1894)

When Chopin’s story—arguably her most popular—first appeared, it was titled “The Dream of an Hour.“ It was retitled when republished a year later, and is now remembered by the revised title. When it was first published, the story was considered quite shocking for its portrayal of Louise Mallard’s feeling of liberated happiness when she begins to think of a future without her husband in it.

“The Red-Headed League,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

“A Case of Identity,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

“The Five Orange Pips,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

“The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

“The Man With the Twisted Lip,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

The title of De Quincey’s book, of course, is Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, a classic 1821 memoir about the author’s addiction to laudanum.

In the “Twisted Lip” story, Dr. Watson’s narration continued: “He had drenched his tobacco with laudanum in an attempt to produce the same effects. He found, as so many more have done, that the practice is easier to attain than to get rid of.“

“The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

“A Scandal in Bohemia,“ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)

Irene Adler is the closest thing to a love interest Sherlock Holmes ever found, and Dr. Watson’s opening words provide a glimpse into the psychology of the great detective, especially his extremely limited emotional range.

Watson continued: “He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results.“

Reading this description, one cannot help but think that Holmes was autistic. In fact, if he were a real person in today’s world, he would almost certainly be placed on the spectrum, quite likely with a diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome. In 2009, Dr. Lisa Sanders confirmed this in her regular “Diagnosis” column in The New York Times, writing about Holmes:

“He demonstrates what Asperger called “autistic intelligence”—an ability to see the world from a very different perspective than most people, often by focusing on details overlooked by others. Indeed Sherlock Holmes boasts that he is able to see the significance of trifles and calls this his ‘method’.”

“The Foreign Legation,” in Vanity Fair (April, 1984); reprinted in Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella (1984)

After the first paragraph, we already have an extensive backstory. After the second, we see how a sad story has moved in a pathetic direction. After both, we’re left with an unsettling feeling about where the story may be going from here.

“Scales” (1980), in The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 (2009)

This is not simply a great opening line, it is one of the best things ever said on the topic (one day, I’m hoping to do a book titled The Single Best Thing Ever Said on Just About Any Topic You Can Think Of, and this is my Number One choice for observations about jellybeans).

“Abyss,” in A Multitude of Sins (2002)

The narrator continued in the story’s second sentence: “Then each went to the restroom and made a private, lying cell phone call to account for their whereabouts during the next few hours.”

“Under the Radar,” in A Multitude of Sins (2002)

“Privacy,” in A Multitude of Sins (2002)

The narrator, an unnamed writer—or, perhaps, a former writer—continued in the short story’s second paragraph: “We were living in a large city in the northeast. It was winter. February. The coldest month. I was, of course, still trying to write, and my wife was working as a translator for a small publishing company that specialized in Czech scientific papers. We had been married for ten years and were still enjoying that strange, exhilarating illusion that we had survived the worst of life’s hardships.”

“Who Killed Bob Teal?” in True Detective magazine (November 1924)

This was one of Hammett’s first short stories, and it is the first mention of a fictional detective agency that would go on to play such an important role in his later works. The narrator is an unnamed operative who works at the agency (in later stories by Hammett he went on to become well known simply as The Continental Op).

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” in Overland Monthly (January 1869)

The narrator continued: “Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was another question. ‘I reckon they’re after somebody,’ he reflected; ‘likely it’s me.’”

The short story, which helped establish Harte’s reputation as a serious writer, went on to become one of his most popular tales, aided by four stage versions—all operas!—and five screen adaptations.

“M’liss,” in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches (1870)

This is a beautiful description—easily brought to life in our imagination when we close our eyes—and a perfect way to begin any story. The title, by the way, is the nickname of Melissa Smith, the daughter of the man for whom the tiny town is named.

“The Idyll of Red Gulch,” in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches (1870)

The narrator continued: “How long he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn’t care; how long he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered. A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and saturated his moral being.”

“After the Storm,” in Winner Take Nothing (1933)

In a 2017 blog post, British writer Paul Gadsby wrote: “Hemingway often liked to repeat the word ‘and’ in close succession rather than employ a comma. The effect this had was to convey immediacy and to portray a series of startling images at pace, which is particularly the case in this starkly visual opening line. The almost childlike vigor of this sentence leaves us little room to breathe, heightening the drama and the curiosity.”

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” in Cosmopolitan magazine (September 1936)

In The Art & Craft of the Short Story (2016), Rick DeMarinis wrote: “It’s a simple sentence, but look what it does. It drops the reader into a world that requires dining tents with double green flies. It tells the reader that among the several people sitting down to lunch, something has happened, something so unmentionable that the diners are pretending the thing has not happened at all. That’s an awful lot for twenty-four simple words to accomplish.”

“The Afterlife,” in The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (2006)

These fascinating opening words describe a social reality I’ve since confirmed as true, but had never really thought about before reading Hempel’s wonderful short story. The narrator is the unnamed daughter of the widower in question, and, while her age is not mentioned, she comes across as someone in her late teens.

Inspired by Hempel’s own experiences after the death of her mother, the story captured the many different—and often hilarious—strategies that single women employed to win her father’s affection. In the end, they all failed, and there was only one conclusion for the daughter to reach: “My father’s life had ended with my mother’s death, and…what he inhabited now was a kind of afterlife—not dead, but not alive to possibility, to what else one might still choose.”

“Syringe,” in The Remembered Arts Journal (June 28, 2016)

In five simple words, the goal of all great opening lines is achieved—the reader feels compelled to read on to see where the story is going. In the second paragraph, the narrator continued:

“There were many times when she thought she’d lost him, but he would rally, surprising her and the other family members who, at the urging of his doctor, had joined her at bedside to say goodbye. Freda’s emotions were whipsawed by these false alarms to the point where her heart became numb, and the man in the hospital bed, the man she’d met and married thirty-two years before, appeared as if a stranger.”

When I learned that the author was alive today because of a lung transplant in 2015, I believed his short story might have autobiographical elements. Henry confirmed my suspicions with this reply to my query:

“The story is a small mystery that centers around a batch of composition notebooks that Freda’s late husband used to communicate when on a hospital ventilator or tracheal tube. It was based loosely on my own experience—five months in hospital post-transplant. I still have the seven notebooks I filled during the weeks I couldn’t speak.”

“Springtime à la Carte,” in The Four Million (1906)

I believe this was the only thing Henry ever wrote on the subject of opening lines, and he does it in characteristic fashion—making an emphatic assertion and then immediately walking it back. The narrator continued:

“For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation.

“Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.

“Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!

“To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn ice–cream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinee. And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed.”

“The Cop and the Anthem” (1904), in The Four Million (1906)

So begins the story of one of Henry’s most unforgettable characters, a Manhattan vagrant who does everything he can to get himself arrested in order to find a warm place to stay in the upcoming winter.

In the story’s second paragraph, the narrator continued: “A dead leaf fell in Soapy’s lap. That was Jack Frost’s card. Jack is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.”

The character of Soapy was magnificently brought to the Big Screen by English actor Charles Laughton in O. Henry’s Full House, a 1952 film anthology of five of the author’s most memorable short stories (each story was introduced by John Steinbeck, and this one included a terrific bit part by the young Marilyn Monroe).

“The Gift of the Magi” (1905), in The Four Million (1906)

When the story was first published in The New York Sunday World on Dec. 10, 1905, it was titled “Gifts of the Magi.” The title was changed, but nothing else, when it was reprinted a year later in The Four Million anthology.

In the second paragraph, the narrator continued by describing Della’s emotional state, and he concluded with an observation that went on to become one of O. Henry’s most famous quotations (I’ve placed the key portion in italics to make it more obvious): “There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”

Of the hundreds of short stories Henry penned in his career, this sentimental Christmastime tale became his most popular. It’s been adapted to film four separate times, the first in 1917, and the best—starring Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger—in O. Henry’s Full House, a 1952 film anthology of five of the author’s most memorable short stories.

Parenthetically, many naysayers have asserted that, once the pennies were taken away, it would have been impossible for Della to get to $1.27 with the remaining coins. Ignore them, for they haven’t done their homework. in 1905, two-cent and three-cent coins were still in circulation, and that would have certainly done the trick.

“Babes in the Jungle,” in Strictly Business (1910)

“The Gold that Glittered,” in Strictly Business (1910)

“The Ransom of Red Chief,” in The Saturday Evening Post (July 6, 1907); reprinted in Whirligigs (1910)

This opening line not only establishes the “voice” of the narrator, but it perfectly telegraphs the nature of the story about to unfold—two small-time criminals named Sam and Bill see their brilliant kidnapping scheme backfire in an ironic and comical way.

The story also captures the essence of a common human experience: our worst failures often originate in cockamamie schemes we originally considered quite clever. Many years later, in a 1977 interview, Rebecca West was thinking along similar lines when she famously said: “If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be, ‘It seemed a good idea at the time.’”

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Stay Awake By (1973)

“Guns, Not Shovels,” in the Chicago Defender (Feb. 13, 1943)

These words mark the first appearance of Hughes’s most popular fictional character, a Harlem resident formally named Jesse B. Semple, but known to all of his friends as “Simple.”

“Conversation on the Corner,” in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950)

It’s rare for a literary opening line to herald a major cultural shift within an entire segment of the American population, but Hughes was able to do that very nicely in this 1950 short story.

“Blue Evening,” in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950)

The words come from Simple’s friend and foil, Ananias Boyd, who encounters his pal in a neighborhood bar. The following dialogue unfolds:

“Another hang-over?” “Nothing that simple. This is something I thought never would happen to me.” “What?” I asked “That a woman could put me down….”

“A Toast to Harlem,” in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950)

I have a soft spot for oxymoronic openings, and this one is a beauty.

“An Auto-Obituary,” in Simple Stakes a Claim (1957)

Simple had a clever way with words, and I’m a little surprised that this creative coinage didn’t catch on in the broader culture.

“Sympathy,” in Simple’s Uncle Sam (1965)

A deeply profound thought from an ostensibly simple man.

“Cousin Minnie Wins,” in Simple’s Uncle Sam (1965)

“Rip Van Winkle,” in The Sketch Book (1819-20)

The range is now known as the Catskill Mountains, of course, but Irving was writing at a time when the original Dutch spelling of place names predominated. By modern standards, this might not be regarded as a great opening line, but I have always admired it, and I especially enjoyed the lovely metaphor of a mountain range lording it over the surrounding countryside.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” in The Sketch Book (1819-20)

The opening words of novels and short stories can be appreciated in many different ways—some of them highly unexpected. In this case, the narrator continued with a delicious tidbit about how Tarrytown, New York got its name:

“The name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days.”

“A Village After Dark,” in The New Yorker (May 14, 2001)

The narrator, clearly an older man who is beginning to sense a loss of capability, continued: “So it was that on arriving at the village just after dark I failed to find my bearings at all. I could hardly believe I was in the same village in which not so long ago I had lived and come to exercise such influence.”

“Mr. Right is Dead,“ title story of Mr. Right is Dead (1965)

The opening lines of many works of fiction read as if they were passages from a textbook of psychology--and that is the case here. In Jaffe’s short story, the narrator continued: “I guess that’s because it’s the one weakness we all secretly feel should be the easiest to overcome, and we secretly feel guilty that we can’t.“

“Louisa Pallant,” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (February 1888)

This is one of James’s very best opening lines, and one of his least well-known. In an observation that brilliantly captures an eternal truth about the human experience, the line opens a story about how the beautiful Louisa has rejected the unnamed narrator for a richer man. The marriage turns out to be a disaster, however, and after her husband’s death, Louisa has been left with only a pittance. She goes on to raise a child who is also quite beautiful, and who embodies many of her own flaws, only more so (if the story sounds familiar, it contains hints of Dicken’s 1860 classic, Great Expectations).

The unnamed narrator continued: “I was once treated to a revelation which startled and touched me in the nature of a person with whom I had been acquainted—well, as I supposed, for years, whose character I had had good reasons, heaven knows, to appreciate and in regard to whom I flattered myself I had nothing more to learn.”

“Four Meetings” (1877); reprinted in Clifton Fadiman, The Short Stories of Henry James (1945)

The unnamed narrator—an educated, well-travelled, cultured, and slightly verbose American who clearly appears patterned after James himself—is describing Caroline Spencer, a New England beauty who is enthralled by the idea of her upcoming trip to Europe (the story takes a dramatic turn when she is swindled out of her money by her own cousin). Many consider “Four Meetings” to be one of James’s best short stories, and Ford Madox Ford even hailed it as “a masterpiece.”

“A Report to An Academy,” in A Country Doctor (1919)

The narrator of Kafka’s short story—originally published in a 1917 issue of the German monthly Der Jude—is a West African ape. Five years earlier, he was shot and captured by a hunting expedition, given the name Red Peter by his captors (after a red facial scar from the gunshot wound), and shipped in a cage to Europe. In transit, he studied the behavior of the crew and, beginning with the human handshake ritual, found it surprisingly easy to imitate them. Arriving in Europe, he worked even harder at his imitative efforts in an effort to avoid a lifetime of future confinement in a zoo. After acquiring the rudiments of human language, he’s able to make a living as a music-hall performer named Peter.

“Buddy the Leper,” in The Book of Guys (1993)

All it takes to turn an ordinary first sentence into a spectacular one is the addition of a totally unexpected word at the end—like leper.

“The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus,” in The Book of Guys (1993)

From the very first words, we realize this will be no ordinary examination of the famous Greek god of wine and revelry, and the remainder of the opener only confirms that impression. Keillor continued by writing:

“He was dipping his finger into a very fine 1925 B.C. Pinot Noir and swabbing it onto her lips, saying that he had laid in six gallons of extra-virgin cold-pressed olive oil—“You think that’s too much or not enough?” he asked—“All depends,” she said, licking the wine off her lower lip with her rough pink tongue.”

“The Business,” in Peaceable Kingdom (2003)

In her 1999 Word Painting book, writer and writing instructor Rebecca McClanahan wrote: “Description is, in effect, word painting.“ Her observation came immediately to mind when I first read this description of an approaching cockroach. In the short story, the narrator continued: “Billy didn’t like him. Howard knew that. He couldn’t have cared less. He got service because he left a decent tip. Billy handed him the cocktail napkin. Howard squished the bug. If you had a potato chip stuffed with onion dip, that was what it felt like.”

Peter Straub once said that people often came to Ketchum’s writings for the wrong reasons and stayed with him for the right ones—and one of those reasons might well be sensational openings like this one.

“Flowers for Algernon,” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (April 1959)

Charlie is a man with an IQ of 68, and these are the opening words from his very first “Progris riport.” A few weeks earlier, he was recruited to be the first human subject in an experimental surgical procedure designed to increase intelligence (an earlier procedure on a mouse named Algernon paved the way).

Keyes’ short story was widely praised, winning the 1960 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. A few years later, he expanded it into a critically acclaimed novel (it shared the 1968 Nebula Award for Best Novel). The tale went on to become a part of popular culture when it was adapted into the 1968 film Charlie, starring Cliff Robertson.

Night Shift (1978)

These are the opening words of the Foreword to Night Shift, King’s first collection of short stories. A little more than two decades later, writer Peter Straub wrote about this beginning: “With its deliberate repetition of the first two words, its gliding but insistent rhythm, and its movement from the colloquial contraction of ‘let’s’ to the abrupt shock of the final noun, this flourish is literary to the core.“ They do not come across as literary, though, says Straub, “because they represent that friendliest of all communications, the invitation.“

In the second paragraph, King, ever the skillful host, escorts the reader into his house: “The house is empty as I write this; a cold February rain is falling outside. It’s night. Sometimes when the wind blows this way, we lose the power. But for now it’s on, and so lets talk very honestly about fear. Let’s talk very rationally about moving to the rim of madness...and perhaps over the edge.“ [ellipsis in original]

“The Body,” in Different Seasons (1982)

This is one of my Top Ten Favorite Opening Lines, a short, simple, and boldly straightforward declaration that perfectly captures an eternal truth about the human experience. I’ve personally experienced the phenomenon a number of times in my personal life, and I’m sure you have as well. The opening sentence also helps to explain one of the reasons we love writers so much: they help us express deep and powerful feelings that we’d have trouble articulating on our own.

In the opening paragraph, the narrator, a Maine writer named Gordon “Gordie” LaChance, continued: “They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away.“

Fittingly, in 1982, Rob Reiner adapted the novella into one of my all-time favorite films, “Stand by Me.“ With Richard Dreyfuss providing the narration, King’s wonderful coming-of-age tale was brought to life by the young actors Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell.

In a 2017 essay, Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner and other novels) described the opening words of “The Body” as deeply meaningful when he first read them at age twenty—an age when he said it was common for people to believe the world doesn’t get them. “This passage,” he wrote, was “an expression of how alone we are, really, the things that are most important to us, that are really vital to us, are perversely the most difficult to express.”

Years later, when Hosseini was a developing writer rather than a developing person, the words took on an added significance, something he could not appreciate at that earlier stage of life. He wrote: “This passage is one of the truest statements I’ve encountered about the nature of authorship. You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your head, and onto the page or the computer screen—it becomes distorted, and it’s been diminished. The writing you end up with is an approximation, if you’re lucky, of whatever it was you really wanted to say.”

“Ayana,” in The Paris Review (Fall 2007); later reprinted in Just After Sunset (2008)

This is a lovely beginning to a story about a man who makes a miraculous recovery from pancreatic cancer after being kissed by a blind, 7-year-old girl named Ayana.

“The Finest Story in The World” (1893)

Typically, aspirations are lauded in an almost uncritical manner, and this was the first time I’d seen a suggestion that the virtue can also have an important downside. In the opening paragraph, the unnamed narrator—a published author of some renown, and a kind of mentor to Charlie—continued:

“I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his given name, and he called the marker ‘Bulls-eyes.’ Charley explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother.”

As it turns out, Charlie’s aspirations were of a literary nature, and therefore one of the most difficult of all aspirations to bring to a satisfactory fruition. The plot of Kipling’s classic short story revolves around Charlie’s belief that he has stumbled upon an idea that, as he put it to his mentor, “would make the most splendid story that was ever written.”

“Redeployment,“ title story of Redeployment (2014)

Tucker Max, writer and co-founder of Scribe Media, wrote about these first words: “This is the best opening to a book I’ve ever read. I’m actually a dog person, so this shocked the hell out of me. It was gripping. As you read, the sentence starts making more sense, but it stays just as shocking. And you can’t help but finish the page and the chapter to understand why. But my God, what a way to hook a reader.“

By the end of the first page, readers understand the rationale for the shootings: during the Iraq war, stray dogs were licking up blood from dead bodies, thereby giving away the position of American troops to enemy snipers. Klay’s collection of twelve short stories-—his first published book—was immediately hailed by critics, and few were surprised when it went on to win the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction.

“The Gift of Cochise,“ in Collier’s magazine (July 5, 1952)

The narrator continued: “Facing the cabin were twelve Apaches on ragged calico ponies, and one of the Indians had lifted his hand palm outward. The Apache sitting on the white-splashed bay pony was Cochise.“

“Until Gwen,” in The Atlantic (June 2004)

In a 2005 Boston Globe article, Bella English revealed that Lehane “had this opening sentence kicking around in his head for eight years, but no place to put it.” She continued: “He couldn’t for the life of him find the right vehicle for it; it just didn’t fit into anything he was working on. Then he was asked to write a short story for an anthology, with one requirement: It had to have something to do with fathers and sons.”

In a 2014 article in the Hunger Mountain Review (“7 Ways to Seduce Your Reader”), writer and editor Miciah Bay Gault hailed this as an “all-time favorite” and cleverly described it as “a speed-date of a first line.” She added: “In one sentence we learn about the narrator’s crappy childhood, crappy present life, criminal background, and criminal father. We get a sense of the characters’ relative ages and a bit of the setting. In this line we understand that daddy is perfectly willing to put his son in jeopardy. Because the narrator has chosen to let us in on that fact, we sympathize with a potentially unsympathetic protagonist and we believe he wants to go straight. Wow. That’s a lot to pack into one line, a powerful first sentence that seduced me into reading more.”

After his spectacular opening sentence, Lehane continued in an equally enjoyable way:

“Two minutes into the ride, the prison still hanging tilted in the rearview, Mandy tells you that she only hooks part-time. The rest of the time she does light secretarial for an independent video chain and tends bar, two Sundays a month, at the local VFW. But she feels her calling—her true calling in life—is to write.

“You go, ‘Books?’

“’Books.’ She snorts, half out of amusement, half to shoot a line off your fist and up her left nostril. ‘Screenplays!’ She shouts it at the dome light for some reason. ‘You know—movies.’”

“Sweet Smell of Success” (1950), title story of Sweet Smell of Success: And Other Stories (1957)

The narrator, a sleazy Manhattan press agent named Sidney Falco, continued in the first paragraph: “I sat there at my desk with the phone propped between my head and shoulder and allowed the insistent monotone of her voice to jab at my brain, while I mopped my forehead with my left hand and tapped a cigarette with my right.”

Lehman’s story originally appeared under the title “Tell Me About It Tomorrow” in an April, 1950 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine (the publication’s editors insisted on a title change because they didn’t want the word “smell” to appear in the pages of the magazine).

Lehman’s novelette was adapted into a first-rate 1957 film starring Tony Curtis as Falco and Burt Lancaster as the powerful and unprincipled newspaper columnist J. J. Hunseker (Lehman co-wrote the screenplay with Clifford Odets). The film got off to a disappointing start, in large part because Tony Curtis fans had trouble accepting him in a role that clashed with his “nice-guy” image. By the end of the year, however, the film was on numerous “Ten-Best” lists, and is now regarded as a film noir classic.

“The Tonto Woman” (1982); reprinted in The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories (1998)

Vega continued in the opening paragraph: “Since then I have fornicated with many women, maybe eight hundred. No, not that many, considering my work. Maybe six hundred only.” And the priest would say, “Do you mean bad women or good women?” And Ruben Vega would say, “They are all good, Father.”

“The Restraints,” in James Thomas, et. al., Flash Fiction: Very Short Stories (1992)

In his 2007 writing guide Hooked, writer and writing teacher Les Edgerton offered this and a number of other exemplary opening lines “that grab the reader and pull him in with a firm yank into the story.” About this one in particular, he wrote:

“Wow. Who wouldn’t want to read further to learn more about such a character and to find out what her relationship with her father was? Her hunger wasn’t important to him; her dancing was. I’d like to know about a character like this. Wouldn’t you?”

“The Call of Cthulhu,” in Weird Tales magazine (February 1928)

This classic opening line come from narrator Francis Wayland Thurston, an anthropologist who is reflecting on a series of recently-discovered notes from his long-deceased uncle, a professor of Semitic languages at Brown University. He continues with this typical example of Lovecraftian prose:

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

In 2014 blog post on “The Top Ten Opening Lines from H. P. Lovecraft,” writer Douglas Wynne wrote: “H. P. Lovecraft knew how to write a hook. Say what you will about his adjective addiction or his lapses into florid prose; one place where he knew how to get to the point was in an opening line. He may have meandered a bit after getting your attention (and I’d argue that’s part of his charm), but in his pulp fiction heart Lovecraft understood the importance of grabbing you right away to earn your patience, and his stories consistently showcase his mastery of the intriguing opening.”

And about this classic opener—one of Lovecraft most widely quoted observations—Wynne wrote: “This one’s a classic. A concise philosophical statement that makes you wonder why connecting the dots and reaching certain conclusions would be so bad that your ignorance is the ultimate mercy.”

“A River Runs Through It,” in A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976)

A River Runs Through it and Other Stories was a debut work by Norman Maclean, a seventy-three-year-old retired University of Chicago English professor (it was also the first work of fiction published by the University of Chicago Press).

The title story is an autobiographical novella that has become one of America’s most revered works of fiction (in 1992, Robert Redford brought the story to the screen in an award-winning movie). In a 2017 Foreword to a new edition of the book, Redford said he first read “A River Runs Through It” in 1981, after the writer Tom McGuane recommended it as “the real thing.“ Admitting that he typically distrusts such enthusiastic recommendations, Redford wrote: “But when I read the first sentence...I thought I might be in for something.“

In “In the Beginning: Creating Dynamic, Meaningful & Compelling Openings,” an October 2012 article in The Writer’s Chronicle, University of New Orleans professor Richard Goodman wrote that MacLean’s first sentence was “one of the most charming, engaging, irresistible beginnings I know.“ About the opening sentence, he added: “If you can resist that, then you have enormous willpower or a pathological hatred of fishing. Even then, I would venture that your curiosity is piqued enough to make you read on. You probably have to know just why and how there was no distinction between religion and fly fishing. Maclean shows you in this affecting story of two brothers, sons of a Presbyterian minister, who taught the brothers how to fish, but who couldn’t prevent one from his tragic end.“

In the novel’s opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fisherman, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fisherman on the Sea of Galilee were fly fisherman and that John, the favorite was a dry-fly fisherman.”

“An Old Man Who Liked to Fish,” in Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories (2018)

The narrator continued: “Since I live with reckless inattention to what I eat, I watched with fascination as they set out apples, cheese, red wine and the kind of artisanal bread that looks like something found in the road. The Smiths were the last friends of my parents still alive. And to the degree we spend our lives trying to understand our parents, I always looked to Edward and Diana’s visits as a pleasant forensic exercise.”

In a New York Times review, Justin Taylor wrote: “There’s so much to praise and parse here that I hardly know where to begin. How about the way that the light visual comedy of the bread is juxtaposed with the cerebral, astringent humor of the phrase “pleasant forensic exercise”? How about the shift, over four sinuous sentences, from detachment to intimacy, as the narrator reveals his relationship to the Smiths?”

“Balloons,” in The New Yorker (May 10, 2021)

Opening paragraphs don’t get much better, and the concluding portion about a yearly inspection of the marriage is one of the best things ever written on the subject. McGuane was eighty-one when the short story was published, and I was delighted to see an old master still functioning at the top of his game.

The narrator, we shortly discover, is a local physician who is having an affair with Joan. He continued: “Roger always saluted his father-in-law’s departure with the words ‘Good riddance.’ In those days, Joan stirred up our town with her air of dangerous glamour and the sense that her marriage to Roger couldn’t possibly last.”

“How to Become a Writer,” in Self-Help (1985)

These are the unforgettable opening words of a short story, but they read like a self-help essay for aspiring writers. The narrator continued: “It is best if you fail at an early age—say fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire.”

This short story helped establish Moore’s reputation as a serious writer, and it led biographer Alison Kelly to write in Understanding Lorrie Moore (2009): “The tone of droll irony has since become Moore’s trademark: the more painful the experience, the likelier she is to make it the subject of a joke.”

“Introduction” to Richard Harding Davis’s “The Red Cross Girl” (1912), in The Novels and Stories of Richard Harding Davis, Vol. 11 (1916)

One of the most delightful surprises in my research into great opening lines was discovering remarkable specimens in the most unexpected places. This spectacular tribute came at the beginning of the “Introduction” to Richard Harding Davis’s 1912 short story “The Red Cross Girl.” The writer was Davis’s good friend and fellow pulp fiction writer Gouverneur Morris IV (1876-1953), the great-great-grandson of one of America’s Founding Fathers. In the opening words, the tribute continued at an exceptionally high level:

“Some people think that a man of fifty-two is middle-aged. But if R. H. D. had lived to be a hundred, he would never have grown old. It is not generally known that the name of his other brother was Peter Pan.”

Richard Harding Davis has been almost entirely forgotten by modern readers, but he was a major American celebrity in the early 1900s. A pioneering war correspondent and bestselling writer of adventure stories, he was also Theodore Roosevelt’s good friend. There is no question that Davis’s writing about the exploits of Roosevelt and his Rough Riders was instrumental in creating the legend that continues to surround the 26th President. A handsome, dashing figure, Davis also served as the model for Charles Dana Gibson’s “Gibson Man,” created to match his famous “Gibson Girl.” Davis died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 51 in 1916.

“The Office,” in Dance of the Happy Shades (1968)

Unusual juxtapositions are a staple of great opening lines, and this is a particularly good one—immediately bringing to mind such historic flashes of illumination as Newton daydreaming under an apple tree. The narrator, an unnamed woman with literary aspirations, continued: “It was simple but audacious. I went into the living room where my husband was watching television and I said, ’I think I ought to have an office.’”

From the outset, I expected “The Office” to be an exploration of Virginia Woolf’s famous observation about female writers needing “A room of one’s own,” but it turns out to be more of a “Be-careful-what-you-wish-for” tale.

In “On Writing ‘The Office,’” a 1978 essay, Munro described this short story as “the most straightforward autobiographical story I have ever written.” While living in Vancouver, British Columbia early in her career, she rented an office above a drugstore, hoping it would provide the space she needed to write a major novel. It turned out to be a failed experiment, though, with Munro confessing: “I spent hours staring at the walls and the Venetian blinds, drinking cups of instant coffee with canned milk, believing that if I concentrated enough I could pull out of myself a novel that would be a full-blown miracle.”

Her frustrating time in that second-story writing space did produce one thing, though, and it was “The Office.” About the entire experience, Munro wrote wryly: “I stayed in the office four months and never wrote another word, but I did get my first ulcer.”

“The Things They Carried,” the title story of The Things They Carried (1990)

In the first story in this collection of Vietnam-era short stories, the narrator continued: “They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s March, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.”

The book won 1990 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is now regarded as a classic in war literature.

“The Geranium,” in Accent: A Quarterly of New Literature (Summer 1946); reprinted in The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories (1947)

In a 2020 WritingCooperative.com article (titled “11 Proven Ways of Inviting Readers In”), writer Jim Latham wrote: “O’Connor engages our interest by making us wonder just how long Old Dudley has been sitting in his chair if he is molding the wood to the shape of his body. It must have been a long time, indeed, if waiting to see a potted plant is the focal point of his day. Wondering this, we are not only curious about Old Dudley, but we also begin to feel sympathy for him. O’Connor also gives us the interesting image of looking out one window and into another. What happened to blacken the brick around the second window?”

“Revelation,” in The Sewanee Review (Spring 1964); reprinted in Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965)

When I first read this opening sentence, I was struck by the idea that a woman could be so large she could make a small room seem even smaller. It was a neat hook, and I was eager to read on.

In “A Catholic Thinker” blog post in 2013 (“The Mean Grace of Flannery O’Conner”), physician Tod Worner offered what I regard as one of the best assessments ever made about the author: “Flannery O’Connor’s writing could be downright vicious and raw. Her characters are often crude, unkempt, and ill-educated. Bereft of redeeming qualities and brimming with flaws, it is easy to be repelled by them and the path their lives are taking. And yet, with writing that is so vivid, so animated, so…real, it is difficult to release yourself from its grip.”

“Song Without Words,” in Argosy magazine (Dec., 1951); reprinted in Collected Stories (1982)

As a psychologist, I have a special fondness for opening words that express a fundamental truth about the human experience, and this is one of the very best. O’Connor’s name is not familiar to many modern readers, but he was one of the most popular short story writers of his era. From 2005 to 2015, The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award was given in his honor.

“Edna St. Vincent Millay Meets Tarzan,” in A Dream of Countries Where No One Dare Live (1993)

“Roma,” in A Dream of Countries Where No One Dare Live (1993)

“Easter Sunday,” in A Dream of Countries Where No One Dare Live (1993)

The narrator, a boy named Peter, continued: “I had taken to dreaming about him, but the dreams were always about him, never with him if you know what I mean.”

“Brokeback Mountain,” in Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999); based on a slightly shorter version in The New Yorker (October 13, 1997)

To qualify as a great opener, the words don’t have to be short, punchy, and succinct, they must simply be well written—and that is what we see in this description of a man who appears to be a working cowboy. In the opening paragraph, Proulx continues to draw readers into the story by suggesting that this cowboy won’t be working much longer.

“The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer and under its roaring passage he can hear the scratching of fine gravel and sand. It could be bad on the highway with the horse trailer. He has to be packed and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch is on the market and they’ve shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, “Give em to the real estate shark, I’m outa here.” Dropping the keys in Ennis’s hand.”

All in all, it’s an exceptionally well written—if somewhat somber—scene. And then, Proulx concludes the 212-word paragraph with an unexpected, and completely stunning, final sentence:

“He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist had been in his dream.”

The original short story went on to win the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1998. A slightly expanded version of the story was published in Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999), which went on to become a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 2005, the story was adapted into a popular film by the same title, starring Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist.

“Tits-Up in a Ditch,” in The New Yorker (June 2, 2008)

In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “People said that Shaina Lister, with aquamarine eyes and curls the shining maroon of water-birch bark, had won all the kiddie beauty contests and then had become the high-school slut, knocked up when she was fifteen and cutting out the day after Dakotah was born, slinking and wincing, still in her hospital johnny, down the back stairs of Mercy Maternity to the street, where one of her greasy pals picked her up and headed west for Los Angeles.”

In the hands of a lesser writer, we might have seen an opening paragraph that went something like this: “The day after she was born, Dakotah Lister was abandoned, left all alone in the hospital as her fifteen-year-old mother drove away with her boyfriend.” But Proulx, as her many fans will tell you, is no average writer. And, in case you’re wondering, the intriguing title of the short story is a colloquial expression commonly used by farmers in the Great Plains and American west to refer to a dead cow found in a field or ditch.

“I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read,” in The Freeman (December 1958)

Readers are accustomed to seeing great opening lines from non-humans, especially animals, but this is one of the few literary openers they’ll ever see from an inanimate object. The pencil continued:

“You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, ‘We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.’”

“The Big Nap,” in The New Yorker (July 6, 2021); and ultimately in the anthology New Teeth: Stories (2021)

In a New York Times review, Sarah Lyall wrote about this opening paragraph: “Alert readers will recognize the cadence, vocabulary and world-weary tone of Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep. But this detective is even more clueless than Philip Marlowe: He’s a toddler looking for a lost stuffed unicorn who can’t even figure out how the client, his own baby sister, got into the house.”

By the time we finish the story’s second paragraph, it’s abundantly clear that we’re in for an entertaining ride—or should I say entertaining read. The detective continued: “Her past was murky. The detective had heard that she came from the hospital. But there was also a rumor she’d once lived inside Mommy’s tummy. It didn’t add up. Still, a job was a job. ‘So, what brings you here?’ asked the detective”

In her review, Lyall continued about the story: “A triumph of sustained humor that works equally well as a parody of hard-boiled noir detective fiction and as a moving account of siblings banding together against a world that makes no sense, “The Big Nap” is the best thing in an uneven but mostly delightful book by the extravagantly talented Rich. Really, I wish I could just keep quoting from it.”

“A Piece of Pie” (1937); reprinted in Runyon on Broadway (1950)

GUEST COMMENTARY from Herman Axelrod, Ph.D., a retired Philadelphia public school teacher and former Penn State professor. Dr. Axelrod writes: “These opening words from one of my favorite Damon Runyon stories are, if you’ll pardon the expression, simply too delicious not to be included in your fine collection. The story is set in New York City’s Mindy’s restaurant, where a man and a woman in an eating contest attempt to finish off a twelve-course meal—a meal, by the way, that ends with a pumpkin pie that is three inches deep and two feet in diameter. Like so many Runyon tales, the story is filled with one-of-a-kind vernacular phrases (like ’as anybody ever slaps a lip over’) and ends with an unexpected and completely satisfying twist.“

“The Falls,” in The New Yorker (Jan. 22, 1996)

From the outset, Saunders puts us inside the head of a middle-aged husband and father known only as Morse. As the opening paragraph continues, so do the internal ramblings of the sad-sack protagonist:

“Sometimes he wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t even a wacko of sorts, although certainly he wasn’t a pervert. Of that he was certain. Or relatively certain. Being overly certain, he was relatively sure, was what eventually made one a wacko. So humility was the thing, he thought, arranging his face into what he thought would pass for the expression of a man thinking fondly of his own youth, a face devoid of wackiness or perversion, humility was the thing.”

“My Chivalric Fiasco” in Harper’s Magazine (September 2011)

“Swimming,” in Drowning Lessons: Stories (2007)

In 2007, Selgin’s Drowning Lessons won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

“Mr. Dingle, the Strong,” in More Stories from the Twilight Zone (1961)

“A Thing About Machines,” in More Stories from the Twilight Zone (1961)

“The Midnight Sun,” in New Stories from the Twilight Zone (1962)

“The Whole Truth,” in New Stories from the Twilight Zone (1962)

The narrator continued: “When Harvey peddled one of his used cars, his lying was colorful, imaginative, and had a charm all of its own.”

“The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,“ title story of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1959)

This delightful opening comes from a young British working-class teenager known only as Smith. After his arrest for robbing a bakery, he’s been sentenced to a youth detention center known in England as a borstal. Shortly after his arrival, authorities become aware of his prowess as a runner and attempt to use him for their own purposes.

In 1962, the story was adapted into a critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful film, with novice actor Tom Courtenay in the starring role (he went on to win a BAFTA award for Most Promising New Actor).

“Hugo Molder and the Symbol of Displaced Persons Everywhere,” in Letters from the Horse Latitudes: Short Fiction (1994)

The narrator continued in the opening paragraph: “The statue was to have been donated to the State of New Mexico by an old widow, who hadn’t intended for it to stay in the lot, although Hugo didn’t know that. She told the workmen to set it down there until she could find a permanent place for it, but she died before she got around to it. Travelers who stopped for gas at Hugo’s usually asked how it came to be there.”

This is a perfectly serviceable opening line, but it fails to match the splendor of the second paragraph, which, in my opinion, would have made a far superior beginning of the story: “Hugo Molder had a false front tooth that he used like a valve to let air into his mouth while he pursed his lips in thought. When someone asked about the Indian, he’d push the bottom of the tooth out with the tip of his tongue, suck air through the hole, and gaze over at his son, Weldon.”

Sordid and Organized (1915)

A basement containing multiple stainless steel tables could only be one of a very limited number of things, so our curiosity is immediately aroused. The small orange hose and stainless steel spatula reduce the number of options considerably, and we learn the exact nature of the setting as the narrator continued:

“The previous table had held a ninety-two-year-old man, natural causes. Poor old guy had simply used up all his parts. He had passed in his sleep while he was still a bit distinguished looking. Even though he was 6’2” and only 128 pounds, his face had not reduced quite all the way to gaunt.”

“Monster,” in Reckless in Texas: Metroplex Mysteries, Vol. 2 (2023; Barb Goffman, ed.)

Oxymoronic first sentences are always a good way to begin a story, and this one is particularly enticing.

“The Unicorn in the Garden,” in The New Yorker (Oct 31, 1939)

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” The New Yorker (March 18, 1939)

This now-legendary short story opens with a bang, but we will shortly learn that it is only a daydream of the mild-mannered Walter Mitty. Even though the scene is only in Mitty’s mind, it is filled with rich, bold detail. The daydream continues in full force for several more moments as Mitty—with his wife in the passenger seat—is driving his car on a Connecticut highway. The daydream is finally interrupted when Mrs. Mitty exclaims: “Not so fast! You’re driving too fast! What are you driving so fast for!”

“My Boyhood Dreams,” in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (1900)

“My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It,” in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (1900)

“The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg,” in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (1900)

“Extracts From Adam’s Diary” in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (1900)

Because we know the title of the short story, we immediately deduce the identity of the new creature. And since Eve has been only recently created, there is no female pronoun for Adam to use. She is most certainly not a “he,“ so he uses the only available option: “It.“ And then, in what I regard as one of Twain’s most brilliant lines, Adam provides a hint about how his world is unalterably changing: “Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain….We? Where did I get that word?—I remember now—the new creature uses it.”

“Vision Out of the Corner of One Eye,” in The Censors (1992)

In his 2007 writing guide Hooked, writer and writing teacher Les Edgerton offered this and a number of other exemplary opening lines “that grab the reader and pull him in with a firm yank into the story.” About this one in particular, he wrote:

“We see a scene in which a man has taken an obviously crude, if not criminal, action; and then, immediately, we see he has another side to him that we didn’t expect. We know we’re in the company of a couple of pretty unusual, interesting, and complex characters, and that something we haven’t seen before is about to happen. Actually, it’s in the middle of happening. An arresting image like Valenzuela has provided here is guaranteed to spark reader interest.”

“The Tarn,” in The Silver Thorn: A Book of Stories (1928)

One of the great pleasures of my Great Opening Lines project has been discovering intriguing openers from authors I’ve heard of, but never read. “The Tarn” is one of Walpole’s darker short stories, and the opening scene is so beautifully described you can close your eyes and bring every detail to life in your mind’s eye. Go ahead, try it.

A guest in another man’s home, absorbed by the books in his library, has no idea that the man standing just behind him is having dark, delicious fantasies of strangling him. At this point, readers have no idea what the man has done to stimulate such ferocious rage, or if the host will actually follow through. How could they stop themselves from reading on?

As the story unfolds, we learn that both men are writers—and a familiar literary theme emerges. In a 2021 blog post, speculative fiction writer Matthew Rettino described the story this way: “A highly relatable tale of literary jealousy and sweet revenge.”

“The Snow,” in All Soul’s Night: A Book of Stories (1933)

In the story’s second paragraph, the narrator continued: “The passage where she was led from the study to the dining-room, and the window looked out on to the little paved path that ran at the edge of the Cathedral green. As she stared down the passage she couldn’t be sure whether the woman was there or no. How absurd of her! She knew the woman was not there. But if the woman was not, how was it that she could discern so clearly the old-fashioned grey cloak, the untidy grey hair and the sharp outline of the pale cheek and pointed chin? Yes, and more than that, the long sweep of the grey dress, falling in folds to the ground, the flash of a gold ring on the white hand. No. No. NO. This was madness. There was no one and nothing there. Hallucination…” [ellipsis in original]

I can’t be certain, but I have a feeling that Daphne du Maurier might have been inspired by this Walpole story when she created the second Mrs. de Winter for her classic 1938 novel Rebecca. In both cases, the second wives are unable to free themselves from the ghosts of their husbands’ first wives.

“A Worn Path,” in The Atlantic Monthly (February 1941)

The best way to begin any piece of writing is to craft a beautifully-written, multi-layered first paragraph—and that is the case here with Welty’s description of an elderly black woman trudging slowly but purposefully along a wooded pathway. When I first read the story, I wondered to myself if she had chosen the name Phoenix for a reason—and, not surprisingly, it turned out to be exactly the case.

In a 2012 essay in the literary journal Soundings (titled “The Life of a Sentence”), writer Suzanne Berne highlighted the artistry and significance of the fourth sentence in particular, writing:

“The sentence’s vitality, of course, springs from the comparison between an old woman and the pendulum of a grandfather clock, a comparison built in stages, starting with the way she walks, ‘from side to side,’ to the ‘balanced heaviness and lightness’ of her steps. Perfectly weighted in that simile also rests the whole story: Phoenix Jackson is headed to town to buy medicine for her chronically ill grandson, a long journey repeated ‘as regular as clockwork’…. On her way, Phoenix surmounts obstacles, confronts monsters and outwits foes, an odyssey signaled visually, metaphorically, even structurally in nearly every sentence.”

“There is No Conversation,” in The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels (1935)

This has become one of West’s most popular quotations, to be found in hundreds of print as well as internet quotation compilations. And it started off as the opening line to one of her short novels.

“Paranoia,” in Leah, New Hampshire (1992)

After reading the opening words of this short story several decades ago, I could not get the intriguing phrase collector of paranoiacs out of my mind—and the notion that Benham was an unwilling collector of further fascinated me. In the opening paragraph, he continued:

“Like those who fear dogs only to excite in all dogs an immediate aggressive affection, I seem doomed to be the chosen confessor of those who have systematized their delusions. I wonder if they know how much they frighten me.”

“It Had to Be Murder,” in Dime Detective magazine (February 1942; orig. published under the penname William Irish)

This is the opening paragraph of a story Woolrich originally titled “Murder from a Fixed Viewpoint,” but the Dime Detective editors decided to change it. In the story, protagonist Hal Jeffries’s broken leg has confined him to the bedroom of his apartment. To pass the time, he unobtrusively peers out of his bedroom’s bay window to eavesdrop on his neighbors on the other side of a courtyard. After a time, he begins to suspect that one of his neighbors has murdered his wife. Given his immobility, there’s not much he can do on his own, so he enlists the help of Sam, a “day houseman” who makes daily visits to his flat, and a police detective named Boyne. If the story sounds familiar, read on.

Two years after the short story’s publication, it was re-issued in After-Dinner Story, a 1944 anthology of Woolrich’s crime-fiction tales. This time, the title was changed to “Rear Window,” and that was one of the things that attracted Alfred Hitchcock’s attention. Almost immediately, he decided to adapt it into a film—and it would ultimately become the 1954 cinema classic starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly.

Even though few modern readers are familiar with his name, Corrnell Woolrich is one of a handful of writers who invented the crime-fiction genre now known as noir.

“Big Boy Leaves Home,” in Uncle Tom’s Children (1938)

So begins the first of the four novellas that comprised the book, and they feature a voice that the overwhelming majority of American readers—think white people—had never before heard.

“The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” in Uncle Tom’s Children (1938)

These are the understated—yet highly dramatic—first words of “An Autobiographical Sketch” that appeared at the beginning of Wright’s debut book, a collection of four short novellas. From our modern-day perspective, the “Jim Crow education” story he went on to tell is powerful and sickening—and definitely worth your while to read if you get the chance (I’d recommend using the Internet Archive, my favorite resource for out-of-print books). The title of the book was inspired by Harriett Beecher Stowe’s 1852 classic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

The publication of Wright’s first book represented the emergence of an important new voice in African-American literature. About it, the critic Alain Locke wrote: “With this, our Negro fiction of social interpretation comes of age.”

“The Man Who Lived Underground,” in The Man Who Was Almost a Man (1940)

With these words, the reader is thrust immediately into a scene in which the unnamed protagonist senses a great deal of danger. The opening paragraph continues: “He was tired of running and dodging. Either he had to find a place to hide, or he had to surrender. A police car swished by through the rain, its siren rising sharply. They’re looking for me all over.”

“Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern” in Eleven Kinds of Loneliness: Stories (1962)

The narrator continued: “A less dedicated or less imaginative teacher might have pressed for more details, but Miss Price was content with the rough outline. It was enough, in fact, to fill her with a sense of mission that shone from her eyes, as plain as love, from the first morning he joined the fourth grade.”

“Snow in Summer,” in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale (2018)