A Celebration of
Great Opening Lines
in World Literature

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [book one in The Hitchiker’s Guide series] (1979)

In the first paragraph, the narrator continued: “Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an 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.“

In the novel’s second paragraph, the narrator went on: “This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper....“

Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023)

The opening words come from Loretta Thurwar, a black female convict who is about to appear on “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” a wildly popular television show in which inmates in America’s private prison industry compete in gladiator-style death-matches for the ultimate prize: an unconditional release from prison.

This dramatic first sentence was brought to my attention by Washington Post book critic Ron Charles, who described it as “a knock-out.” He went on to add:

“With this short, arresting line, Adjei-Brenyah manages to immediately convey the deadly plot of this novel, but he also telescopes the story’s most profound theme about the condition of being watched, of being turned into a media object.”

Adjei-Brenyah’s novel went on to be named a finalist for the National Book Award.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)

For One More Day (2006)

The First Phone Call From Heaven (2013)

Albom clearly knows how to write a great first sentence, but he’s also adept at writing a compelling first page. Here’s how he continued after the opening sentence:

Drrrnnn!

She ignored the ring and dug her nails into the plastic.

Drrrnnn!

She clawed her forefinger through the bumpy part of the side.

Drrrnnn!

Finally, she made a rip, then peeled off the wrapping and scrunched it in her palm. She knew the phone would go to answering machine if she didn’t grab it one more—

Drrrnnn!

“Hello?“

Too late.

“Ach, this thing,“ she mumbled. She heard the machine click on her kitchen counter as it played her outgoing message.

“Hi, it’s Tess. Leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, thanks.“

A small beep sounded. Tess heard static. And then.

“It’s Mom...I need to tell you something.“

Tess stopped breathing. The receiver fell from her fingers.

Her mother died four years ago.

The Wind Knows My Name (2023)

Allende has penned some exceptional openers in her career, and this one nicely plants the idea that something is amiss in Rudolph Adler’s world—and has been for some time now. For savvy readers, the Vienna location and “November 1938” date provides an unsettling clue. In the novel’s third paragraph, the narrator continued:

“The stench of fear, like rust and rotting garbage, clung to his nostrils; neither his pipe tobacco nor his citrus-scented aftershave lotion could mask it. That afternoon, the stink of dread stirred up by the wind was suffocating, making him feel dizzy and nauseous. He decided to turn away the patients left in his waiting room and close up early. Surprised, his assistant asked if he was ill. She’d worked with the doctor for eleven years and had never known him to shirk his duties; he was a punctual, methodical man.”

For a number of openers from Allende’s nonfiction works, start here.

“Thumbelina” (1835)

“The Little Mermaid” (1837)

Feed (2002)

This delightful opening line suggests that teenagers will always have their own special argot, even in the dystopian future. The words come from a shallow, fun-loving teenager known only as Titus. After a disappointing trip to the moon, the “feed” going into his brain begins to malfunction—and the temporary absence of spoon-fed information from corporate controllers reawakens a questioning attitude that has been almost completely extinguished.

In a 2007 NPR blog post “Great Opening Lines to Hook Young Readers,” Nancy Pearl wrote: “Who could resist the first line of the chillingly satirical Feed by M. T. Anderson?” She went on to add: “That line sets the stage for the plot of this futuristic world that’s become overrun with rampant consumerism. Computer chips are implanted in most babies at birth. There’s no need to go to school, since you can Google any information you might need; there’s no need to talk to anyone, since you can IM instantaneously. There’s certainly no need to think, especially since the banner ads that float through your mind tell you exactly what you need to buy, do, and be to join the “in” crowd. But what happens when someone hacks into the computer feed that everyone is receiving? This is a terrific choice for both teen and adult book discussion groups.”

Anderson’s cyberpunk novel was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and went on to be included in Time magazine’s list of the “100 Best YA Books of All Time.”

Flowers in the Attic (1979)

These are the opening words of the Prologue to the book. The narrator is 12-year-old Cathy Dollanganger, who was only twelve years old when her mother forced her and her three siblings to live secretly in the attic of their grandparents’ home.

In the opening paragraph, Cathy continued: “And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine. Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic.“

The One and Only Bob (2020)

This is a sequel to The One and Only Ivan, Applegate’s wonderful 2012 children’s novel about a talking gorilla, and, if anything, it is even better. For reasons I’m not sure I completely understand, I absolutely love books narrated by talking animals, and this one starts off with a fabulous opening line. On the rest of the first page, Bob truly finds his “voice” as he continues:

“I bark at empty air. I eat cat litter. I roll in garbage to enhance my aroma.

“I harass innocent squirrels. I hog the couch. I lick myself in the presence of company.

“I’m no saint, okay?”

And so it goes—with a staccato-like delivery style that would be the envy of a stand-up comic—for 340 pages of one of the best animal-narrated stories I’ve ever read.

I, Robot (1950)

The name of the encyclopedia immediately suggests a place that exists in the future. But where? And when? And how does it differ from the present day?

The Robots of Dawn (1983)

Nightfall (1990)

In only six simple words, we already know we have left earth and are about to have an out-of-this-world adventure

Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995)

The novel begins at the exact moment the narrator is conceived, and it captures precise details, including key aspects of her parents’ lovemaking patterns. The narrator, who will ultimately be known as Ruby Lennox, continued in the first paragraph: “At the moment at which I moved from nothingness into being my mother was pretending to sleep—as she often does at such moments. My father, however, is made of stern stuff and he didn’t let that put him off.”

Atkinson’s brilliant opening had a vague, but familiar feeling about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on the reason why until I read what she wrote in her Introduction to the 25th Anniversary edition of the book: “The beginning of the book is a nod to Tristram Shandy.” She went on to add that her novel—like Sterne’s classic work and, indeed, all of literature—is “about the journey of the self toward the light.”

Behind the Scenes at the Museum was Atkinson’s debut novel, and what a way to start a career. It won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year award and is now regarded as a modern classic.

The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

In a 2011 blog, the English writer Kit Whitfield wrote: “Typical of Atwood, her first sentence begins at once lucidly simple and loaded with implications. It’s a sentence that aches with time.“

The narrator of tale, a handmaid known as Offred, continued: “The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in mini-skirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair.“

Among its numerous awards, Atwood’s powerful dystopian novel won Canada’s most prestigious literary prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1985. In 2017, Hulu adapted the novel into a ten-episode streaming series, with Elizabeth Moss starring as Offred. After the first season, the series received 13 Primetime Emmy nominations, winning eight, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. The series continues to be Hulu’s most popular offering, and is now in its fifth season.

The Blind Assassin (2000)

The opening words come from Iris Chase, an elderly woman who is reflecting on the death of her younger sister in 1945, at age twenty-five. At her death, Laura left behind a sci-fi novel titled The Blind Assassin, which went on to become a posthumous cult classic. Atwood’s complex, multi-layered, novel-within-a novel was panned by many critics, but went on to win numerous awards, including the 2000 Booker Prize.

Oryx and Crake (2003)

The Heart Goes Last (2015)

The Testaments (2019)

Mr. Vertigo (1994)

This arresting opening line comes from Walt Rawley, a St. Louis orphan who, at age nine, was rescued from the streets by a mysterious circus performer named Master Yehudi. Set in the 1920s, Yehudi brings Walt into a Kansas circus troupe filled with colorful, larger-than-life characters, and, after learning how to levitate, the former street urchin achieves fame as “Walt the Wonder Boy.” In the opening paragraph, the picaresque protagonist further piques the reader’s interest by saying:

“The man in the black clothes taught me how to do it, and I’m not going to pretend I learned the trick overnight. Master Yehudi found me when I was nine, an orphan boy begging nickels on the streets of Saint Louis, and he worked with me steadily for three years before he let me show my stuff in public. That was in 1927, the year of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, the precise year when night began to fall on the world forever. I kept it up until a few days before the October crash, and what I did was greater than anything those two gents could have dreamed of. I did what no American had done before me, what no one has ever done since.”

Timbuktu: A Novel (1999)

The opening paragraph gets off to a terrific start, and continues like this for a full 270 words, as the character named Mr. Bones describes—with great concern—the deteriorating condition of someone who is very, very dear to him.

In the novel’s second paragraph, the story takes a dramatic turn as we learn that Mr. Bones is a dog. The narrator continued: “What was a poor dog to do? Mr. Bones had been with Willy since his earliest days as a pup, and by now it was next to impossible for him to imagine a world that did not have his master in it.”

Willy, a homeless man who lives in Brooklyn, is also concerned about the fate of Mr. Bones in a Willy-less world, and the two characters soon embark on a journey to rectify the situation. It’s a compelling novel, and a few years ago, I was delighted to learn that it was a personal favorite of celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl.

In a 2006 piece she did for National Public Radio, Ms. Pearl wrote: “Mr. Bones narrates the story of his life with Willy G. Christmas, which began when Mr. Bones was a pup and Willy was Willy Gurevitch, the brilliant son of Polish refugees. Now, Willy and Mr. Bones are on a search for Willy’s old high school English teacher, perhaps the only person who recognized Willy’s poetic gift. But it’s likely that Willy is going to die soon, and although Mr. Bones is pretty sure he knows what happens when people die—Willy has told him often enough that they go to Timbuktu—he’s not quite sure that dogs can go there too. And if not, where would he be without Willy? This novel, both like and unlike anything else that Auster has written, introduces two unforgettable characters.”

Tuck Everlasting (1975)

These are the opening words of the Prologue to the book. The narrator continued ominously: “It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after.”

In a 2016 blog post on “What Makes a Great First Line,” literary agent Amanda Luedeke wrote: “The first line from Tuck Everlasting ...doesn’t do much in the way of drawing the reader into the action–it actually goes out of its way to describe a notable lack of activity–but it serves as an example of another effective function of an opening sentence: laying a foundation.”

Luedeke went on to write that “Babbitt paints a quick picture of a certain time of year, evoking the weather (probably hot) and the pace of life (slow) at the moment the story opens, and we absorb these details and are primed to interpret the characters and events to come...without her having to explain everything...right up front.”

Peter and Wendy (1911)

The son of a weaver, Barrie studied at the University of Edinburgh before moving to London in 1885 to pursue a writing career. In 1897, he befriended Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davis, a London couple with three young sons, George, John, and Peter (they ultimately added two more boys to the mix). Barrie loved playing with the boys, and regaled them with many fanciful stories, including one in which Peter was a bird before he was born and, after his birth, retained the ability to fly.

In 1902, Barrie introduced the character of Peter Pan in his novel The Little White Bird, but it was only a minor role, and Peter never advanced beyond infancy. Two years later, he developed Peter into the character we all know today for the 1904 London stage production, “Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.“ The play was a spectacular success, and catapulted Barrie into worldwide celebrity.

In 1911, Peter Pan was already one of the world’s most famous fictional characters when Barrie extended the stage play into a full-blown novel titled Peter and Wendy. The novel’s opening line is now regarded as a classic in world literature. What is less well known, though, is how Barrie continued the first paragraph:

“They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this forever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up.”

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

The opening words introduce us to the young, female protagonist, but provide no information about why she is living with relatives. They also provide a hint about what is to come: “There was no garret at all, and no cellar—except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap-door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.“

Bored of the Rings: A Parody (1969)

In this brilliant Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, the narrator continued: "She slipped off the flimsy garment and strode toward the fascinated biggie unashamed of her nakedness. She ran a perfect hand along his hairy toes, and he helplessly watched them curl with the fierce insistent wanting of her."

The Second Greatest Story Ever Told (1991)

This is the only novel I’ve seen that begins with a description of the birth of a baby, and the first words capture the event accurately and succinctly. The new-born is Ilona Ann Coggswater, who we will shortly learn is no ordinary baby, but the first daughter of God.

The narrator continued in the novel’s second paragraph: “And though the safety, comfort, warmth, and humidity of her mother’s womb seemed preferable to the glare and rubber gloves that now surrounded her, it was checkout time.”

Bechard is better known as an independent filmmaker and documentarian, but his debut novel demonstrated great talent at satirical writing. He also provided an intriguing epigraph to the first chapter—an updated version of John 3:17: “For God did not send His Daughter into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Her might be saved.”

The Exorcist (1971)

So begins a novel that has become a classic in horror fiction: the story of the demonic possession—and subsequent exorcism—of an eleven-year-old girl. Blatty was a student at Georgetown University in 1949 when the campus was bristling with news of recent exorcism, and the story stayed with him, untold, until he finally put it together in fictional form twenty years after he graduated.

An immediate best-seller, the novel was adapted by William Friedkin into a 1973 film by the same title. Now regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made, it was the first in the genre to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award (it received ten nominations, winning two, for Best Adapted Screenplay—written by Blatty, incidentaly—and Best Sound).

“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.“

Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

This legendary opening line is loaded with ambiguity. Is the narrator himself burning, and finding pleasure in it? Or is he finding pleasure in burning something else? With these six simple words, we are immediately thrust into a dystopian future, where the narrator, a fireman named Guy Montag, finds pleasure in burning books that have been outlawed by government censors in an autocratic state (we also eventually learn that the title refers to the temperature at which books spontaneously erupt into flame).

The opening line of Fahrenheit 451 has been admired since the book was published, and for the past fifty years it’s been discussed in every creative writing class that has ever existed. One of my favorite comments appeared in a 2011 LitReactor article by Meredith Borders, where she explained why the beginning is so effective: “The sentence is made up of six words, elegant in their brevity and crushing in their implications. Fireman Guy Montag lives his entire life taking casual pleasure in government oppression—until a series of events leads him to look at his life and society with growing horror.“

Nurse Matilda (1964)

So begins the story of Nurse Matilda, a hideously ugly witch who mysteriously arrives at the household of the Brown family, which is beset by some of the naughtiest children in England. The book was very popular in Great Britain, and resulted in two sequels: Nurse Matilda Goes to Town (1967) and Nurse Matilda Goes to Hospital (1974). The opening paragraphs of the two sequels are worded slightly differently from the original novel, but they both end the same way: “...and all the children were terribly, terribly naughty.”

In 2005, the novels were loosely adapted into the film Nanny McPhee, starring Colin Firth and Emma Thompson (she also wrote the screenplay). In addition to a new name for the title character, there were some other changes as well, but the essential story remained the same—a nanny with magical powers arrives at an out-of-control home and transforms the life of a family being disrupted by some very naughty children. One other important thing from the novel also made it into the film, and I was delighted to see it retained. Let me explain.

I’m a longtime fan of the literary device known as chiasmus (pronounced ky-AZ-muss), and in 1999, I introduced it to popular culture in my book Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You. Brand’s 1964 novel contains a wonderful example. Describing her approach to caring for children, Nurse Matilda says: “When my children don’t want me, but do need me: then I must stay. When they no longer need me, but they do want me: then I have to go.”

When I heard about the film coming out, I eagerly awaited its appearance, wondering if this very special observation would be included. Happily, with a slight change in wording, it did. In an early scene, when Nanny McPhee first meets the seven children, she says to them: “When you need me, but do not want me, then I will stay. If you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go.” A hearty thanks to the literate Emma Thompson for including the chiastic sentiment in her screenplay.

A Confederate General from Big Sur (1965)

There’s nothing like the assertion of a historical impossibility to arrest a reader’s attention, and Brautigan does that very nicely in the opening sentence of his debut novel, published when he was twenty-eight. In the novel, Brautigan—a popular San Francisco street poet in the early days of the “hippie” movement—tells the story of Lee Mellon, an alienated and often delusional California man who believes he is a descendant of a heroic Confederate general from Big Sur, California. In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued:

“I had always thought that Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas were the Confederacy and let it go at that. I had no idea that Big Sur was also a member.”

A critical and commercial failure after it was published, the novel soon went out of print. It was re-issued two years later—after the success of Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America (1967)—and is now regarded as a counter-culture classic.

“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.”

Sombrero Fallout (1976)

As the book opens, this entire passage is presented in quotation makes, and we quickly surmise that it is the opening paragraph of a novel the author is currently writing. As the story unfolds, Brautigan does something I’ve never before seen in literary fiction. Here’s how Eric Lorberer, editor of The Rain Taxi Review of Books, described it in a Fall, 2000 essay:

“As the novel opens, a writer is writing a novel, gets discouraged, and throws the opening lines in the trash. While one track of the novel chronicles the next hour in the writer’s life, the other follows the discarded lines, which ‘decided to go on without him.”

The Postman (1985)

The narrator is describing the mind of protagonist Gordon Krantz, a wandering apocalypse survivor who, after losing everything to bandits, stumbles upon a United States Postal Service uniform. He originally dons the uniform solely for warmth, but eventually decides it will be helpful in his attempt to build faith in a “restored” United States of America. In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued:

“After half a lifetime in the wilderness, most of it spent struggling to survive, it still struck Gordon as odd—how obscure memories would pop into his mind right in the middle of a life-or-death fight.“

Critics began hailing Brin’s novel from the day it was published, and it went on to win the 1986 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction novel. The tale was brought to the big screen in a 1997 film adaptation, with a memorable performance by Kevin Costner.

“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.”

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague (2001)

It is apple-picking time in the harvest season of 1666 and, after only six words, we’re wondering what happened—and already know it must have been bad.

“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!“

Venus Envy (1993)

This whistling past the graveyard reflection comes from 35-year-old Frazier Armstrong, an art gallery owner who has learned that her lung cancer is so advanced she has only a short while to live.

The opening paragraph continued: “Frazier Armstrong breathed deeply, which wasn’t easy, since the oxygen tube stuck down her throat had rubbed it raw. ’Then again, I never will have to fill out the IRS long form, buy a county sticker for my car, be burdened with insurance payments that stretch into eternity, to say nothing of my business license and the damned money I pay to the county each year on my depreciating business machines. No more mortgage payments and no more vile temptation as the doors of Tiffany’s yawn at me like the very gates of hell.’“

Brown then found a way to recycle a famous Oscar Wilde quip as her narrator continued about the dying patient: “She burrowed ever deeper into the hospital bed. Porthault sheets brought from home made the bed more comfortable but every time she glanced at the saccharine wallpaper, a dusty rose with tiny little bouquets, she thought, ’One of us has to go.’“

The Relic Master (2015)

When you pick up any one of Christopher Buckley’s numerous works of fiction or non-fiction, you can confidently expect to be greeted by a great opening paragraph, and that is certainly the case with this, his first historical novel. In the novel’s second paragraph, the narrator continued:

“For one, his asking price was far too low. A relic of the finger that had probed the spear wound in Christ’s side would fetch as much as forty or fifty gulden. And he was asking only fifteen. More troubling was the absence of fragrant odor when Dismas held it to his nostrils. A genuine relic was always pleasant to the nose.”

The Heart of a Dog (1925)

The Heart of a Dog is a searing satire of Russian Bolshevism. Almost immediately banned by Communist authorities, the novella didn’t surface again until many decades later. The narrator of the tale, it quickly becomes clear, is a dog—and a dog with strong political opinions.

As the story begins, he is writhing in pain. He goes on to explain: “Some bastard in a dirty white cap—the cook in the office canteen at the National Economic Council—spilled some boiling water and scalded my left side. Filthy swine—and a proletarian, too. Christ, it hurts. That boiling water scalded me right through to the bone. I can howl and howl, but what’s the use?“

Kat, Incorrigible (2011; pub. in England in 2010 as A Most Improper Magick)

The setting is Regency, England in 1803, and these delightful opening words come from Kat Stephenson, a young girl who discovers she has inherited magical powers from her mother, who died ten days after she was born. The novel went on to win the Waverton Good Read Children’s Award in 2011 for Best Debut Children’s Novel by a British writer.

In a 2014 SFSignal.com “Mind Meld” post, writer Paul Weimer asked a number of writers to identify their favorite opening lines. Writer Beth Bernobich wrote about this opener:

“Imagine a cup of frothy hot chocolate, served in an elegant cup, with a dollop of cream—sweet, but with an edge of that dark chocolate bitterness—a perfect antidote to cold November days. The opening paragraph to Kat, Incorrigible…is that first sip that tells right away what a treat you’re in for.”

Scales and Sensibility (2021)

Jane Austen’s legendary opening line from Pride and Prejudice has been tweaked in a multitude of ways over the years, but Burgis takes it in a whole new way in her YA fantasy update of Sense and Sensibility. In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “But it was becoming increasingly obvious to everyone in Hathergill Hall that for Penelope Hathergill, actually having a dragon would guarantee disaster.”

Milkman (2018)

The opening words come from an 18-year-old protagonist known only as “Middle Sister” (we will shortly learn that no characters in the novel are formally named). The novel was hailed by critics from the outset, and went on to become one of the most acclaimed books of the year, winning the 2018 Man Booker Prize, the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

In a 2019 “Narrative Muse” post, Australian blogger Aisha Lelic wrote, “Milkman had me hooked with the very first line,“ adding: “Its hypnotic rhythm and tone reminded me of hard-boiled fiction—tough, terse, and cynical with a touch of loneliness and dread. And yet it’s nothing like hard-boiled fiction. In fact, Milkman is like nothing I have ever read.“

Kindred (1979)

The opening words come from Dana Franklin, a 27-year-old black writer. A year earlier, she came to consciousness in a hospital to find her left arm amputated. When the police questioned her and husband Kevin, a white man who is also a writer, they were reluctant to tell the truth because their time-travel story is so far-fetched they know they will not be believed.

In the novel, Franklin continued: “And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone. When the police released Kevin, he came to the hospital and stayed with me so that I would know I hadn’t lost him too.”

Erewhon (1872)

“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.”

Ender’s Game (2010)

In a 2016 Guardian article on the best opening lines in children’s and young adult fiction (“Hook, Line, and Sinker”), Ciara Murphy wrote about this line: “Rarely do we start novels already rooting for a character from the very first sentence, but Orson Scott Card makes sure we do just that by immediately introducing us to ‘the one’. This line, from an unnamed narrator, describes a protagonist who we will shortly discover is named Andrew “Ender” Wiggin.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)

In a 2000 New York magazine review shortly after the book was published, Daniel Mendelsohn said the book "had me hooked from the first, wistful, epic-tinged sentence." The novel went on to win the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and in 2006 was hailed by Bret Easton Ellis (of American Psycho fame) as "one of the three great books of my generation." In 2019, The Guardian ranked the novel Number 57 on its list of The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

In a 2013 Atlantic magazine article titled "This Did Something Powerful to Me," staff writer Joe Fassler asked a number of authors to identify their "Favorite First Lines" from novels and other books. Roxane Gay, the American writer, professor, and social commentator, chose the opening words of Chabon's Amazing Adventures novel. She explained: "I love this sentence because it does so much work. The sentence is a story in and of itself and reveals Chabon's amazing talent for long, meandering sentences that are satisfying in both sound and substance."

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

This has long been my favorite Chesterton quotation, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was the opening line of a 1904 alternate reality novel that imagined what life in London would be like in 1984. In a 2011 DailyWritingTips.com post on “20 Great Opening Lines to Inspire the Start of Your Story,“ Mark Nichol wrote about this opener: “Astute observations accompanied by an implied sigh of disgust are tricky to master, but Chesterton, one of the most multifaceted men of letters, lights the way for you with this sample of the form.“

There are many who believe that the future date chosen for Chesterton’s novel inspired George Orwell to title his classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sea Change (2023)

I loved the opening words of this weirdly wonderful debut novel. In fact, I’d say they completely had me by insert his hectocotylus. The words come from the narrator—a thirty-something aquarium worker named Ro—who continued:

“Unfortunately for Dolores, there is no bachelor octopus around ready to father her orphan eggs, and so when she turns that milky, almost pearlescent blue that I know means she is in the mood for love, there is no one but me to see.”

In a review on Debutiful.net, Adam Vitcavage wrote: “Sea Change is a standout of the 2023 debut class. It will pull you in from the first page and not let go as you traverse through a sea of originality. It’s filled with stunning and scrumptious prose.”

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

These are the opening words to the book’s Foreword. Clarke, who wrote the novel as a companion volume to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film by the same title, continued: “Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe. So for every man who has ever lived, in this universe there shines a star.”

Chapter One of the novel actually begins this way: “The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended. Here on the Equator, in the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for existence had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight.”

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Clarke, who wrote the novel as a companion volume to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film by the same title, also offered some memorable opening words in the Foreword to the book: “Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe. So for every man who has ever lived, in this universe there shines a star.“

Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

The narrator, who is living in an unspecified time in the distant past, meets a man wearing a new and novel kind of protective eye covering. In the opening paragraph, he continued:

“Is he blind? I could understand it if he wanted to hide blind eyes. But he is not blind. The discs are dark, they look opaque from the outside, but he can see through them. He tells me they are a new invention.“

When Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, the Nobel Prize committee described Waiting for the Barbarians as “a political thriller in the tradition of Joseph Conrad, in which the idealist’s naiveté opens the gates to horror.“

The Man in the Window (1992; republished 2013)

Cohen’s 1992 novel was one of Nancy Pearl’s “Book Lust Rediscoveries,” an imprint of out-of-print books personally selected for republication by a woman who is often described as “America’s Favorite Librarian.” In her Introduction to the book, Pearl wrote: “When I read the entrancing first line of The Man in the Window, I knew I’d made no mistake [in picking it up]. Here was a novel to love.”

In her introduction, Pearl continued: “That first line…made it impossible for me to put the book down. I loved the interplay of the fantastic—an angel!—with the utterly prosaic—a horse chestnut tree. And the specificity: not just any old chestnut tree, but a horse chestnut.” Simply on the basis of Cohen’s opening line, Pearl concluded: “Clearly, this was a book that was written with a reader like me in mind.”

Highfire (2020)

In a 2023 Guardian article, Irish writer Liz Nugent included this opener in her list of “The Top Ten First Lines in Fiction,” writing:

“Best known for his Artemis Fowl series for children, Highfire was Colfer’s first adult fantasy novel, a genre I had avoided because of my own narrow mind. But this line hooked me straight away. Vern, as it turns out, is a dragon, the last of his kind and a confirmed anthropophobic. The opening line shows that we have failed him. This fact is unequivocal. Why would he ever have anything to do with us in the future? I had to read on to find out in this wildly entertaining take on being antisocial.”

In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “He had known many in his life, even liked a few, but in the end they all sold him out to the angry mob. Which was why he holed up in Honey Island Swamp out of harm’s way.”

The Confessions of Frannie Langton (2019)

The year is 1826, the city is London, and these taut opening words come from Frannie Langton, a black Jamaican woman who has been accused of the double murder of her employers, the eminent English scientist George Benham and his French wife Marguerite. In the novel’s second paragraph, Frannie continued: “I duck my head, peer at my boots, grip my hands to stop their awful trembling. It seems all of London is here, but then murder is the story this city likes best,”

All in all, this is a compelling opening to a spectacular debut novel. About the book, writer Christine Mangan (Tangerine) wrote: “From the sweltering heat of the West Indies to the rain-slicked cobbles of London, Collins transports her readers to the nineteenth century with an enthralling historical thriller. Frannie Langton is an unforgettable heroine, one who boldly reclaims her narrative within the context of a history that seeks to silence her. The Confessions of Frannie Langton is gorgeous―Gothic writing at its very best.”

The Hunger Games [Book 1 of The Hunger Games Trilogy] (2008)

The opening words come from sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, one of the modern era’s most popular literary heroines, thanks to the success of Collins’s blockbuster dystopian novel. She continued: “My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.”

“The reaping?“ we immediately think, and in that exact moment, Collins achieves the goal of all opening paragraphs—seducing the reader into her world.

Catching Fire [Book 2 of The Hunger Games Trilogy] (2009)

The book begins with a bleak situation beautifully described by protagonist Katniss Everdeen. She continued: “I should get up, move around, and work the stiffness from my limbs. But instead I sit, as motionless as the rock beneath me, while the dawn begins to lighten in the woods. I can’t fight the sun. I can only watch helplessly as it drags me into a day that I’ve been dreading for months.”

Mockingjay [Book 3 of The Hunger Games Trilogy] (2010)

Katniss Everdeen begins the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy by surveying the complete destruction of her family home by the Capitol’s firebombs.

The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883)

So begins the story of a block of wood that ultimately became a wooden puppet named Pinocchio—and one of the most popular children’s stories of all time. Originally presented in 1881-82 in serial form in a popular Italian children’s magazine, the story was published as a single book in 1883. In 1957, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce hailed it as one of the greatest works in all of Italian literature, not just children’s literature.

In her classic Children’s Literature (1972), Francelia Butler said the novel “remains the most translated Italian book and, after the Bible, the most widely read.” The opening lines above are from Carol Della Chiesa’s 1926 translation.

Dead Reckoning (2014)

In this heavily autobiographical novel, Colmore, a retired Episcopal priest, tells the story of Henry Simpson, a retired Episcopal priest. The narrator continued: “Old notes from seminary (good God, Henry, that paper on the sources of the Pentateuch belongs in a museum), a couple of citations commending my parish for housing the homeless. And tchotchkes my sisters and I couldn’t bring ourselves to toss out after our mother died.”

James and the Giant Peach (1961)

These words could begin any typical children’s book, but things take a dramatic, dark, and disturbing turn as the reader moves on to the second paragraph: “Then, one day, James’s mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.“

Matilda (1988)

This is an intriguing way to begin any book, but especially a children’s book. This is no ordinary children’s book, however. Dahl’s narrator continued in the novel’s second paragraph: “Well, there is nothing very wrong with all of this. It’s the way of the world. It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, ‘Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick.’”

Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)

I’m a sucker for tales told by dead narrators, and this is one of the best in that sub-genre. In this case, the narrator and protagonist is a Canadian film critic named Connor “Gil” Gilmartin. The novel begins when he unexpectedly arrives home to find his attractive wife in flagrante with a fellow film critic—a man he has always dismissively referred to as “the Sniffer.“ After his wife’s lover strikes him on the temple with a walking stick, killing him instantly, Gilmartin continued:

“How did I know that I was dead? As it seemed to me, I recovered consciousness in an instant after the blow, and heard the Sniffer saying, in a quavering voice: ’He’s dead! My God! I’ve killed him!’ My wife was kneeling by my side, feeling my pulse, her ear to my heart; she said, with what I thought was remarkable self-possession in the circumstances, ’Yes, you’ve killed him.’“

The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman (1992)

This is a powerful opening sentence, and readers immediately begin to wonder, “What has this man done that haunts him so?“ The narrator continued: “In his anguish it was as if ancient coffers opened before his eyes, but instead of overflowing with gold doubloons, louis d’or, silver crucifixes encrusted with rubies, there spilled out demons.“

The Christie Affair (2022)

In a Wall Street Journal review, Tom Nolan wrote that the novel “Sizzles from the first sentence,” and I was pleased to include it in my compilation of “The Best Opening Lines of 2022” on Smerconish.com (see the full list here).

In 1926, Agatha Christie was one of the world’s most popular writers when, after her husband told her he was leaving her for his mistress, she famously disappeared for eleven days. While Christie never talked about what happened, the story has been explored in a number of books and films—but never more ingeniously than in de Gramont’s novel, which told the story from the perspective of Nan O’Dea, the mistress of Agatha Christie’s husband. In the novel, O’Dea continued with a dark but powerful observation:

“It’s a particular feeling, the urge to murder. First comes rage, larger than any you’ve ever imagined. It takes over your body so completely it’s like a divine force, grabbing hold of your will, your limbs, your psyche. It conveys a strength you never knew you possessed. Your hands, harmless until now, rise up to squeeze another person’s life away. There’s a joy to it. In retrospect it’s frightening, but I daresay in the moment it feels sweet, the way justice feels sweet.”

A Christmas Carol (1843)

These opening words have been popular since they were first written, and even showed up in a clever bit of repartee a few years back. As the story goes, Harlan Ellison was giving a lecture on writing fiction when he confidently asserted, “The opening of a story must breathe! It must have life!” Before he could say another word, a voice from the back of the room retorted, “Marley was dead, to begin with.”

In Dickens’s classic novel, the narrator continued: “The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

The expression “good upon ’Change” has puzzled readers—especially American readers—since A Christmas Carol was first published. ’Change is a shortened version of Exchange (as in The Stock Exchange or The Royal Exchange). The meaning of the passage is that Scrooge’s reputation among money traders was so good that his signature could be absolutely relied on.

The saying dead as a doornail, you should also know, was not original to Dickens; he was simply repeating a popular colloquial expression that dates to the 14th century in England. The narrator went on to add about the phrase: “Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

The Grasshopper King (2003)

It’s rare for a math genius to write an entertaining and engaging book of fiction, but Ellenberg, one of America’s most respected mathematicians, proves it can be done—and with a most inviting opening sentence as well.

The Sentence (2021)

The narrator, a middle-aged Native American woman named Tookie, continued: “The first word I looked up was the word ‘sentence.’ I had received an impossible sentence of sixty years from the lips of a judge who believed in an afterlife. So the word with its yawning c, belligerent little e’s, with its hissing sibilants and double n’s, this repetitive bummer of a word made of slyly stabbing letters that surrounded an isolate human t, this word was in my thoughts every moment of the day. Without a doubt, had the dictionary not arrived, this light word that lay so heavily upon me would have crushed me, or what was left of me after the strangeness of what I’d done.”

Erdrich’s most recent novel covered a lot of ground—COVID, the murder of George Floyd, systemic racism, a bookstore-haunting ghost named Flora—but the most enduring theme is suggested in the opening words. Writer Malcolm Jones (Little Boy Blues and others) summarized that theme beautifully in a New York Times book review: “Set in a bookstore, narrated by a bookseller whose former life in prison was turned around when she discovered books and began to read ‘with murderous attention,’ The Sentence testifies repeatedly to the power books possess to heal us and, yes, to change our lives. It may be that, as Tookie argues, ‘books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters.’ But that harsh judgment notwithstanding, there are books, like this one, that while they may not resolve the mysteries of the human heart, go a long way toward shedding light on our predicaments. In the case of The Sentence, that’s plenty.” The opening words were so special that I included them in my Smerconish.com compilation of The Best Opening Lines of 2021 (see the post here).

The Trees (2021)

Normally, it is inadvisable for an opening paragraph to include a word that will send readers scrambling for a dictionary, but in this case, it seems quite fitting to insert a word defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as, “Absence of knowledge or awareness; ignorance.”

About Everett’s opening paragraph, Lorraine Berry wrote in a Los Angeles Times review: “The butt of the joke here is the white Establishment, reduced by Everett’s tropes and puns to a redneck laughingstock.”

Buried Mistakes: A Cry for Justice From Beyond the Grave (2014)

We normally think of a “hook” as a short, pithy sentence that opens a novel in a compelling, intriguing, or powerful way, but Ezpeleta’s novel—inspired by the stories of the “comfort women” the Japanese military provided their soldiers during WWII—proves that a hook can be much longer; in this case, the ten short paragraphs that make up the entire Prologue of the book.

Stigmata (2017)

The narrator continued in the second paragraph: “The day had been mild, unseasonably so. The storm appeared suddenly, ink-black clouds broiling up the sky in the north, as the bells of Saint-Étienne were ringing for vespers. A blast of icy wind hit her like a slap as she ran across the marketplace, a blow so violent and unexpected that it almost knocked her off her feet.”

A Vain and Indecent Woman: The Scandalous Life of Joan of Kent (2018)

The narrator of the novel, the father of Joan of Kent, immediately piques our interest with the comment about never having had the opportunity to boast about his daughter. He then takes the story in a whole new direction when he continues:

“I was twenty-nine years old when I died.

“Died; I use the term loosely. I was murdered, but within the dictates of the law and with the full approval of the king, even though he was barely eighteen years at the time.”

The Eyre Affair (2001)

The words come from protagonist and narrator Thursday Next, the daughter of Wednesday Next and her husband Colonel Next, a former official in a British Special Operations Unit known as The ChronoGuard. She continued: “I don’t mean he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultraslow trickle.”

Outlander [Book 1 of Outlander Series] (1991)

Voyager [Book 3 of Outlander Series] (1993)

I have a soft spot in my heart for oxymoronic opening lines, and this intriguing reflection describes the slightly disoriented James Fraser, whose eyelids are sealed shut from dry blood as he comes to consciousness in the middle of a casualty-filled battlefield. After removing a dead body that has been heavily draped over one of his legs, he senses hovering crows above and hears sounds of wailing from injured soldiers lying nearby.

The narrator says of him: “Memory flooded back, and he groaned aloud. He had been mistaken. This was hell. But James Fraser was unfortunately not dead, after all.”

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone [Book 9 of the Outlander Series] (2021)

It’s been seven years since the last novel in the series—a period of time called a droughtlander by Gabaldon fans—and the Prologue of her most recent installment contains this eloquent description of an experience that will resonate with almost all readers. It was one of my choices for a Smerconish.com post on The Best Opening Lines of 2021 (see the post here).

American Gods (2001)

The novel begins with this extraordinary introduction to Shadow Moon, a convict who is about to be released from prison after his wife has been killed in a car accident. About these opening words, sci-fi writer Philip Palmer said in a 2011 blog post: “Wonderfully restrained evocative prose, with a laugh-out-loud funny joke in the middle sentence. After this great start, the book gets even better.”

The narrator continued: “The best thing—in Shadow’s opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he’d plunged as low as he could plunge and he’d hit bottom. He didn’t worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.” American Gods went on to win the 2002 Nebula Award and 2002 Hugo Award.

American Gods (2001)

The novel begins with this introduction to Shadow Moon, a convict who is about to be released from prison after his wife has been killed in a car accident. About these opening words, sci-fi writer Philip Palmer said in a 2011 blog post: “Wonderfully restrained evocative prose, with a laugh-out-loud funny joke in the middle sentence. After this great start, the book gets even better.”

The narrator continued:

“The best thing—in Shadow’s opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he’d plunged as low as he could plunge and he’d hit bottom. He didn’t worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread; he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it.”

The Graveyard Book (2008)

In a 2018 blog post on “10 of the Greatest First Lines in Literature,” Svani Parekh wrote:

“Who can resist reading on? It’s an explosive first line that sucks a reader right into the plot. To me, this especially shows that ‘Start in the Middle of the Action’ applies not just to opening lines, but to the beginnings of stories in general. Start at a crucial point where the stakes are high. You can always flashback later to explain how your character got to where he is.”

The Silent Miaow: A Manual for Kittens, Strays, and Homeless Cats (1964; photographs by Suzanne Szasz)

This is the opening paragraph of a book that, in an “Editor’s Foreword,” Gallico said was written by a cat. According to Gallico, the manuscript of the book was left on his doorstep, and he originally thought it was written in some kind of cipher. The title, for example was:

                  £YE SUK@ANT MUWOQ
   Q Nabal Dir Kottebs Dra7d abd J1/4 N14dd ca6s

In the Foreword, Gallico said he set the book aside after failing in his first attempts to solve the cipher. When he returned to the book a few months later, the solution came to him in a Eureka! moment. He wrote:

“It was no code at all, and was never intended to be. People unfamiliar with the use of a typewriter produce a pattern of error that is repetitive. The above [title and subtitle] however, is a different sort of stumbling. It is exactly the kind of garbling that might be expected if the typewriter key were to be struck or depressed not by a finger, but by a five-toed paw, which in attempting to hit, say, the ‘a’ would spread out to cover the ‘q,’ ‘w,’ or ‘s,’ so that any one of those others might make the imprint instead of the vowel sought.”

Gallico’s Foreword also contained several other tidbits of interest, but I’ll leave them for interested readers to track down on their own. When the book was published, the titled page indicated that it had been “translated from the feline” by Gallico, a well-known cat lover and author of other cat-related books, including Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Was God (1957).

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

Opening lines don’t get much better that this one. In fact, in a 2014 Vox.com post, writer Max Fisher wrote a piece titled “Gabriel García Márquez Wrote the Greatest Opening Line to a Book, Ever.” He went on to add:

“The question of what constitutes the greatest first line to any novel in literary history is not something that can ever really be decided. But Marquez’s is surely as good a contender as any. It has been repeatedly ranked as one of the best, for example in 2006 by the American Book Review, which declared it the fourth-best opening line in literary history. The other top sentences, by Herman Melville and others, are worthy but ultimately unpersuasive competitors: for inventiveness, for vividness, and for the sheer force by which Marquez’s first line compels you to drop everything and go read his novel from beginning to end, there is no real equal.”

In Colin Falconer’s 2013 list of “The Best 43 Opening Lines in Novel Writing History,” he ranked the line Number Two. About it, he commented succinctly: “So many questions and all from just one sentence.”

Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

For savvy readers, the phrase bitter almonds is always associated with a tragic end, and the desire to learn more naturally results. The narrator continued: “Dr. Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.“

Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004)

In a 2005 review in The Oxonian Review (titled “The Nonagenarian and the Nymphette”), Glen Goodman wrote: “For most readers, this opening line may smack more of Henry Miller or Vladimir Nabokov than of the perfumed, sensual prose of Gabriel García Márquez; but, like the Nobel Prize winner’s previous novels, the first sentence of Memoria de mis putas tristes (literally “memoir of my sad whores”) engages the reader while encapsulating the central motivation of the narrative. The book—García Márquez’s first work of fiction in a decade—details the nonagenarian narrator’s first encounter with actual love, revealing the late-blooming romantic hidden deep within himself.“

Neuromancer (1984)

About this classic opening line, Mark Nichol wrote in a 2011 DailyWritingTips.com post (“20 Great Opening Lines to Inspire the Start of Your Story”) : “Don’t expect any fluffy bunnies or fragrant blossoms or dulcet giggles to show up in this seminal cyberpunk story. A spot-on metaphor expresses the story’s nihilism, letting you know what you’re in for and lugubriously inviting you in.”

In addition to its acclaimed opening line, Neuromancer is also noteworthy for popularizing the term cyberspace and presciently imagining something very close to what we now know as the internet or World Wide Web. It was Gibson’s debut novel, and the very first novel to win the three biggest honors in the sci-fi genre: The Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award.

Many years later, Gibson offered one of history’s best metaphors on the subject of great opening lines. In “The Handshake,” an essay in Joe Fassler’s Light the Dark (2017), a brilliant collection of brief works that grew out of his “By Heart” interviews in The Atlantic, Gibson wrote: “The first sentence is the handshake, on either side of the writer-reader divide. The reader shakes hands with the writer. The writer has already had to shake hands with the unknown. Assuming both have heard the click, we’ve got it going on.”

The Clockwork Scarab [Book 1 in the Stoker & Holmes series] (2013)

This first paragraph has an attractive element of intrigue, but it is what the young narrator goes on to say that implanted the “hook” in this reader:

“But as far as I knew, I was neither in danger for my life, nor was I about to forestall the death of another.

“Being a Holmes, I had my theories and suspicions as to who had summoned me and why.”

All in all, this is a tantalizing beginning, and a wonderful way to introduce readers to Mina Holmes, the niece of the world’s first consulting detective. And the tale only gets better when Mina meets—and teams up with—Evaline Stoker, the sister of Dracula-author Bram Stoker, to fight crime in Victorian-era London.

While composing this entry, I learned that Gleason’s work is part of a literary genre I was totally unfamiliar with: steampunk. You can learn more about it here.

Lord of the Flies (1954)

Golding’s classic dystopian novel starts off innocently enough, but quickly descends into a dark allegorical tale about the moral degeneration of a band of English schoolboys stranded on an island.

A quarter of a century after the novel came out, Golding shared with an interviewer the story of the book’s inception. Sitting with his wife in front of the home fireplace, he looked over at her and said, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” When she said, “That’s a first-class idea! You write it!” Golding concluded: “So I went ahead and wrote it.”

The Princess Bride (1973)

This is a spectacular first sentence, and it’s easy to understand why it has piqued the curiosity of readers for nearly a half century. When readers encounter this intriguing oxymoronic opening for the first time, most quite naturally wonder, “How can a book become a favorite if one never reads it?” There is a satisfactory answer to that question, of course, and it has to do with having a book read to you instead of actually reading it yourself.

As the novel unfolds, the distinction between fantasy and reality is blurred from the outset, with Goldman suggesting he is writing an abridgement of a classic European tale by a writer named S. Morgenstern (the full title and subtitle is The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, the “Good Parts” Version). There is no such author, of course, and no classic book; it’s simply a literary conceit employed by Goldman in order to create a number of different ways the story could be interpreted and understood.

In 1987, Rob Reiner came out with a film adaptation that was only a modest success at the time, but is now regarded as a Hollywood classic (in 2016, it was added to the National Film Registry’s list of “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films”).

Confessor [the 11th and final book in the Sword of Truth Series] (2007)

This is the entire first paragraph, and it’s an excellent way to lure a reader in for more. The narrator continued in the second paragraph: “Jolted fully awake by the shock of pain, he instantly seized her bony wrist, preventing her from ripping open his thigh. A dingy dress, buttoned all the way up to her throat, covered her gaunt figure. In the dim light of distant campfires Richard saw that the square of cloth draped over her head and knotted under her angular jaw looked to be made out of a scrap of frayed burlap.”

The Little White Horse (1946)

This is a lovely in media res (literally, “into the middle of things”) opening that ends with an important life lesson: different individuals find comfort and courage—and probably lots of other things as well—in different things. The narrator continued in the second paragraph: “Maria gazed at her boots. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French essays from the floor, popped a peppermint into her mouth, and peered once more in the dim light at the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers.”

And, just to make sure her young readers got the message, Goudge continued in a third paragraph: “Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people—those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food; and Miss Heliotrope, Maria, and Wiggins were typical representatives of their own sort of people.”

After winning The Carnegie Medal in 1946, Goudge’s novel became a favorite childhood book for many Baby Boomers, including J. K. Rowling, who said in a 2011 interview: “The Little White Horse was my favorite childhood book. I absolutely adored it. It had a cracking plot. It was scary and romantic in parts and had a feisty heroine.” in 2008, the book was adapted into a film titled “The Secret of Moonacre.”

The Tin Drum (1959)

The novel’s opening words come from Oskar Matzerath, a Polish man in his late twenties who is being confined in a mental hospital in the early 1950s. Is he a legitimate patient, or some kind of Cold War political prisoner? He offers a hint at the answer when he goes on to say: “There’s a peephole in the door, and my keeper’s eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.”

The Tin Drum was Grass’s first novel (his previous works were poetry, dramatic plays, and libretti for ballet), and he originally struggled to turn the ideas he had about the novel to words on a page. He struggled and struggled until the first sentence above came to him. After that, he reported, “The barriers fell, language surged forward, memory, imagination, the pleasure of invention, and an obsession with detail all flowed freely.”

Forrest Gump (1986)

With these words, we are introduced to one of the modern era’s most interesting fictional characters (brought to life by actor Tom Hanks in a 1994 film adaptation).

Gump continues his irresistible self-introduction in the novel’s second paragraph: “I been an idiot since I was born. My IQ is near 70, which qualifies me, so they say. Probly, tho, I’m closer to bein a imbecile or maybe even a moron, but personally, I’d rather think of myself as a halfwit, or something—an not no idiot—cause when people think of a idiot, more’n likely they be thinkin of one of them Mongolian idiots—the ones with they eyes too close together what look like Chinamen an drool a lot an play with theyselfs.”

In the 1994 film adaptation, starring Tom Hanks, the novel’s opening metaphor was changed to, “My mama always said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” The movie version of the thought is the one that is best remembered today.

The Humans (2013)

From the outset, we surmise that the opening words are coming from a non-human—but that’s all we know for sure. And, as the narrator continues, we’re forced to concede that it may also have a wry sense of humor:

“For those that don’t know, a human is a real bipedal life form of midrange intelligence, living a largely deluded existence on a small, waterlogged planet in a very lonely corner of the universe.”

As the tale unfolds, we learn that the narrator is an extra-terrestrial who’s been sent to earth to learn more about human beings. To accomplish the mission, the alien protagonist assumes the form of Andrew Martin, a prominent mathematics professor at Cambridge University. Initially disgusted by almost all things human—especially their penchant for killing each other—the visitor from outer space gradually becomes accustomed to, and even impressed by, many of their unusual practices.

The Midnight Library (2020)

From the opening sentence, readers know the book will likely involve libraries and suicide, but few have a clue—at this early stage—as to where Haig’s speculative fiction novel is going to take them. The novel—a brilliant exposition of the theme of infinite possibilities—became an immediate bestseller and was shortlisted by the British Book Awards for the 2021 Fiction Book of the Year.

Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

Given the longstanding pattern of bestowing unearthly names on beings from other planets, Heinlein immediately gets our attention by going in a completely different direction (his delightful “exception to the rule” opening is now regarded as one of the sci-fi genre’s most outstanding opening lines). The allure of the first sentence is also enhanced by the traditional once upon a time beginning.

In a 2014 SFSignal.com post on “The Best Book Openings,” sci-fi writer John C. Wright wrote about Heinlein’s classic opener:

“The contrast of the oddest of oddities, a Martian, and the most quotidian of names, Smith, is here on display. The reader’s eye is pulled as if magnetically to the next line to discover how a Martian can have so very terrestrial a name. Also present is the slightest hint of one of the philosophical points of the novel: Smith is not a man from Mars, for he is not a man at all, since by upbringing he is an alien. In other words, this story asks what it means to be human, and that opening line serves to establish the question to be asked.”

Stranger in a Strange Land is now regarded as a true American classic. In 1962, it became the first science fiction novel to make The New York Times Best-Seller list (later in the year it also won the Hugo Award for Best Novel). In 2012, the Library of Congress hailed it as one of 88 “Books That Shaped America.“

Lost Horizon (1933)

This is a wonderful opening line, perfectly capturing the mixture of sadness and disappointment that has been experienced by countless middle-aged people over the years when they’ve had some kind of reunion with childhood or adolescent friends.

Practical Magic [Book 1 of The Practical Magic series] (1995)

This is the first sentence of an opening paragraph that extends a warm, almost irresistible, invitation to read on:

“If a damp spring arrived, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on Magnolia Street. It didn’t matter what the problem was—lightning, or locusts, or a death by drowning. It didn’t matter if the situation could be explained by logic, of science, or plain bad luck. As soon as there was a hint of trouble or the slightest misfortune, people began pointing their fingers and placing blame.”

The Book of Magic [Book 3 of The Practical Magic series] (2021)

In a New York Times review, Joanne Ramos wrote: “So opens The Book of Magic, the final installment of Alice Hoffman’s popular Practical Magic series, a page-turning fairy tale of a saga that spans three books, one star-studded movie adaptation and multiple centuries of adventure and misadventure, love lost and found and bottomless cauldrons of sorcery in the lives of the bewitchingly witchy Owens family.”

The opening line warmed my heart, and I believe it will be similarly experienced by friends of libraries everywhere. In the novel’s opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “It was there that Jet Owens saw her fate in a mirror behind the reference desk. Even in her eighties, Jet was still beautiful. Each day she washed with the black soap the family prepared in March during the dark phase of the moon, with every bar then wrapped in crinkly cellophane. Jet had no aches or pains and had never been ill a day in her life, but fate is fate and it can often be what you least expect it to be. On this day, when the daffodils had begun to bloom, Jet saw that she had seven days to live.”

“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.”

Klara and the Sun (2021)

An opening sentence often provides important clues about what is about to unfold, and such is the case with Klara and the Sun, the first novel to come from Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2017.

Since most people would say when we were young, and not when we were new, it comes as no surprise to learn that the narrator and her friends are non-human (given the designation AF—for Artificial Friends—they are robots designed to be friends to their owners). Since AFs depend on sunlight to recharge their batteries, Klara and Rosa’s position near the window becomes vitally important. The entire novel is a compelling allegory about loneliness and the deep need to make a connection in life.

The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

The narrator continued: “Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.“

In a 2003 Preface to a new edition of Jackson’s novel, Stephen King wrote glowingly about this opening: “I think there are few if any descriptive passages in the English language that are finer than this; it is the sort of quiet epiphany every writer hopes for: words that somehow transcend words, words which add up to a total greater than the sum of the parts.“

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: “Immediately, we are drawn into a universe of uncertainty with this immaculate line. Here, for all living creatures, reality can overwhelm and therefore the suggestion of a dream world is a viable alternative. But as we all know, dreams can turn to nightmares and even the hint of what an insect might dream about sends shivers down the spine.“

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

In a 2017 Literary Hub post, Emily Temple hailed this as “The Best Opening Paragraph of All Time,“ and her assessment is easy to understand. I love the entire first paragraph, but the killer sentence is the final one. Did the family members all die as a result of mushroom poisoning? And did they all die at the hand of Merricat, as the narrator and protagonist wishes to be called?

In her post, Temple continued: “This paragraph is brilliant because of Merricat’s voice, and so is the rest of the book. It immediately teaches us who she is, and what this book is going to be like.“ Michael Douglas’s production company adapted the novel into an acceptable 2019 film, but one that didn’t do justice to the novel.

Stillicide: A Novel (2020)

In one sentence, we’re completely hooked. Quickly transported to the opening scene, we see a young, gravely injured boy, lying on the ground just in front of us, his life slowly slipping away. The narrator continues with grisly, but gripping details:

“With the thick rain the blood from the wound ran a thin washed pink.

“Nearby again a pheasant crowed, a klaxon call as they make before thunder.

“The bullet had gone in at the boy’s jaw and removed that side.”

The Metamorphosis (1915)

This line, with its fantastical and highly unexpected ending, has excited readers for more than a century. When the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gabriel García Márquez first read the line as an undergraduate at the National University of Colombia in the late 1940s, the effect was immediate and dramatic. “The first line almost knocked me off the bed. I was so surprised,” he later recalled in a 1981 Paris Review interview. Márquez went on to add: “When I read the line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago. So I immediately started writing short stories.”

One of the most famous first lines in all of literature, it was originally written in German this way: “Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.” Since “Ungeheuren Ungeziefer” has no literal equivalent in English, it has been translated in a variety of different ways for English readers. In a 2015 Guardian article, writer W. B. Gooderham provided an invaluable service by compiling a variety of divergent translations. The version above, the most popular, comes from a 1933 translation by Edwin and Willa Muir. Here are the others:

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” [Stanley Corngold, 1972)

“One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.” [Joachim Neugroschel, 1993]

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed.” [Michael Hofmann, 2007]

“As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin.” [Joyce Crick, 2009]

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa woke from a fitful, dream-filled sleep, he found that he had changed into an enormous bedbug.” [Christopher Moncrieff]

“When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect.” [Susan Bernofsky, 2014]

“One morning Gregor Samsa woke in his bed from uneasy dreams and found he had turned into a large verminous insect” [John R. Williams, 2014]

“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.

Jack’s Magic Beans (2011)

Keene is the author of more than forty books, primarily in the horror, crime, and dark fantasy genres (as much as anyone, he is responsible for the world’s current fascination with zombies). In 2019, when asked by a Goodreads user to identify his favorite opening line, he identified this one.

The Complex (2016)

In 2019, Keene identified this as his second favorite opening line, and it’s easy to understand why. For his favorite, see the other Keene entry.

Sailor Song (1992)

After this nifty tribute to Charles Dickens, the narrator continued: “He was dreaming about his ex-wife Jeannie, and how good she looked in their duster days in Fresno—the clean, simple days, before the baby and the Bakatcha Movement were born. Before the decade came to be known as the Nasty Nineties.“ NOTE: Galaxxy is spelled correctly in the first sentence.

Off Season (1980)

It was openings like this that inspired Stephen King to write: “Ketchum has become a kind of hero to those of us who write tales of terror and suspense. He is, quite simply, one of the best in the business.” And about this particular novel, King wrote that Off Season was “a kind of literary Night of the Living Dead.”

Ketchum has often been dismissed as a purveyor of violent pornography, but that would be writing him off too easily. In 2011, he received the World Horror Convention’s Grand Master Award for outstanding contribution to the horror genre.

Hide and Seek (1984)

The Girl Next Door (1989)

In a 2012 LitReactor.com article (“Storyville: Endings, Twisted and Otherwise”), writer Richard Thomas wrote about opening words: “You need to set your audience up. Whether you are writing a 500-word bit of flash fiction or an epic series, you need to plant that seed…that really gives you a clue as to what is to come.” And about this opener in particular, he wrote: “That is such a great set-up. The story that follows is all about pain and boy, what a hook.”

The Box (1994)

The Lost (2001)

“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.

The Book of Longings (2020)

This was one of my selections for The Top Twenty Opening Lines of 2020 (to be seen here). The idea that Jesus had a wife, and that she is telling the story of their life together, is compelling. It also raises a question few have ever asked: What kind of husband would Jesus have been?

In the novel, Ana continued: “He said he heard rumblings inside me while I slept, a sound like thunder from far over the Nahal Zippori valley or even farther beyond the Jordan. I don’t doubt he heard something. All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night. That my husband bent his heart to mine on our thin straw mat and listened was the kindness I most loved in him. What he heard was my life begging to be born.”

Salem’s Lot (1975)

Great opening lines are often more like lures than hooks, and this one has been beckoning readers since the early stages of King’s career. In a 2020 essay on “Great Hookers I Have Known,“ King wrote about it: “I suppose if I had to pick a favorite opening sentence from my own work—and it still isn’t much of a hooker—it would be the opening sentence of Salem’s Lot.“

The man and the boy turn out to be the man and the girl, a father and daughter—Andy and Charlene “Charlie” McGee—who begin the novel “on the run” from government authorities.

You might also be interested in learning that, seven years earlier, in a 2013 interview, King identified yet another opening line from his works as his personal favorite. For more, see the Needful Things (1991) entry.

The Shining (1977)

This is the novel’s entire first paragraph—the protagonist’s simple but powerful assessment of a man who’s interviewing candidates for the job of off-season caretaker of a grand old hotel in the mountains of Colorado.

In the second paragraph, Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, continued: “Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissy speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.”

In 1980, the novel was adapted into a Stanley Kubrick film with an unforgettable performance by Jack Nicholson. When King first saw the film, he hated it, but ultimately came to respect it as a work of art. He wrote in Danse Macabre (1981); “Even when a director such as Stanley Kubrick makes such a maddening, perverse, and disappointing film as The Shining, it somehow retains a brilliance that is inarguable; it is simply there.”

Cujo (1981)

Here, King immediately gets our attention by juxtaposing the four most innocuous opening words of all time—once upon a time—with three of the most firghtening: a monster came.

The Gunslinger [Book 1 of The Dark Tower series] (1982)

In a 2011 Lit Reactor article, Meredith Borders included this opener in her list of “The Ten Best Opening Lines of Novels.” About it, she wrote: “Stephen King began writing The Gunslinger when he was a sophomore in college; he has said that the opening sentence came to him as a forceful inspiration that he could not ignore. Twelve and a half years later, the novel was published.”

The inspiration for the novel was Robert Browning’s 1852 poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” A few years after the novel was published, King reported, “I played with the idea of trying a long romantic novel embodying the feel, if not the exact sense, of the Browning poem.“ In her 2011 post, Borders agreed that King had accomplished what he set out to do, writing, “The words are stark and lovely, instantly giving the sense that we are in medias res of an epic adventure lasting through time out of mind.”

Christine (1983)

Christine may be the first novel in literary history to feature a lover’s triangle that includes two human beings and an inanimate object. What the reader doesn’t know at the end of this inviting first sentence, however, is that Christine is an inanimate object who will soon become quite animated—and one of the most jealous lovers of all time.

The Dark Half (1989)

Needful Things (1991)

All authors can cite the favorite opening lines they have themselves written, and this one is King’s. In a 2013 interview with The Atlantic’s Joe Fassler, King said: “But I can tell you right now that the best first line I ever wrote—and I learned it from [James] Cain, and learned it from [Douglas] Fairbairn—is the opening of Needful Things. It’s the story about this guy who comes to town, and uses grudges and sleeping animosities among the townspeople to whip everyone up into a frenzy of neighbor against neighbor. And so the story starts off with an opening line, printed by itself on a page in 20-point type: YOU’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.“

King went on to add: “All there by itself on one page, inviting the reader to keep reading. It suggests a familiar story; at the same time, the unusual presentation brings us outside the realm of the ordinary. And this, in a way, is a promise of the book that’s going to come. The story of neighbor against neighbor is the oldest story in the world, and yet this telling is (I hope) strange and somehow different. Sometimes it’s important to find that kind of line: one that encapsulates what’s going to happen later without being a big thematic statement.“

The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)

Lisey’s Story (2006)

The opening line introduces readers to the widow of the famous actor Scott Landon. After two years of struggling with the loss of her husband, she is finally getting around to cleaning out his office. In the process, all kinds of memories come flooding back to her—and, in typical Stephen King fashion, other strange and unusual events also begin to unfold.

In an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit in 2013, King was asked which of his novels was his favorite. While he answered that it was Lisey’s Story, you should know he has answered this question differently over the years. The novel was a favorite of many other people as well, winning the 2006 Bram Stoker Award.

“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.

Later (2021)

The words come from Jamie Conklin, a young boy who is living in Manhattan with single mom Tia, a literary agent. Even though the opening words have a Holden Caulfield feel to them, Jamie is not an ordinary boy. Since birth, he has possessed a special ability to communicate with dead people.

In the opening paragraph, Jamie continued: “It’s about a certain word I keep using. I learned a lot of four-letter words from my mother and used them from an early age (as you will soon find out), but this is one with five letters. The word is later, as in “Later on” and “Later I found out” and “It was only later that I realized.”

Shoeless Joe (1982)

The narrator and protagonist is Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer who just happens to share the author’s surname. He goes on to quote his father as saying: “He’d put on fifty pounds and the spring was gone from his step in the outfield, but he could still hit. Oh, how that man could hit. No one has ever been able to hit like Shoeless Joe.“

In the novel, Kinsella hears a voice telling him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of a huge corn field. The field, he is told, will give Shoeless Joe Jackson, the central figure in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, a chance at redemption. The novel was acclaimed by critics from the outset and went on to win the 1982 Books in Canada First Novel Award.

After the novel was adapted into the 1989 film Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, the saying “If you build it, he will come” went on to become a cultural meme The saying was recently ranked 39th on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movie Quotes of all time.

Pew (2020)

It’s not easy to write a compelling opening sentence of 100-plus words (this one has 114), but Lacey demonstrates that it can be done—if you have the talent.

Rosemary’s Baby (1967)

Rosemary, especially, cannot believe the good news, but, from the very beginning, something seems off—and it ultimately turns out to be horribly off.

Levin’s bestselling novel touched off a huge boom in horror fiction in the late sixties. A year later, the novel was adapted into a Roman Polanski film, starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and, in an Oscar-winning role, Ruth Gordon.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

I especially like what writer Danielle Karthauser said about this classic opening line in a 2016 post on Mugglenet.com: “This first line literally gives the reader all they need to know about his character. Author C. S. Lewis is telling his readers, ’Here is my main character. Do you think he has an ugly name? Yeah, he does. Does his personality match it? Almost.’“

In the novel—the third book in The Chronicles of Narnia series—the narrator continued with one other savory tidbit about the protagonist: “His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can’t tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none.“

The Silver Chair (1953)

This opening line from Book 4 in The Chronicles of Narnia series couldn’t be simpler, or more affecting. Close your eyes, and the scene appears almost automatically in your mind.

The narrator continued: “She was crying because they had been bullying her. This is not going to be a school story, so I shall say as little as possible about Jill’s school, which is not a pleasant subject. It was ’Co-educational,’ a school for both boys and girls, what used to be called a ’mixed’ school; some said it was not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it. These people had the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they liked. And unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls liked was bullying the others.“

The Telephone Booth Indian (1942)

These are the first words of the Preface to the book. Liebling continued: “The details are not too clear in my mind, as I read the story in a hygiene reader which formed part of the curriculum of my fourth year in elementary school, but I have no doubt it is essentially correct.”

The Call of the Wild (1903)

From the phrasing of the first sentence, it becomes clear that Buck is a dog, and not a human being. The opening words also offer the intriguing suggestion that this tale will be told from a canine perspective, not a human one.

The narrator continued: “Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.“

“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.”

Year of the Reaper (2021)

This is a terrific first line—straightforward, succinct, but highly evocative. The narrator continued: “This Cas had learned the hard way, early on, when the plague had struck and the bodies lay blanketed around him. And as he crossed the bridge, the ghost keeping pace by his side, it became clear he would have to pretend harder. This particular spirit was growing suspicious.”

The protagonist, we will shortly learn, is 18-year-old Lord Cassia, a young nobleman recently emerged from prison and returning to his home in the middle of a devastating worldwide plague and after a long, costly war with a neighboring kingdom. About the book, Jennifer Harlan. said in a New York Times review: “This moving book explores what it means to rebuild and how much history depends on who is left to tell it.”

Foreign Affairs (1984)

To be successful, a novel with a beginning like this requires what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called a “willing suspension of disbelief.“ And a novel with this premise is only going to achieve such a result if the writer has the talent to pull it off. Happily, Lurie had exactly the right stuff, as we see in librarian Nancy Pearl’s 2006 assessment of the book on National Public Radio (NPR):

“There’s a wonderful invisible dog named Fido…as the protagonist Vinnie Miner has named him [who] always appears when she’s feeling sorry for herself. In London, Vinnie will encounter love, a mysterious housekeeper, and ultimately learn that perhaps Fido just might be her truest companion. Lurie’s novel won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize and is still a wonderful reading choice for anyone looking for marvelous writing, an original take on what could be considered a hackneyed plot, and characters that will stay with you long after you finish the book. Especially Fido.”

The Bringer of Happiness (2022)

Miracle at St. Anna (2002)

The opening words immediately pique a reader’s curiosity. Does Sam Train become invisible literally, or metaphorically? We simply must read on.

The Good Lord Bird (2013)

The opening words come from narrator and protagonist Henry Shackleford, a former slave who introduces himself in a most memorable way. As an eleven-year-old (or thereabouts) baby-faced boy in the Kansas Territory of 1856, he accidentally meets the legendary abolitionist John Brown, who mistakenly believes him to be a girl, gives him a dress to wear, and enlists him as a good luck charm in his anti-slavery crusade. As the tale unfolds, Henry—dubbed “Little Onion” by Brown—discovers it is easier to keep up the charade than to reveal his true gender. The novel won the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction.

The Road (2006)

GUEST COMMENTARY from Dr. Peter Olsson, a New Hampshire psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who writes: “In the opening words of a novel that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, McCarthy sets the mood in dark, cold, and starkly crafted sentences that plunge the reader directly into a post-apocalyptic America. In the opening paragraph, the narrator added”:

“His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none.”

Dr. Olsson continued: “In a searing novel described by Dennis Lehane as ’the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war,’ a desperate and passionately protective father travels with his beloved young son down a perilous, decimated terrain toward a distant ocean beach that serves as a fragile symbol of hope. In their journey, they face terrifying encounters with people rendered subhuman by hunger and depraved environmental conditions. McCarthy is a master of probing, dark, penetrating language that explores the truth of authentic emotional questions through his wordcraft.“ See the opening line of Olsson’s 2019 memoir Janusian Days here.

Nutshell (2016)

Of McEwan’s nineteen novels, perhaps the most imaginative is Nutshell, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the point of view of a fetus (yes, you heard that right).

In a 2016 Wall Street Journal article, Michael W. Miller wrote: “The idea for the extremely unusual narrator of Ian McEwan’s new novel Nutshell first came to him while he was chatting with his pregnant daughter-in-law. ’We were talking about the baby, and I was very much aware of the baby as a presence in the room,’ he recalls. He jotted down a few notes, and soon afterward, daydreaming in a long meeting, the first sentence of the novel popped into his head. In an Irish Times review, John Boyne wrote: “McEwan has long been considered a master of the opening chapter...and here he makes even more of this talent with an opening sentence that sets out his stall in nine words: “So here I am, upside down in a woman.“

The idea of a novel being narrated by a fetus sounds pretty far-fetched, but once we suspend our disbelief and place ourselves squarely in the hands of a talented storyteller, it works surprisingly well. Alarmed by the murderous plans being hatched by his mother and her brother-in-law, the narrating fetus continues:

“That was in my careless youth. Now, fully inverted, not an inch of space to myself, knees crammed against belly, my thoughts as well as my head are fully engaged. I’ve no choice, my ear is pressed all day and night against the bloody walls. I listen, make mental notes, and I’m troubled. I’m hearing pillow talk of deadly intent and I’m terrified by what awaits me, by what might draw me in.”

Twilight (2005)

In a 2016 article in The Guardian, Ciara Murphy wrote: “Love it or hate it, Twilight has what I consider to be one of the best opening lines in YA fiction. We’re immediately thrust into the action, with a whole backstory to catch up on and a heroine who (assuming she’s going to narrate the entire book) needs to execute an escape Houdini would be proud of. This is what I call a hook.”

The opening words come from a teenage girl named Bella Swan, who continues: “I stared across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and she looked pleasantly back at me.” And in the next paragraph, Bella added: “At least it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.”

New Moon [Book 2 of The Twilight Saga] (2006)

Eclipse [Book 3 of The Twilight Saga] (2007)

Circe (2018)

In a 2019 “Ask the Editor” post on PublishersWeekly.com, Betty Kelly Sargent, the founder and CEO of Bookworks, hailed this as one of her favorite opening lines. When asked by a reader, “Do you think it’s essential to start a novel with a dynamite first sentence?” Sargent replied:

“Absolutely. Your first sentence must entice, impress, surprise, and maybe even shock the reader. With all the competition for a reader’s attention these days, it’s important to try to hook your reader instantly, so spending the time it takes to craft a powerful opening sentence is well worth the effort…. Think of the opening sentence as an invitation to read your story—an invitation that’s hard to refuse.”

In Miller’s acclaimed re-telling of the myth of Circe, the protagonist continued in the opening paragraph: “They called me nymph, assuming I would be like my mother and aunts and thousand cousins. Least of the lesser goddesses, our powers were so modest they could scarcely ensure our eternities. We spoke to fish and nurtured flowers, coaxed drops from the clouds or salt from the waves. That word, nymph, paced out the length and breadth of our futures. In our language, it means not just goddess, but bride.”

The Bone Clocks (2014)

The opening words come from 15-year-old Holly Sykes, who is wildly infatuated with a 24-year-old man named Vinny. In the opening paragraph, Holly continued: “Last night, the words just said themselves, ‘Christ, I really love you, Vin.’ and Vinny puffed out a cloud of smoke and did this Prince Charles voice, ‘One must say, one’s frightfully partial to spending time with you too, Holly Sykes,’ and I nearly weed myself laughing.”

In a New York Times review, Michiko Kakutani described the novel as “Dazzling,” adding “Mitchell’s heavy arsenal of talents is showcased in these pages: his symphonic imagination; his ventriloquist’s ability to channel the voices of myriad characters from different time zones and cultures; his intuitive understanding of children and knack for capturing their solemnity and humor; and his ear for language—its rhythms, sounds and inflections.”

The Thirteenth Disciple (1931)

Suicide at age five? A perfect example of what writers describe as a “hook.“

Spartacus (1933)

One of the most gratifying aspects of my research for this project was discovering spectacular opening paragraphs in the works of authors I’d never heard of. Mitchell, a popular Scottish author in the early decades of the twentieth century, published many novels, including Spartacus, under his own name, and many others under his pen name, Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

This is not the Spartacus novel that inspired Stanley Kubrick’s popular 1960 film adaptation, though. Douglas relied on Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay of Howard Fast’s 1951 novel of the same name. Mitchell’s opening line above demonstrates great flair and style, and I feel certain that, nearly twenty years later, Howard Fast must have devoured Mitchell’s earlier work when he was writing his version of the Spartacus legend.

My Mother’s House (2020)

After seven words, we are fully engaged, and the narrator makes sure we stay that way as the opening paragraph unfolds:

“Difé. Melting windowpanes rolled down the aluminum siding, dripping polyurethane tears. Orange, blue, and yellow flames hollered their frustration into the icicles along the struggling gutters. The two-story (three, if you counted the basement), one-family (two, again, if the basement was included) house had had enough. Fed up with the burden of its owner’s absurd hoarding, inexcusable slovenliness, and abuse of power, it spontaneously combusted everywhere a power source sprouted unkempt.”

Difé is a Haitian creole word that translates into a number of English words, including fire, arson, ablaze, flammable, fiery, and ignitable.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985)

In a 2017 blog post titled “20 Strategies to Write Your Novel’s First Paragraph,” writer, editor, and Bookfox.com founder John Fox wrote: “Everyone tells you to seek clarity in your opening, to let the reader know where you’re going to take them.” About this particular opening, though, Fox went on to write:

“Murakami blows that advice up. I love how he’s deliberately playing with confusion, so that you know that the narrator is moving inside the elevator, but you have no idea what direction. It’s a feeling of complete lack of control and awareness. It’s a fantastic mystery to start the novel, and dovetails so nicely with the wonderland of the rest of the book.”

After Dark (2004)

This is a provocative opening line—ambiguous enough to pique our attention and specific enough to suggest a far-off, bird’s-eye view of the large urban setting in which the events of the novel will unfold. In the novel’s second paragraph, the narrator advances the idea that a city is not unlike a biological organism:

“Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature—or more likely a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms.“

Reading the opening words, I thought to myself, “This is like a wide-angle shot in a film.” Imagine, then, my pleasant surprise when, almost twenty years later, Murakami wrote in a 2023 Introduction to the work: “After Dark is a very cinematic novel, written in a cinematic style. The story progressed as I followed images I had in my mind (like chasing after colorful butterflies in a forest).”

The Nice and the Good (1968)

In the novel’s second paragraph, the narrator continued: “At one moment a lazy fat man, a perfect sphere his loving wife called him, his name Octavian Gray, was slowly writing a witty sentence in a neat tiny hand upon creamy official paper while he inhaled from his breath the pleasant sleepy smell of an excellent lunch-time burgundy. Then came the shot.”

Bend Sinister (1947)

The novel begins with this impressive opening description—visual, textured, and layered with potential meaning.

Many years later, Nabokov offered this lovely thought about the entire novel: “Bend Sinister was the first novel I wrote in America, and that was half a dozen years after she and I had adopted each other.”

The Time Traveller’s Wife (2003)

In this hard-to-classify novel (part romance novel, part science-fiction), the opening words come from Chicago artist Clare Anne Abshire, wife of Henry DeTamble, a librarian with a rare genetic disorder that causes him to involuntarily travel through time.

The Time Traveller’s Wife was a stunningly successful debut novel for Niffenegger, a Chicago visual artist who said she wrote the book as a metaphor for her many failed romantic relationships. An immediate New York Times bestseller, it was named the 2003 Amazon Book of the Year.

Her Fearful Symmetry (2009)

A Deadly Education [Book I of the Scholomance trilogy] (2020)

An opening line like, “I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he tried to kill me” would be an excellent way to begin a novel. But after the second time he saved my life? Now that’s an opening line that truly piques our interest.

Little Cruelties (2020)

In a review on SwirlandThread.com, writer Mairéad Hearne wrote, “There is almost an expectation with a Liz Nugent book of a dramatic and game-setting opening line and in Our Little Cruelties that expectation is very much fulfilled.”

The Third Policeman (1967)

Originally written in 1939-40, The Third Policeman failed to find publication until 1967, a year after O’Nolan’s death. In How to Read Literature (2013), Terry Eagleton hailed it as a great Irish novel, and said about the first paragraph: “It opens with these chilling words.”

The unnamed narrator turns out to be a dead man talking, but readers don’t learn this until the end of the novel. In a 1940 letter to William Saroyan—who was trying to help find an American publisher—O’Nolan wrote: “When you get to the end of this book you realize that my hero or main character (he’s a heel and a killer) has been dead throughout the book and that all the queer ghastly things which have been happening to him are happening in a sort of hell which he earned for the killing.”

Delirium (2011)

The year is 2091 and the narrator is Lena Haloway, a 17-year-old girl who continues: “Everyone else in my family has had the procedure already. My older sister, Rachel, has been disease free for nine years now. She’s been safe from love for so long, she says she can’t even remember its symptoms. I’m scheduled to have my procedure in exactly ninety-five days.”

In a 2016 Guardian article on “The Best Opening Lines in Children’s and Young Adult Fiction,” Ciara Murphy wrote: “From the first line of her novel, Oliver welcomes us into a world very much unlike our own, with a unique twist on the dystopian theme, and promises us a love story quite unlike any we’ve ever read before.”

Animal Farm (1945)

The narrator continued: “With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.”

The drunken, careless farmer is the thinly disguised czar Nicholas II, and the unfolding tale a brilliant satire of a high-minded revolution that descends into totalitarianism. When Animal Farm was first published in England in 1945, it was subtitled A Fairy Story. A year later, when the book appeared in the United States, the subtitle was eliminated completely in some printings and replaced with A Satire or A Contemporary Satire in others.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

It’s common for dystopian novels to open with a disquieting or unsettling hint, and Orwell’s classic tale does that by mentioning a clock number that doesn’t exist. In How to Read Literature (2013), Terry Eagleton wrote:

“This first sentence gains its effect from carefully dropping the word ‘thirteen’ into an otherwise unremarkable piece of description, thus signaling that the scene is set either in some unfamiliar civilization or in the future. Some things haven’t changed (the month is still named April, and winds can still be bitter), but others have, and part of the effect of the sentence springs from this juxtaposition of the ordinary and the familiar.”

You might be interested in learning that Orwell was not the first writer to craft an opening line about a clock striking thirteen. Almost a half century earlier, the legendary Yiddish writer Aleichem began a short story that began “The clock struck thirteen” (see the entry here).

My Name is Red (1998)

The narrator is Elegant Effendi, a Turkish miniaturist who is clearly speaking from the afterlife. He continued: “As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below.”

The Kiss of Deception [Book 1 of The Remnant Chronicles] (2014)

The intriguing opening words come from narrator and protagonist Princess Lia, a 17-year-old girl whose happy world has been shattered when her royal parents arranged for her to be married to a man she has never met, the prince of a neighboring kingdom. In a 2016 “Nerdy Talks” blog post, Eunice Moral included it in her “Best Opening Lines” compilation.

In the novel’s second paragraph, Lia continued: “The wind knew. It was the first of June, but cold gusts bit at the hilltop citadelle as fiercely as deepest winter, shaking the windows with curses and winding through drafty halls with warning whispers. There was no escaping what was to come.”

The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail (2013)

This is a magnificent first sentence, and one could easily make the argument that it deserves to be included in any discussion of the greatest opening lines in all of children’s literature.

According to writer Lee Wind, Peck made a startling revelation at a 2013 meeting of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). In a workshop on “Shaping Story From the Opening Line,” the legendary author told participants that the line didn’t come to him until eleven months into his work on the novel, when he was on page 124 of the fifth draft of the book. Immediately sensing that the perfect opening line had arrived, he quickly sat down to re-write the beginning of the tale. About the long wait, he happily admitted, “It was worth it.”

In that same workshop, Peck told participants that books for younger people must suggest action that has begun before the opening line. With children’s books, he said, “We start in the story, not at the beginning.”

The Club Dumas (2003)

The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)

The Light Fantastic [Book 2 in Discworld Series] (1986)

I’ve always been a great fan of Pratchett’s ability to blend evocative imagery with wry humor, and of all his opening lines, this is my personal favorite. As an experiment, I asked ChatGPT to do an analysis of the first sentence. I think you’ll be interested in the exceptionally high quality of the response:

“Fans of Terry Pratchett and his Discworld novels often appreciate his ability to infuse profound observations and thought-provoking ideas into his humorous and fantastical narratives. This line, in particular, captures a sense of the world’s weary beauty and the subtle doubts that can emerge even in the face of everyday miracles like the rising sun.“

Wyrd Sisters [Book 6 in Discworld Series] (1988)

In all of his writings—and especially in his first sentences—Pratchett has demonstrated himself to be a grandmaster of metaphorical language. In this one, after teasing us with the more plebeian images of howling wind and stabbing lightning, he offers a simile (‘“like an inefficient assassin”) that is so ingenious the author almost seems to be bragging. It’s almost as if he’s sending a subliminal message that might go something like this: “Yes, dear reader, I know that’s a good one, and if you keep reading, you’ll find similar inspired creations awaiting you within.”

Night Watch [Book 29 in Discworld Series] (2002)

This is an absolutely delightful first sentence, almost daring readers to wonder if such a thing could actually happen in real life. In a 2015 blog post, Dean Koontz hailed it as a “quick-punch” opening line, adding that it “should intrigue with its mix of the hard-boiled and the comic.”

Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

In 2006, The American Book Review ranked this Number 3 on its classic list of “The 100 Best First Lines from Novels.” Younger readers may be forgiven for not recognizing this classic opening line as an unparalleled description of a WWII V-2 rocket propelling toward its target. Many modern readers also fail to appreciate how the book’s metaphorical title perfectly captures the parabolic trajectory of such a rocket from launch to final impact.

After the book was named co-winner (with Isaac Bashevis Singers’s A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories) of the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction, the notoriously reclusive Pynchon declined the award. Sensing a rare publicity opportunity, the president of Viking Press suggested that Professor Irwin Corey, an up-and-coming comedian, accept the award on Pynchon’s behalf. During Corey’s mock acceptance speech, a streaker famously ran across the stage and throughout the auditorium.

Anthem (1937)

First sentences don’t get much better, and we quickly deduce that this one is coming from the dystopian future. The narrator and protagonist—named Equality 7-2521—is an acutely intelligent young man the government has assigned to work as a street sweeper.

As Equality 7-2521 continues, notice how the first-person pronoun I has been completely eliminated from his vocabulary: “It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!”

The Secret River (1955)

After Rawlings’ unexpected death from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 57 in 1953, the completed manuscript for The Secret River was found among her papers. Her only children’s book, it was published posthumously in 1955. In the book, the narrator continued:

“Calpurnia is a little girl and Buggy-horse is her dog. Her name is Calpurnia because she was born to be a poet. Buggy-horse is a peculiar name, but even when he was a puppy, his back dipped in the middle and he had an enormously fat stomach, just like a little old buggy horse. He could not possibly have been called Rex or Rover or any ordinary name for a dog. Calpurnia wrote her first poem about him:

“My dog’s name is Buggy-horse. Of course.“

“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.”

Still Life With Woodpecker (1980)

This is the attention-grabbing first sentence of the Prologue to the book. A Prologue or Preface is generally a kind of Author’s Note to the reader, and, for the most part, is not generally regarded as a novel’s “opening line.” It’s rare for a Prologue to open so strikingly, but this one is a refreshing exception to the rule.

The official opening words of the novel—at the beginning of Chapter One—are also pretty special: “In the last quarter of the twentieth century, at a time when Western civilization was declining too rapidly for comfort and yet too slowly to be very exciting, much of the world sat on the edge of an increasingly expensive theater seat, waiting—with various combinations of dread, hope, and ennui—for something momentous to occur.”

A few years back, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a classic Dan Fogelberg song was inspired by this novel. Here’s how the singer-songwriter expressed the thought in an interview: “Make Love Stay was based on a book written by Tom Robbins called Still Life With Woodpecker. It was wonderful. It presumed the most difficult concept a man in the late twentieth century has to really wrestle with is how to make love stay. I loved the idea. I thought that was a great philosophical moment, so I just wrote some music, basically to his ideas.”

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

This metaphorical masterpiece is from “Today’s Special” which appears to be a kind of preface or prologue to the work. The narrator continued in a figurative frenzy:

“Slavic people get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

“The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip… [ellipsis in original]

“The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized.”

Sabbath’s Theater (1995)

This is the troubling dilemma facing sixty-four-year-old Mickey Sabbath, a former puppeteer and aging sexual libertine. He’s been thrust into this situation by his lover of many years, Drenka Balich. It’s a delicious tale, and it went on to win the 1995 National Book Award for Fiction.

In the novel, the narrator continued about Mickey’s unfortunate situation: “This was the ultimatum, the maddeningly improbable, wholly unforeseen ultimatum, that the mistress of fifty-two delivered in tears to her lover of sixty-four on the anniversary of an attachment that had persisted with an amazing licentiousness—and that, no less amazingly, had stayed their secret—for thirteen years. But now with hormonal infusions ebbing, with the prostate enlarging, with probably no more than another few years of semi-dependable potency still his—with perhaps not that much more life remaining—here at the approach of the end of everything, he was being charged, on pain of losing her, to turn himself inside out.”

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone [Book 1 in the Harry Potter Series] (1997)

This was the opening line of the very first Harry Potter novel, and by adding “thank you very much” at the end, Rowling subtly but skillfully adds a “thou doth protest too much” quality to the Dursleys’ assertion that they are a perfectly normal family.

The Harry Potter series went on to become one of the most successful in literary history, but it had an inauspicious beginning. Rowling, an unknown writer at the time, received a modest advance (1,500 pounds) and the initial print run was a puny 500 copies, almost all expected to be purchased by school libraries.

In a 2016 Guardian article on the best opening lines in children’s novels, Ciara Murphy wrote: “If ever we needed confirmation that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were, in fact, not normal at all, this line is it! But by emphasizing so strongly the Dursleys’ pride in their supposed normality, Rowling also hints at the existence of other, perhaps more ‘abnormal’ dimensions to reality, setting us up perfectly for a book filled with witches, wizards and dark forces….”

In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.”

In an October 17, 2019 article in the Independent, Ellie Harrison included Rowling’s opening line on her list of “The 27 Best Opening Lines in Books, from Rebecca to The Great Gatsby.”

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets [Book 2 in the Harry Potter Series] (1998)

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [Book 3 in the Harry Potter Series] (1999)

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire [Book 4 in the Harry Potter Series] (2000)

In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict, and unoccupied.”

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [Book 5 in the Harry Potter Series] (2003)

In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “Cars that were usually gleaming stood dusty in their drives and lawns that were once emerald green lay parched and yellowing; the use of hosepipes had been banned due to drought. Deprived of their usual car-washing and lawn-mowing pursuits, the inhabitants of Privet Drive had retreated into the shade of their cool houses, windows thrown wide in the hope of tempting in a nonexistent breeze. The only person left outdoors was a teenage boy who was lying flat on his back in a flower bed outside number four.”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Book 6 in the Harry Potter Series] (2005)

The narrator continued: “He was waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring, and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else. The more he attempted to focus on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his political opponents.”

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [Book 7 in the Harry Potter Series] (2007)

Contact (1985)

In this acclaimed debut novel—which won the 1986 Locus Award for Best First Novel—the narrator portentously describes the birth of Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway. As the story unfolds, Ellie goes on to become a child prodigy and, as an adult, a leading figure in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The first work on Contact began in the late 1970s as a screenplay by Sagan, already a world-famous astronomer, and his future wife Ann Druyan. In 1981, when development of the film stalled, Simon and Schuster stepped forward with a staggering two million dollar advance to turn the screenplay into a novel. It was the largest book advance ever offered at the time, and the investment paid off handsomely. It went on to become one of the Top Ten bestselling novels of 1985, selling nearly two million copies.

Predictably, the success of the book revived interest in a film, and the novel was adapted into a 1997 film—also a critical and commercial success—with Jody Foster playing the role of Arroway.

The Fur Person (1957)

These are the opening words of a charming novel inspired by Sarton’s own cat, Tom Jones. In a 2015 “Conscious Cat” blog post, writer and cat lover Ingrid King hailed the The Fur Person as “one of the most endearing cat stories I’ve ever read.” About the book, King added: “This little book captures the essence of what a cat is all about in the beautiful prose of this gifted and sensitive writer and poet.”

And, speaking of beautiful prose, Sarton’s novel contains one of my favorite examples of the literary device known as chiasmus:

“A Fur Person is a cat who had decided to stay with people as long as he lives. This can only happen if a human being has imagined a part of himself into a cat just as the cat has imagined part of himself into a human being.“

For more information on chiasmus, go here.

Lincoln in the Bardo (2017)

The opening words come from Hans Vollman, a former printer who, after his unexpected death, exists in the Bardo, a space between death and the afterlife. Vollman and some of his ghostlike compatriots go on to figure prominently in the period just after the death of Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie.

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife (2006)

It’s rare to find opening lines about the subject of literary opening lines, and this one has to be regarded as the best. If you’re reading it for the first time, the words do not come from a person who loves books, but from an animal—a rat named Firmin. When he was born in the basement of a Boston bookstore in 1960, Firmin was the 13th baby born to an alcoholic mother rat who had twelve nipples.

As the runt of the litter, Firmin had to do something to survive, so he began nibbling on the pages of his bedding, an old, discarded copy of Finnegan’s Wake. Firmin’s unusual diet had a transformative effect, allowing him to read and think symbolically. As he grew older, his literary tastes grew more and more refined, and his sense of alienation from his fellow creatures increased—leading him to make dismissive, but brilliant, remarks about them. My favorite was this one: “Thanks to their dwarfish imaginations and short memories they did not ask for a lot, mostly just food and fornication, and they got enough of both to take them through life.”

The first paragraph of Firmin is spectacular, and the second may be even better, capturing the almost universal experience of anyone who has chosen to write for a living: “In all my life struggling to write I have struggled with nothing so manfully—yes, that’s the word, manfully—as with openers. It has always seemed to me that if I could just get that bit right all the rest would follow automatically. I thought of that first sentence as a kind of semantic womb stuffed with the busy embryos of unwritten pages, brilliant little nuggets of genius practically panting to be born. From that grand vessel the entire story would, so to speak, ooze forth. What a delusion! Exactly the opposite was true.”

Old Man’s War (2005)

This unusual statement comes from narrator and protagonist John Perry, a retired advertising writer who—at some unspecified time in the future—joins the Colonial Defense Forces, undergoes a process in which his mind is genetically reassigned to a new body, and ultimately engages in heroic exploits. This was Scalzi’s debut novel, and the first in a series of six “Old Man’s War” novels. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2006.

Redshirts (2012)

The Lovely Bones (2002)

The narrator and protagonist is Susie Salmon, a 14-year-old girl who, after having been raped and murdered by a man in her own neighborhood, watches from heaven as life unfolds for her family, friends, and the murderer. The book went on to win the 2003 American Booksellers Association Adult Fiction Book of the Year.

In a 2016 Bustle.com post, actor and writer Charlotte Ahlin included this on her list of “The 10 Most Terrifying Opening Lines from Books.” About it, she wrote: “If gruesome murder terrifies you, then here’s a killer first line. Granted, the rest of The Lovely Bones is more sad than thrilling and terrifying. But there’s something so matter-of-fact about the opening line and the introduction to Susie’s murder. You’re not sure exactly what you’re in for, but you know that something disturbing is coming your way.”

Where the Wild Things Are (1963)

In a 2023 Telegraph article (“The Art of a Brilliant (or Awful) Opening Line”), art critic Tristram Fane Saunders reported that Oxford Professor of Poetry A. E. Stallings regarded this as “the most perfect opening sentence in children’s 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.”

Black Beauty (1877)

The opening paragraph reads like the beginning of almost any autobiography you’ve ever read. As readers begin the second paragraph, however, it quickly becomes apparent that this is not the autobiography of a human being:

“While I was young I lived upon my mother’s milk, as I could not eat grass. In the daytime I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her. When it was hot, we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold, we had a warm shed near the grove.”

The Paradise Gig [Book 15 of Key West Capers series] (2020)

The opening scene is set up by Nacho, an even older Chihuahua this year, in his second narrator role in a series of novels that were described by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as “Funny, elegantly written, and hip.” Nacho continued:

“That’s one way of looking at it. But you could also say the story really started way back in 1964, long before I was even born, and that things had been sort of simmering very slowly ever since.”

Relative Humidity (to be published Jan. 26, 2023)

I’m a big fan of Laurence Shames and a great admirer of his opening lines. The opener of Relative Humidity, his most recent work, is like a combination punch in boxing—first the set-up, then the sting. When I asked Shames if there was a backstory behind the opener, he replied:

“I’ve always enjoyed playing around with the conventions of the mystery novel, turning them upside-down or inside-out whenever possible. In this opening, I wanted to do the complete opposite of the grab-the-reader-by-the-throat first beat. I wanted it to be as quiet as possible—though, of course, if the narrative stayed ‘calm and peaceful’ there would be no book, as every reader of commercial fiction already knows. So the zinger, while inevitable, is meant as a payoff for the reader’s patience and as reassurance that the mayhem will soon begin.”

Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)

This is the first sentence of a letter from English explorer Robert Walton to his sister Margaret Saville. While on a scientific expedition to the North Pole, Captain Walton’s crew see a man of enormous size driving a dog sled. A few hours later, they discover a half-frozen, emaciated man—Victor Frankenstein—who has been in pursuit of the gigantic figure. The rest of the story slowly unfolds in this epistolary novel that went on to become a classic in world literature.

The story behind the creation of the tale is also quite interesting. On a dark, rainy evening in June of 1816, 18-year-old Mary Shelley and new husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, five years her senior, were guests of Lord Byron, then twenty-eight, at his villa in Geneva, Switzerland. Also present that evening was John Polidori, Byron’s personal physician.

After discussing some German horror stories that had recently appeared in a French translation, Byron offered a whimsical challenge: “We will each write a ghost story.” Mary Shelley struggled at first, but an idea eventually popped into her mind. Here’s how she put it in an 1831 Introduction to a revised version of the story: “Perhaps a corpse would be reanimated; galvanism had given token of such things; perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together and endured with vital warmth.” Galvanism, you should know, was a recent coinage inspired by the work of Italian physician Italo Galvani (1737-98), who discovered that legs of dead frogs twitched when a current of electricity was applied to them.

Later that evening, Shelley was lying in bed, half-asleep, when an image formed in her mind. A man was “kneeling beside the thing he had put together,” she wrote in that 1831 Introduction. As her imagination took in “the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,” she opened her eyes in a state of fright—and an idea for a novel was born. The first edition of the tale was published anonymously in London on January 1, 1818, when Shelley was only twenty years old. Her name first appeared in a second edition, published in 1821.

Grasshopper Jungle (2014)

The opening reflections come from 16-year-old Austin Szerba, an Iowa high school student who, along with his best friend Robby Brees, is about to do some really dumb—and really dangerous things—when they accidentally unleash an invasion of six-feet tall praying mantises into the world.

In a New York Times review, Clive Thompson wrote: “Grasshopper Jungle is a rollicking tale that is simultaneously creepy and hilarious. Its propulsive plot would be delightful enough on its own, but Smith’s ability to blend teenage drama into the bug invasion is a literary joy to behold.”

The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956)

The novel gets off to a great start with these opening lines, but it begins to soar when the narrator continues:

“They understood quite a number of barks: the barks for ‘Out, please!’ ‘In, please!’ ‘Hurry up with my dinner’ and ‘What about a walk?’ And even when they could not understand, they could often guess—if looked at soulfully or scratched by an eager paw. Like many other much-loved humans, they believed that they owned their dogs, instead of realizing that their dogs owned them. Pongo and Missis found this touching and amusing and let their pets think it was true.”

At some point, I’ll be featuring this in a post on “20 of the Best Opening Lines from Animal Narrators and Protagonists.” If you’d like to nominate any candidates, let me know.

The Benefactor (1963)

The opening lines of Sontag’s debut novel pique our curiosity. What is the nature of the preoccupation? How has it changed? For those of us who’ve experienced a youthful preoccupation calmed by the years, there’s an immediate identification with the narrator, an aging French writer known only as Hippolyte.

As the narrator continues, our curiosity is further heightened: “In the thirty years which have passed, the preoccupation has changed its form, become inverted so to speak. When it began, it grew in me and emptied me out. I ignored it at first, then admitted it to myself, then sought consolation from friends, then resigned myself to it, and finally learned to exploit it for my own wisdom. Now, instead of being inside me, my preoccupation is a house in which I live; in which I live, more or less comfortably, roaming from room to room.”

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)

Great opening lines often create a sense of heightened expectation, and there are few that rival this one—which prompted Colin Falconer to write in a 2013 blog post (“The Best 43 Opening Lines in Novel Writing History”): “Yes, yes, yes! What if?”

The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008)

This candid declaration comes from Enzo, an aging Golden Retriever who from early life has felt like a human trapped in a dog’s body (he was masterfully “voiced” by Kevin Costner in a 2019 film adaptation). As Enzo approaches the end of life, he is heartened by a belief that, after death, he will be reincarnated as a human being.

Enzo went on to complete his opening thought this way: “I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysyllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences.”

At some point, I’ll be featuring this in a post on “20 of the Best Opening Lines from Animal Narrators and Protagonists.” If you’d like to nominate any candidates, let me know.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985)

The narrator continued: “His name was Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and if his name—in contrast to the names of other gifted abominations, de Sade’s, for instance, or Saint-Just’s, Fouché’s, Bonaparte’s, etc.—has been forgotten today, it is certainly not because Grenouille fell short of these more famous blackguards when it came to arrogance, misanthropy, immorality, or, more succinctly, to wickedness, but because his gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent.”

In a 2023 Guardian article, Irish writer Liz Nugent included this opener in her list of “The Top Ten First Lines in Fiction.“ She wrote: “France in this era...gave us female nudes, silk-clothed nobility in powdered wigs and pastoral images of the peasantry. The most notable books of the century were Les Liaisons Dangereuses, depicting a time of decadence when France loosened her stays for a moment and Candide, bitterly satirical, blasphemous and seditious. And into this time comes a man, at once gifted and abominable. Here we have two questions: What is his great gift and more thrillingly, what is his abomination? The answers do involve female nudes but not in a way you could possibly predict.“

Perfume is one of the best-selling German novels of the 20th century, selling more than twenty million copies in more than twenty different languages.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

So begins the story of a human-looking extraterrestrial being who lands on earth in hopes of finding an eventual destination for the desperate citizens on his dying planet Anthea. After his arrival, he takes the name Thomas Jerome Newton, insinuates himself into the human population, and begins to implement his plan.

When the novel was adapted into a 1976 film starring David Bowie, it was only moderately successful, despite stunning visuals and an inspired performance by Bowie. The film has since become a cult classic, and it continues to hold an almost religious significance for Bowie fans. When the film was restored and re-released on its 40th anniversary in 2016, cinematographer Tony Richmond said about the casting of Bowie: “I can’t imagine any other actor in that role. It wasn’t just his defining role, but it was the role for him. He kind of glided through it like an alien, and with his face with that white, pasty skin, he was just absolutely perfect.”

About the novel, crime writer James Sallis hailed it as “Among the finest science fiction novels” in a July 2020 review in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He went on to add: “Just beneath the surface it might be read as a parable of the Fifties and of the Cold War. Beneath that as an evocation of existential loneliness, a Christian fable, a parable of the artist. Above all, perhaps, as the wisest, truest representation of alcoholism ever written.”

The Hobbit (1937)

This is the line that started it all, written during the height of a worldwide depression when millions around the world were also hungering for a bit of escapism. In a 2016 Guardian article on “The Best Opening Lines in Children’s and Young Adult Fiction,” Ciara Murphy wrote: “In just ten words, Tolkien’s opening line is so simple and yet leaves the reader with so many questions. What is a hobbit? Why does he live in a hole? And why is this particular hobbit so important that an entire novel is going to be centered on him?”

About the hole in the ground, the narrator continued: “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

The Hobbit was greeted with international acclaim from the day it was published. Writing in The Times of London, C. S. Lewis wrote about it: “The truth is that in this book a number of good things, never before united, have come together: a fund of humor, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar’s with the poet’s grasp of mythology.”

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)

When the first installment of the novel was published in Harper’s Magazine in April of 1895, Twain feared that his reputation as a humorous writer might negatively influence readers, so he presented the work as a translation (by a Frenchman named Jean Francois Alden) of the memoirs of Louis de Conte, a fictionalized version of Joan of Arc’s real page, Louis de Contes.

Twain’s authorship became quickly known, however, and he was formally identified as the author when Harper and Brothers published the book in 1896. In the novel, the narrator continued:

“In all the songs and histories of Joan of Arc which you and the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in the late invented art of printing, mention is made of me, the Sieur Louis de Conte. I was her page and secretary. I was with her from the beginning until the end.”

A Dog’s Tale (1904)

The narrator is a pet dog—with the unusual name Aileen Mavourneen—who was brought into her new owner’s family a year after a new baby girl was born. The dog ultimately saved the baby’s life when a fire erupted in the nursery, but was savagely beaten when her owner mistakenly interpreted what had happened. The prolific American writer Frederick Busch wrote that the novel “boasts one of the great opening sentences” of all time.

The novel was an expanded version of a short story originally published in Harper’s Magazine in December 1903. The story, which had Aileen’s puppy dying in a research project designed to improve human vision, was published a month later as a stand-alone pamphlet by the National Anti-Vivisection Society.

In the novel’s opening paragraph, Aileen continued: “This is what my mother told me; I do not know these nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing. My mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so much education.”

A Horse’s Tale (1907)

The narrator is Soldier’s Boy, who describes himself as Buffalo Bill’s favorite horse. He continued: “And there is no telling how much he does weigh when he is out on the war-path and has his batteries belted on. He is over six feet, is young, hasn’t an ounce of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in his motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face, and black hair dangling down on his shoulders, and is beautiful to look at; and nobody is braver than he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself.” A Horse’s Tale was first published in two installments of Harper’s Magazine in August and September, 1906.

The Beginner’s Goodbye (2012)

The jarring opening words come from protagonist Aaron Woolcott, a thirty-five-year old book editor whose wife Dorothy died several months earlier in a freakish household accident. In a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel review, writer and lawyer Mike Fisher described the first sentence as “delightfully quirky,” and I can’t imagine a better description. About the novel, Fisher went on to add: “What’s best about Goodbye is what its opening sentence had promised to deliver: An exploration of the awkward and often poignant dance between the living and the dead.“

Steel Beach (1992)

The Sci-Fi world has seen many great opening lines over the years, and this is one of the very best. I can’t imagine anyone reading it for the first time and declining to read further.

The Angel (1961)

The letter is being written by Angelos Angelides, a recently departed Greek man who is now a “Reserve Candidate Angel” in the School of Reserve Heavenly Angels. He continued: “But it’s the only thing that can still give me some relief, and I’m glad that, here in Heaven, they haven’t deprived me of this harmless mania, and that there is ample paper in the P.X.”

Night Time Losing Time (1989)

This is Ventura’s debut novel, and we are immediately pulled in by the unusual opening words. In a New York Times book review, writer Barbara Kingsolver described the narrator and protagonist this way: “The book’s narrator, a fortyish rock-and-roll pianist named Jesse Wales, sits in a Quartzsite motel room remembering his life while steadily losing control of his body and his mind. He spends some time up around the light fixture looking down on his body, and several hours in the drawer with the Gideon, watching his ex-lovers parade by in biblical regalia. It looks like the end of the line for Jesse.”

The Zoo Where You’re Fed to God (1994)

The novel’s opening words describe a protagonist who is not exactly a paragon of mental health—but we are certainly intrigued by his psychological dynamics. On the book’s dust jacket, he is described this way: “James Abbey, a successful surgeon, is a man so tightly wound that he could have a nervous breakdown in the middle of a crowd, and nobody would notice. And that’s exactly what happens one day, when he finds himself at the zoo and starts hearing voices.”

A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1871)

The Sirens of Titan (1959)

It’s a far-fetched—and perhaps even ridiculous—assertion about a future world, but it certainly gets our attention. After making it, the narrator continued: “But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.”

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

The narrator continued: “One of them was a science-fiction writer named Kilgore Trout. He was a nobody at the time, and he supposed his life was over. He was mistaken. As a consequence of the meeting, he became one of the most beloved and respected human beings in history.”

And about the other, he wrote: “The man he met was an automobile dealer, a Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover. Dwayne Hoover was on the brink of going insane.”

“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.

Let us Descend (2023)

Opening lines don’t get much better—and I predict that this first sentence of Let Us Descend will be remembered many decades from now. The words come from 12-year-old Annis, the daughter of an enslaved black woman who was raped and impregnated by her white plantation slaveholder. In the opening paragraph, Annis continued:

“I was a small child then, soft at the belly. On that night, my mother woke me and led me out to the Carolina woods, deep, deep into the murmuring trees, black with the sun’s leaving. The bones in her fingers: blades in sheaths, but I did not know this yet.”

As the story unfolds, we learn that Annis’s grandmother—known as Mama Aza—was a famous female warrior in the West African nation of Dahomey (a country recently featured in the 2022 film “The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis). Sold into slavery by her husband, the king of Dahomey, for falling in love with a soldier, she ended up on a plantation in North Carolina. Mama Aza passed along her warrior training methods to her daughter, and now, Annis’s mother is about to continue the tradition, periodically going deep into the woods to train her daughter in the hand-to-hand combat skills of her ancestors.

I was delighted to honor Ward’s superlative opener in my Smerconish.com compilation of “23 of the Best Opening Lines of 2023” (see the full list here).

The Martian (2011)

This terse assessment of a dire situation comes from protagonist Mark Watney, an American astronaut who, six days earlier, was one of the first human beings to walk on Mars. After a catastrophic dust storm, his crew is forced to evacuate the planet without him, believing he had perished in an explosion. Watney continued: “Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned into a nightmare.”

In 2015, the novel was adapted into a Ridley Scott film, with Matt Damon in the role of the stranded astronaut. Named by more than fifty critics as one of the Top Ten films of the year, it also became the 10th-highest grossing film of 2015. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Damon. Sadly, the novel’s opening lines didn’t make it into the film.

The Time Machine (1895)

This is a simple-but-beautiful opening line, and, at the time they were written, there was something about those three first words—The Time Traveller—that immediately stirred the heart of fin de siècle (turn-of-the-century) readers. In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued:

“His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses.”

The War of the Worlds (1898)

Stuart Little (1945)

The narrator continued: “The truth of the matter was, the baby looked very much like a mouse in every way. He was only about two inches high; and he had a mouse’s sharp nose, a mouse’s tail, a mouse’s whiskers, and the pleasant, shy manner of a mouse. Before he was many days old he was not only looking like a mouse but acting like one, too—wearing a gray hat and carrying a small cane. Mr and Mrs. Little named him Stuart, and Mr. Little made him a tiny bed out of four clothespins and a cigarette box.”

In a 2005 New Yorker article, White’s step-son Roger Angell offered this lovely little tidbit about the book’s now-famous opening line: “The first sentence of Stuart Little, to be sure, is just as surprising as its shadowed endings—the fact that the Littles’ second child, on arrival, is a mouse, not a boy. White never explains the anomaly, and simply gets on with the story, but some critics and teacher-parent groups—and Anne Carroll Moore, the retired but still formidable children’s librarian at the New York Public Library—were collectively aghast. Harold Ross, who read everything, stuck his head into Andy’s office one afternoon and said, ‘God damn it, White, at least you could have had him adopted.’ The author and his readers—kids and their read-aloud elders—stayed calm, however, and Stuart Little sold a hundred thousand copies in the first fifteen months after publication.”

Charlotte’s Web (1952)

In “When You Were Very Young,” a 2014 New York Times article about a Grolier Club exhibition of early editions of classic children’s literature books, writer Sarah Lyall wrote that Charlotte’s Web had “one of the best opening lines in all of literature.” The first sentence sets the stage perfectly. The ensuing dialog between young Fern Arable and her mother frames the remainder of story:

“Out to the hoghouse,” replied Mrs. Arable. “Some pigs were born last night.”

“I don’t see why he needs an ax,” continued Fern, who was only eight.

“Well,” said her mother, “one of those pigs is a runt. It’s very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything. So your father has decided to do away with it.”

“Do away with it?” shrieked Fern. “You mean kill it? Just because it’s smaller than the others?”

The Intuitionist (1999)

In this sparkling work of speculative fiction—Whitehead’s debut novel—the opening reflection come from Lila Mae Watson, a black female elevator inspector who belongs to the “Intuitionist” school of elevator inspection. In contrast to the competing “empiricist” school, which relies on scientific instruments to determine the condition of elevators, Lila Mae assesses the condition and overall safety of an elevator by using her intuitive abilities to tune into its psychic vibrations. It’s an audacious premise, but Whitehead managed to pull it off, leading Esquire, USA Today, GQ, and more publications to honor it as the Best First Novel of the Year. In a Time magazine review, Walter Kirn hailed The Intuitionist as “the freshest racial allegory since Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.“

In the novel, the narrator continues by immediately hinting at a spectacular elevator failure, writing about Lila Mae: “She doesn’t know what to do with her eyes. The front door of the building is too scarred and gouged to look at, and the street behind her is improbably empty, as if the city had been evacuated and she’s the only one who didn’t hear about it.”

The Underground Railroad (2016)

We know from the first sentence that Cora will eventually say yes, and that this will be a tale about a man and woman fleeing slavery. As we continue reading, however, we have no clue at this point that this is an “alternate history” tale—or, more significantly, that the legendary underground railroad isn’t a metaphor, but a literal underground railroad

One of the most acclaimed books of the year, The Underground Railroad won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction literature. In 2019, The Guardian ranked the novel at Number 30 on its list of “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.”

In a New York Times review, book critic Michiko Kakutani described the novel as “potent, almost hallucinatory,” adding that “It possesses the chilling matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and brush strokes borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka and Jonathan Swift.”

My Murder (2023)

Stories narrated by dead men talking—and increasingly dead women as well—have long been a staple of film noir (think Sunset Boulevard and D.O.A.), but Katie Williams, a professor of fiction writing at Boston’s Emerson College, takes the genre in a whole new direction in her nifty new work of speculative fiction. In a Daily Mail book review, Christena Appleyard wrote, “The first sentence is an absolute cracker.”

The opening words come from a young mother named Lou (from Louise), the recent victim of a serial killer. Without giving too much away, Lou and five other victims have been brought back to life by a government agency called The Replication Commission. The recently revived victims form a kind of survivor’s group, and—well, you’ll have to discover the rest for yourself.

In a New York Times review, Maureen Corrigan wrote: “In an ingenious riff on this hallowed [noir] tradition, the very first sentence of Katie Williams’s suspense novel, My Murder introduces us to a chatty, female voice from beyond the grave.”

The Battle of the Sun (2009)

I love it when authors reflect on their own opening lines, and this one had a special significance for Winterson. In her 2011 memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, she wrote that this first sentence came to her during one of the darkest periods of her life (a period about which she wrote; “There was a person in me…so damaged that she was prepared to see me dead to find peace”). She was reading in bed one day when she heard a voice—not a voice in her head, but an actual voice—say “Get Up and start work.” She continued:

“I got dressed immediately. I went over to my studio. I lit the wood-burning stove, sat down with my coat on because the place was freezing and wrote: It began as all important things begin—by chance.

“From then on, every day, I wrote a book for children called The Battle of the Sun.

“Every day I went to work, without a plan, without a plot, to see what I had to say.

“And that is why I am sure that creativity is on the side of health. I was going to get better, and getting better began with the chance of a book.”

The Real Paul Makinen? (2022)

These blunt opening words come from 19-year-old Paul Makinen, a Vietnam-era Minneapolis native who goes on to explain that he has been abruptly awakened from one of the best dreams of his life. In the second paragraph, he continued:

“‘Paulie, it’s you I really love,’ she said, and kissed my face again and again. I was crying, ’cause I have loved her ever since we were five years old. But my father, Edward, whacked me across the mouth with a thick envelope, smashing my dream to bits.”

Most authors have to wait until their books are published to garner any praise or plaudits, but in 2018, a full four years before Yale’s novel would hit the shelves, it was selected as a finalist in the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Novel-in-Progress Contest.

When Nietzsche Wept (1992)

So begins a novel that ultimately leads to a fascinating and complex relationship between Breuer—a prominent Viennese physician who has recently established a friendship with a young colleague named Sigmund Freud—and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

About the novel, writer and scholar Theodore Roszak wrote: “Deep thought wrapped up in superb storytelling. What more could one ask?”

Nightbitch: A Novel (2021)

The narrator—an unnamed 37-year-old artist who has become a frustrated stay-at-home mother of a toddler—continued in the second paragraph: “I think I’m turning into a dog, she said to her husband when he arrived home after a week away for work. He laughed and she didn’t.”

After two paragraphs, we sense we’re in for a wild ride—and after a few more, we’ve not only suspended our disbelief, we’re thinking, “If Kafka were alive today, he’d be tweeting enthusiastically about Yoder’s debut novel.“ I was pleased to include the spectacular first paragraph in my Smerconish.com compilation of The Best Opening Lines of 2021 (see the post here).

Nightbitch went on to become one of the most acclaimed novels of the year, appearing on many “Best of the Year” lists. In an Esquire article on the fifty best books of 2021, Adrienne Westenfeld wrote: “Yoder touches on a kaleidoscope of themes, from the towering inferno of female rage to grieving the loss of self that accompanies motherhood, all of it undergirded by feral, ferocious scenes of our heroine feasting on rabbits and pissing on the lawn. Nightbitch will grab you by the scruff and refuse to let go.“

The success of the novel even surprised the author. Yoder tweeted in the summer of 2021: “I wrote NIGHTBITCH because I felt so alone, so angry, & so hopeless in early motherhood. Never did I imagine what it would become.“ As it turns out, the novel is still in the process of becoming, with a film adaptation, starring Amy Adams, expected to be released sometime in 2023.

The Book Thief (2005)

The narrator, we shall soon discover, is Death, also known as the collector of all souls, and a person who sees colors before he perceives anything else. He continued:

“I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that’s only the A’s. Just don’t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.”