Great Opening Lines Quotes

“We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody threw the girl off the bridge.”
― John D. MacDonald, Darker Than Amber

“The small boys came early to the hanging.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“I know your secret.”
― Jennifer Estep, Touch of Frost

“Four months to the day he first encountered the boy at Walmart, the last of Phil Pendleton's teeth fell out.”
― Kealan Patrick Burke, Sour Candy

“A baby almost killed me as I walked to work one morning. By passing beneath a bus shelter's roof at the ordained moment I lived to tell my tale. With strangers surrounding me I looked at what remained. Laoughter from heaven made us lift our eyes skyward. The baby's mother lowered her arms and leaned out her window. Without applause her audience drifted off, seeking crumbs in the gutters of this city of God. Xerox shingles covered the shelter's remaining glass pane, and the largest read:

Want to be crucified. Have own nails.
Leave message on machine.

The fringe of numbers along the ad's hem had been stripped away. My shoes crunched glass underfoot; my skirt clung to my legs as I continued down the street. November dawn's seventy-degree bath made my hair lose its set. Mother above appeared ready to take her own bow; I too, as ever, flew on alone. ”
― Jack Womack, Heathern

“It was a hot sticky night in Barcelona and all the good whores had the summer flu.”
― Dan Jenkins

“This is what happened.”
― Douglas Fairbairn, Shoot

“I was ten years old when I first saw the inheritance and twenty years old when I first saw Janna Roslyn, but my reaction to both was identical. I wanted them.”
― Susan Howatch, Penmarric

“If I'd known how the week was going to turn out I would have sent it back first thing Monday and asked for a refund.”
― Susan Wittig Albert, Thyme of Death

“I met my Aunt August for the first time in more than half a century at my mother's funeral. My mother was approaching eighty-six when she died, and my aunt was some eleven or twelve years younger. I had retired from the bank two years before with an adequate pension and a silver handshake. There had been a take-over by the Westminster and my branch was considered redundant. Everyone thought me lucky, but I found it difficult to occupy my time. I have never married, I have always lived quietly, and, apart from my interest in dahlias, I have no hobby. For those reasons I found myself agreeably excited by my mother's funeral.”
― Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt

“I blamed the whole mess on Charles Dickens.”
― Gillian Roberts, Philly Stakes