Opening Lines Quotes

“Disclosure: My father, a drummer named Jimmy Curtis, fell in love with Opal Jewel in the summer of 1970.”
― Dawnie Walton, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

“Your house glows at night like everything inside is on fire.”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push

“Mercury Dawn Walker stepped out of the green mist that floated around her body. She was perfecting the art of walking from dimension to dimension”
― Donna White, Enchanted Forests

“When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“It was an early, very warm morning in July, and it had rained during the night. The bare granite steamed, the moss and crevices were drenched with moisture, and all the colors everywhere had deepened. Below the veranda, the vegetation in the morning shade was like a rain forest of lush, evil leaves and flowers ...”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“The sweet, spicy fragrance of Madame Alfred Carriere roses wrapped itself around Alexandra as if she were in the comfort of her mother's arms.”
― Ellen Read, The Feathered Nest

“To release the tension in her chest, Miray took a big breath of the warm midsummer air. After the morning thunderstorm, it was filled with the sweet aroma of cedar trees and the earthy scent of moss. This old forest was the only place where she could be herself, never rejecting her as people did. Its leafy arms were always open.”
― Elena Shelest, Enchanted Forests

“There may have been a day this year when I thought of him as dead right off, the first time he came to mind. Most days I think of him as though he is alive. It can happen anywhere. Walking on a street, reading a magazine, I will see a listing for a concert, a review of a movie, a new place to go for dinner, and will think: Jasper and I should hear that, see that, go there. My mind then works out of habit to remember what date we made, when Jasper said we would see each other next. When this happens, it only takes a second, maybe not even as long as that; it is quick, not a time you can measure by a watch, but most of my life is contained in that time.”
― Christopher Coe, Such Times

“I was just a kid when I first met Bella, but I knew she was someone special, something otherworldly and someone who would leave a searing golden lesion on me.”
― Aliza S., the Poppy fields near the French countryside: Sappho edition

“He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head. God the Father was exploding in his face with a glory of sunlight through painted glass, a glory that moved with his movements to consume and exalt Abraham and Isaac and then God again.”
― William Golding, The Spire

“Kim Jiyoung is thirty-three years old, or thirty-four in Korean age.”
― Cho Nam-Joo, 82년생 김지영

“Jeanette, tell me that you want to live.

-Of Women and Salt”
― Gabriela García

“I don't belong here,' I said to myself. Before I even opened my eyes.
It was my morning ritual. To ward off the smell and the dirt and the fights and the noise of the day. To keep me in that bright green place in my mind which had no proper name; I called it 'Wide'.
'I don't belong here,' I said again. A dirty-faced fifteen-year-old girl frowsy-eyed from sleep, blinking at the hard grey light filtering through the grimy window. I looked up to the arched ceiling of the caravan, the damp sacking near my face as I lay on the top bunk; and then I glanced quickly to my left to the bunk to see if Dandy was awake.
Dandy: my black-eyed, black-haired, equally dirty-faced sister. Dandy, the lazy one, the liar, the thief.”
― Philippa Gregory, Meridon

“With every passing hour, Kezia Ashcroft moved further away from home and closer towards the city where she would most likely die”
― Kezia's Crucifixion

“I almost shot him.”
― Allie Ray, Holler

“Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.”
― Kameron Hurley, God's War

“I chewed on the dried, salted meat until my jaw ached, waiting for it to soften enough to swallow.”
― Alice Ivinya, Enchanted Forests

“Etched
in my memory is the picture of Father’s mother coming up close, on all
fours, crawling, because she couldn’t walk. My little brother bawled at her
approach; she was brimming over with affection, trying to sing a lullaby.
She was ninety. I was also scared. But she was afterall our granny, said
Father. That comforted me. My fear finally faded when I was four or five.
The scene is imprinted in my mind: Father’s mother, on all fours, trying to
cuddle a screaming infant.”
― Nalini Jameela, The Autobiography of a Sex Worker

“Come on, dream...' he dreamed.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, A Happy Ghost

“Screams. Screams. Everywhere. Everyone is scared. But I don’t know who “everyone” is. Their voices sound young, so I guess they’re kids, like me. I don’t hear any older voices. So either the grownups aren’t scared, or there aren’t any grownups with us anymore.”
― J.W. Lynne, The Unknown

“My eyes are wide open, but I see nothing but darkness. My heart races and my breaths come fast as I try to understand what just happened. But I am trying to make sense of something incomprehensible. All I know is that this is no accident. Someone has trapped me here. They have locked me in a place where no one can hear me scream. It will be a miracle if I make it out of here alive.

I am now at the mercy of a serial killer.”
― Jenny Lynne, If I Tell: A Mystery Thriller About a Girl and a Serial Killer

“She stood on the landing inside the door to Stony’s Bar and Grill, simple but perfect in white blouse and blue denim, looking like everything the bar wasn’t. Elegant. Refined. Graceful, even standing still. Definitely Elite. And, barely concealed beneath the surface, desperate.

Please let her be lost, Joe thought.”
― Trigger Jones, Gravity Doesn’t Lie: A Fast-Paced Dystopian Solar System Adventure

“An appalling double tragedy overshadowed the joy that should have welcomed Alice Lee Roosevelt's entrance to the world on February 12, 1884.”
― Stacy A. Cordery, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker

“When the red sea of rage washes over me, I picture a house on a hill, far away from the rest of the world, a band of oak trees around it, full of greenery, a singular whisper of smoke drifting up into the sky—a place where nobody will get hurt. It’s where I like to go, my safe place, that house on the hill, my skull vibrating with dark thoughts. (Battle Not With Monsters)”
― Richard Thomas, Spontaneous Human Combustion

“Down the river from the struggling village, a tiny house sat at the edge of a massive forest, shrouded in the shadows of oak, pine, and flowering dogwood. There wasn’t much on this farm, the land hard and difficult to till, but it’s all they had. They grew potatoes, the tubers somehow able to survive, the father a scowling presence in all of his height and bluster; the mother always in another room, busy with anything else; the boy forever expanding the hole that grew inside his chest. (Hiraeth)”
― Richard Thomas, Spontaneous Human Combustion

“I’d been trying to find myself for what seemed like my whole life. Then a dark fate found me instead. I summoned something and drew its gaze down upon me. This is how the suffering began. (Nodus Tollens)”
― Richard Thomas, Spontaneous Human Combustion

“Your brother is going to die, and there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it."
Uncle Michel probably didn't say it exactly like that. He probably said something comforting and sympathetic. Something like, "Soon he'll be in a better place," or even worse, "He'll always be watching over us." All Max heard was that he and JB were losing their older brother.”
― Jared Branahl & Ryan Johnson, Unbound

“It's true what the folktale says: I did choose to live with the beast. But not for the reason you think. Not to save my father. Not even to save myself.

In truth, I was hoping I'd be eaten.”
― Elizabeth Lowham, Beauty Reborn

“Haggard and dishevelled, they marched through the night. The cold winds between the dense trees chilled them to the bone; they were not adequately dressed or prepared for this trek. Owls hooted, crows cawed, and bats flittered between the branches. The only sounds that pierced the cold night were the cracking of sticks and rustling of leaves beneath their feet, interspersed with the breaths of the ten; some light, some heavy, some strained.”
― Dan Hanly, The Great Leap: A Dark Medieval Fantasy Novel

“Daniel Pearse was born on the rainy day of March 15, 1966. He didn't receive a middle name because his mother, Annalee Faro Pearse, was exhausted from coming up with a first and last — especially the last.”
― Jim Dodge, Stone Junction