The Poet is a
novel written by Michael Connelly. He had Stephen King do the introduction to
the book for him. In said introduction, there’s a place where Stephen King
wrote:
“I’m
a sucker for good first lines, collect them in a little notebook the way some
people collect stamps or coins…”
And
that got me thinking waoh!… I can do that, too. On a serious level, I’ve bought
more than one novel simply on the basis of a good first line. They seem to act as starters, like King stated
above, pulling the reader into the story while they are barely aware that they’ve
been sucked through reality’s fabric into the world of make-believe!
I
collected the following first lines
from books off my study bookshelf. I did not
arrange these in any particular format. I only picked the closest book and pumped
the content into my Word Document.
Have
fun!
“The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years–if it ever did end–began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper…”
Stephen King,
It
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness…”
“You would think that such a day would tremble to begin…”
“He seemed incapable of creating such chaos, but much of what he saw below could be blamed on him…”
“When I finally slither out mewling, I’ve already given Mama hard labor, because she’s been cussing and screaming seventeen hours. Then there’s a calm until she sees me. Then she starts howling worse…”
Christopher Wilson
Cotton
“I hadn’t planned on going anywhere…”
Terry McMillan
How
Stella Got Her Groove Back
“A few minutes past one o’clock in the morning, a hard rain fell without warning…”
Dean Koontz
The
Taking
“Not twenty minutes has passed since you left me here in the cafĂ©, since I said No to your request, that I would never write out for you the story of my mortal life, how I became a vampire…”
Anne Rice
Pandora
“In the darkness, he touched her arm and said, ‘Stay here…’”
Michael Crichton
State
of Fear
“They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia…”
Tom Clancy,
Red
Storm Rising
“The music was as much a gift as sunshine, as rain, as any blessing ever prayed for…”
Bebe Moore Campbell,
Your
Blues Ain’t Like Mine
“The first day of school was even worse than he’d thought it would be. Part of it was the weather. It was one of those perfect days when any normal ten-year-old boy would rather be outside… But Josh MacCallum wasn’t a normal ten-year-old, and it didn’t seem as though anyone was ever going to let him forget it…”
John Saul,
Shadows
“I knew it would begin with the end, and the end would look like death to these eyes. I had been warned…”
Stephenie Meyer,
The
Host
“It was hope undid them. Hope, and the certainty that Providence had made them suffer enough for their dreams…”
Clive Barker,
Everville
“Thankfully, Longview's streets weren't stacked with cars and bodies. Kendra drove past the industrial districts, those smoke stacks that no longer belched white, the waterway now clogged with logs that, in saner days, would have gone to the Weyerhauser mill to build houses and make cardboard boxes. Nothing moved…”
Steven Barnes & Tananarive Due,
Devil’s
Wake
“There are people who like change. There are even a few who thrive on it. That’s not me…”
J. A. Jance,
Breach
of Duty
“I’m dead. You want to talk about my family and here I been dead to them for fifty years…”
James McBride,
The
Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
“Death is my beat. I make my living from it…”
Michael Connelly,
The
Poet
“Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days up river from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte…”
Alex Haley,
Roots
“Girl, take a look at the brother who just walked in…”
Brenda Jackson,
Whispered
Promises
“My redemption began in hell…”
James Herbert,
Others
“Stupid me–I fell right into the old pattern and spent a week pretending I was a moving target. All along, a part of me knew that I was hitching toward southern Illinois because my mother was passing. When your mother’s checking out, you get yourself back home…”
Peter Straub,
Mr. X
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me…”
Daphne du Maurier,
Rebecca
“No one can deny that Chief the Honorable M. A. Nanga, MP., was the most approachable politician in the country… I have to admit this from the outset or else the story I’m going to tell will make no sense…”
Chinua Achebe,
A Man
of the People
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow…”
Harper Lee,
To Kill
A Mocking Bird
“Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng! An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room…”
Richard Wright,
Native
Son
“When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night. Surrounding the house, brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out…”
As told to Alex Haley,
The
Autobiography of Malcolm X
“I was sitting at my desk doing my nails when the door opened and the spy sneaked in…”
Elizabeth Peters,
Street
of the Five Moons
“That smashed elbow was still in a crooked cast after a month of repeated surgery…”
Herman Wouk,
The
Hope
“Robert Langdon awoke slowly…”
Dan Brown,
The Da
Vinci Code
Bonus
“On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to Derry Rite Aid… The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That’s how you identify the dead here in Derry…”
Stephen King,
Bag of
Bones
I sincerely hope you were inspired to make a grab for one of these stunning reads!
Read
with passion!
Akpan
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