Opening Sentences A-Z

• A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture. Flight Behaviour
• A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. Of Mice and Men
• Alan Clay woke up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A Hologram for the King
• All this happened, more or less. Slaughterhouse-Five
• And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city. Open City

• An old man is standing on the after-deck of a ship. Monsieur Linh and His Child
• A school of blackfish is in Seyrvágs Fjord – two or three hundred small whales, swimming silently round in little groups, and longing to be back in the broad ocean again, for this is not the way they intended to go. The Old Man and His Sons
• As he stepped out of the station the Investigator was met by a fine rain mingled with wet, slushy snow. The Investigation
  
• A squat grey building of only thirty-four storeys. Brave New World
• At half-past seven in the morning, carrying the laundry she had ironed the night before, Yvette came down the drive on her way to the house. Never Mind

• A very wise old lady – her name was Martha Gellhorn: look her up – once told me that you can only really love one war. Toploader
• A young man, young but not very young, sits in an anteroom somewhere, some wing or other, in the Palace of Versailles. Pure
  
• Billy Gray was my best friend and I fell in love with his mother. Ancient Light

• Bob Munroe woke up on his face. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
• Citizens, gather ’round your loudspeakers, for we bring important updates! The Orphan Master’s Son
  
• ‘Coffee?’ Me and You

• Discuss the regulars. Ablutions

• Do not set foot in my office. Black Swan Green

• Dr. Learmont, newly appointed general practitioner for the districts of West Masedown and New Eliry, rocks and jolts on the front seat of a trap as it descends the lightly sloping path of Versoie House. C

• Early on a Sunday, after first mass at Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexford towards the coast where my mother’s people came from. Foster

• Even when he reached Kamakura and the Engakuji Temple, Kikuji did not know whether or not he would go to the tea ceremony. Thousand Cranes
• First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed.  Canada

• For almost a year now, he has been taking photographs of abandoned things. Sunset Park

• For the first time, Dad is letting me help pack the car, but only because it’s getting to be kind of an emergency. Things We Didn’t See Coming
• From the fifth floor of the Valhalla, I looked down onto the small courtyard. If This Is Home

• From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester’s Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down. Under the Dome
• Futh stands on the ferry deck, holding on to the cold railings with his soft hands. The Lighthouse
  
• Gabčík – that’s his name – really did exist. HHhH
• Galen waited under the fig tree for his mother. Dirt

• George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. Tinkers
• “Go on,” Cressner said again. Night Shift
• He belongs to an increasingly rare breed of sophisticated, literary publishers. Dublinesque
• He came on a November day, a cold wind blowing, the fields soaked with rain. Secrecy
  
• He came to our place one Sunday in November 189-. The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)
• He dreamed he was sleeping, and Child was driving. Hawthorn & Child

• He first came to the Iris one day just before the beginning of the summer season. Hotel Iris

• He should have seen it coming  The Finkler Question

• He swiftly signed the papers in the stuffy office air…It felt just like the wedding…(a perfunctory affair). The Rime of the Modern Mariner
• Hi! A Tale for the Time Being
• His face was as pitted as the moon. The Orchardist

• I am my own barometer, he said as they stood peering at the barometer. The Foxes Come at Night
• I am sitting, alone, in my shared office at the university. First Novel

• I could not see the street or much of the estate.  The City & The City

• If it hadn’t been for the child then none of this might have happened, but the fact that a child was involved made everything that much harder to forgive. The Forgotten Waltz

• I had been mistaken for him so many times that when he died it was as if part of myself had died too. Mistaken

• I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.  Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

• I headed down the townland of Ballintra in a force 8 to light the fire towards the beginning of August. Long Time, No See

• I like it when I can be done with something. The Faster I Walk The Smaller I Am
• I’m an experiment. The Panopitcon
• “I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse,” Helena said. Tigers in Red Weather

• In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers. The Tiger’s Wife
• In the broad spaces of the streets near the square, Matthew stood and watched for the secrets which the rain reveals. Horses
  
• In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin’s son, grew up with his friend Govinda. Siddhartha
  
• In the summer of 1917 Robert Grainier took part in an attempt on the life of a Chinese laborer caught, or anyway accused of, stealing from the company stores of the Spokane International Railway in Idaho Panhandle. Train Dreams
  

• In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

• I remember, in no particular order: – a shiny inner wrist; – steam rising from a wet sink as a hot frying pan is laughingly tossed into it; – gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house; – a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torchbeams; – another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface; – bathwater long gone cold behind a locked door. The Sense of an Ending

• I saw Hitler at a time when the Reichstag was little more than a burnt, skeletal silhouette of its former self and the Brandenburg Gate obstructed passage rather than granted it. Book of Clouds

• It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel. A Visit from the Goon Squad

• It had been years since Tom’s son had spent so long at home. Solace

• It happens like this. In a Strange Room
• It rains on Cavan, Monaghan; rains on the hills and the lakes and the roads; rains on the houses and the farms and the fences between them; on the ditches and the fields, on the breathing land; rains on the whole strange shape of it. The Long Falling
  
• It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel the painter who killed Maria Iribarne. The Tunnel
• It’s funny: It isn’t the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke. Hope: A Tragedy
• It’s the middle of December, and everything is frozen over. The Apartment

• It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. Shantaram

• It was a little before nine o’clock, the sun was setting into a bank of smoky violet cloud and I had lost my way. The Small Hand
• It was Christmas Eve and Professor Andersen had a Christmas tree in the living room. Professor Andersen’s Night
  

• It was Friday evening, half an hour before the light struck, and she was attempting to open a package with a carving knife. The Illumination
• It was late in the evening, after dinner and Debby, before Harry got a chance to open the paper. Intermission

• I used to love listening to stories about faraway places. Pinball, 1973
• I, Valdimar Haraldsson, was in my twenty-seventh year when I embarked on the publication of a small journal devoted to my chief preoccupation, the link between fish consumption and the superiority of the Nordic race. The Whispering Muse

• I was on my way home from the hunt.  From the Mouth of the Whale

• I was sitting outside the Commodore’s mansion, waiting for my brother Charlie to come out with news of the job.  The Sisters Brothers

• I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg Airport. Norwegian Wood

• ‘I wonder if you would mind not smoking, Mr. Ushikawa,’ the shorter man said. 1Q84 (Book 3)
• Jimmy Luntz had never been to war, but this was the sensation, he was sure of that – eighteen guys in a room, Rob, the director, sending them out – eighteen guys shoulder to shoulder, moving out on the orders of their leader to do what they’ve been training day and night to do. Nobody Move
  

• June 1 Rome-New York Dearest Diary, Today I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die. Super Sad True Love Story
• Late in May 2001, about ten days after I saw him for the last time, Mats Sigfridsson was hauled out of Malangen Sound, a few miles down the coast from here. A Summer of Drowning
  

• Linda liked the way her brother’s driveway felt beneath her feet.  Ten Stories About Smoking
• Look, unless you’re writing one, a self-help book is an oxymoron. How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia

• ‘Miss Kawasemi?’ Orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
• My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. The Spinning Heart
  

• My mother was not real. Caribou Island

• My name is Brodeck and I had nothing to do with it. Brodeck’s Report

• My name is Kathy H. Never Let Me Go

• My publisher called while I was out buying fresh salmon. I Am a Japanese Writer

• Nettie Russell died in the spring, and left her grandson, Todd, an old Ford Fairline and a Maxwell House coffee jar with two thousand dollars in it, a fair sum of money in 1973. Knockemstiff

• News reached the church in Rome. Silence

• Of all the folktales collected by the authors in the Autonomous Kurdish Region during 1998-99, the following modification of the Thomas-Bredon Cluster 14b (On the Inadvisibility of Geronticide) [Narr. Ukbar Kishkiev /male /c.75 yrs /farmer /Guurjev Valley /1999 /trans. Avril Bredon and Bruno Thomas from Kurdish] illustrates best how an archetypal wisdom-narrative (one found in cultures as diametric as West Greenland Inuit [La Pointe & Cheng 1928], the Solomon Islands [Daphne Ng 1966] and Central African Republic [Coupland-Weir 1989]) can be mutated by the host-culture’s folkways, topography and belief-hierarchies:Here’s a story I had from my wrinkled old aunt, who used to tell it as she worked on her loom, click-clacketty, click-clacketty, click-clacketty. The Siphoners
• Once Boshell finally killed his neighbor he couldn’t seem to quit killing him. The Outlaw Album
• One. The Watch
• On Saturdays, when inspection was over and passes were issued in the Orderly Rooms, there was a stampede of escape down every company street in Camp Pickett, Virginia. A Special Providence
• On the boat we were mostly virgins. The Buddha in the Attic
• Patrick pretended to sleep, hoping the seat next to him would remain empty, but he soon heard a briefcase sliding into the overhead compartment. Bad News

• Pereira maintains he met him one summer’s day. Pereira Maintains
• ‘Please state your name for the record.’ The Devil I Know

• Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Winter’s Bone
• Schwartz didn’t notice the kid during the game. The Art of Fielding
• September. A Sport And A Pastime

• She’d been lying in the hammock reading poetry for over an hour. The Stranger’s Child
• She’s staring out to sea now. Orkney
• She threw her pint glass across the garden and told him to just shut up. This Isn’t the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You
  

• Some people say I’m precocious. Down the Rabbit Hole
• Stuart Ransom, professional golfer, is drunkenly reeling off an interminable series of stats about the women’s game in Korea (or the Ladies Game, as he is determined to have it): ‘Don’t scowl at me, beautiful…!’ – directed, with his trademark Yorkshire twinkle, at Jen, who lounges, sullenly, behind the hotel bar. The Yips

• Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.   The Blind Assassin
• Tha’ was a great few days. Two Pints

• The afternoon before I left London for New York – Rachel had flown out six weeks previously – I was in my cubicle at work, boxing up my possessions, when a senior vice president at the bank, an Englishman in his fifties, came to wish me well. Netherland
• The baby boy wriggled in his arms, a warm, wet mass, softer than a goat and hairier than a rabbit kit. Bright’s Passage
  
• The cottage sat at the edge of the lough. TransAtlantic
• The daily recital of the rosary was over. The Leopard

• The first case of polio that summer came early in June, right after Memorial Day, in a poor Italian neighborhood crosstown from where we lived. Nemesis

• The first time Nakajima stayed over, I dreamed of my dead mom.  The Lake

• The Germans have entered Moravia.  Running

• The kid had taken a bus north from Seattle and stood outside studying the bar for a long time, weighing the options. The Terror of Living
• The man at the gate points them towards a low, sprawling building in the middle distance. The Childhood of Jesus

• The monster showed up just after midnight.  A Monster Calls

• The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed.  A Fine Balance

• The mountains tower above life and death and these houses huddling together on the Spit. Heaven and Hell

• The news about Walter Berglund wasn’t picked up locally -he and Patty had moved away to Washington two years earlier and meant nothing to St. Paul now- but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times. Freedom

• The night it happened I was drunk, almost passed out, and I swear to God a bird came flying through my motel room window. The Motel Life

• There are times when my father’s absence is as heavy as a child sitting on my chest. Anatomy of a Disappearance

• There was once, in the city of Kahani in the land of Alfibay, a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear, which meant that whenever he called out ‘Dog!’ the bear waddled up amiably on his hind legs, and when he shouted ‘Bear!’ the dog bounded towards him wagging his tail. Luka and the Fire of Life
• The Rua it was named because of its rusty colour when it gnashed and roared in flood, pouring through the valley’s slopes to finally consummate with the sea at the mouth of Ballo harbour. Shall We Gather At The River
  
• The sign had appeared overnight. When the Emperor Was Divine

• The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. 1Q84 (Book 1 and Book 2)
• The truck’s government tag always tipped them off before his Kansas accent could. The Cove

• The vision of a tall-masted ship, at sail on the ocean, came to Deeti on an otherwise ordinary day, but she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign of destiny for she had never seen such a vessel before, not even in a dream: how could she have, living as she did in northern Bihar, four hundred miles from the coast? Sea of Poppies
• The war tried to kill us in the spring. The Yellow Birds

• The world had gone quiet around me. Letters to Emma Bowlcut
• They appear more often now, both of them, and on every visit they seem more impatient with me and with the world. The Testament of Mary
  
• this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand. The Colour of Milk
• This is the story of a happy marriage but before you throw up and turn the page let me say that it will end with my face pressed hard into the cold metal of the Volvo’s bonnet, my hands cuffed behind my back, and my rights droned into my ear – this will occur in the car park of a big-box retail unit on the Naas Road in Dublin.  Dark Lies the Island
  

• Thursday 7th November - Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forlorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints. Cloud Atlas

• Today again Mataichi scooped the tiny fish one by one into a shallow bowl and examined them carefully under a magnifying glass. A Riot of Goldfish

• Today I’m five. Room

• Twice a year they come here, to her home-place. Nude

• Welcome. The Facility
• We’ll say this all began just outside of Chicago, in late summer on a residential street dead-ending in a wall. Lamb
  
• We wanted more. We The Animals
• We were going out to dinner. The Dinner
• What actually woke him was the unearthly sound itself – a mournful shatter of frozen midnight falling to earth to pierce his heart and lodge there forever, never to move, never to melt – but he, being who he was, assumed it was his bladder. The Crane Wife
  

• Whatever’s wrong with us is coming in off that river. City of Bohane
• What follows is a record of where Meadow and I have been since our disappearance. Schroder
• When I was a kid, I often messed this up. The Thief
• When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation. Swimming Home
  

• You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

• You have to start with a bang, he said. And This is True

• Your ma used up all the juice again. You