Search for Quotes

---

First Line Quotes

"One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets."

Ray Bradbury the First Line of The Martian Chronicles

"1801 - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with."

Emily Bronte the First Line of Wuthering Heights

"Han Fei-tzu sat in lotus position on the bare wooden floor beside his wife's sickbed."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Xenocide

"Si Wang-mu stepped forward."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Children of the Mind

"I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more."

H.P. Lovecraft the First Line of The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia."

Jorge Luis Borges the First Line of Ficciones

"On the burning February morning Beatriz Viterbo died, after braving an agony that never for a single moment gave way to self-pity or fear, I noticed that the sidewalk billboards around Constitution Plaza were advertising some new brand or other of American cigarettes."

Jorge Luis Borges the First Line of The Aleph and Other Stories

"Rooter was at once the most difficult and the most helpful of the pequeninos."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Speaker for the Dead

"The monitor lady smiled very nicely and tousled his hair and said, 'Andrew, I suppose by now you're just absolutely sick of having that horrid monitor.'"

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Ender's Game

"Poke kept her eyes open all the time."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Ender's Shadow

"Nothing looked right in Armenia when Petra Arkanian returned home."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Shadow of the Hegemon

"Bean kind of liked being tall, even though it was going to kill him."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Shadow Puppets

"Han Tzu waited until the armored car was completely out of sight before he ventured out into the bicycle-and-pedestrian packed street."

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Shadow of the Giant

"The house looked strange."

Edward Bloor the First Line of Tangerine

"If you're reading this, it must be a thousand years from now."

Rodman Philbrick the First Line of The Last Book in the Universe

"Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter."

Charles Dickens the First Line of Oliver Twist

"We called him the Professor."

Yoko Ogawa the First Line of The Housekeeper and the Professor

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

William Gibson the First Line of Neuromancer

"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia."

Jorge Luis Borges the First Line of Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

Franz Kafka the First Line of The Metamorphosis

"The great Stephen King once wrote don't sweat the small stuff, which I mulled over for long enough to realize that I don't entirely agree with it."

Eoin Colfer the First Line of Plugged

"'So you're all set for money then?' the boy named Crow asks in his typical sluggish voice."

Haruki Murakami the First Line of Kafka on the Shore

"After him!"

Orson Scott Card the First Line of Laddertop

"I see in Lunaya Pravda that Luna City Council has passed on first reading a bill to examine, license, inspect - and tax - public food vendors operating inside municipal pressure."

Robert Heinlein the First Line of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

"Her entire honeymoon gave her hot and cold shivers."

Horacio Quiroga the First Line of The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories