The first sentence. |
"One should be able to return to the first sentence of a novel and find the resonances of the entire work" Gloria Naylor |
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quote
1
notes"They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles."Junot Díaz, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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6
notes"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
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"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
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9
notes"In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier’s greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini."Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
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2
notes"Although his father had imagined for him a brilliant future in the army, Hervé Joncour ended up earning his living in an unusual profession that, with singular irony, had a feature so sweet as to betray a vaguely feminine intonation."Alessandro Baricco, Silk
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3
notes"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since."F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
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1
notes"‘And don’t forget,’ my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, ‘whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk…’"Graham Swift, Waterland
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2
notes"In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages."Patrick Süskind, Perfume
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6
notes"Mother died today."Albert Camus, The Outsider
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"A child wants to see."
Julian Barnes, Arthur & George
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2
notes"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong."Franz Kafka, The Trial
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1
notes"It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not."Paul Auster, City of Glass
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"The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon."
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
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"The play - for which Briony had designed the posters, programmes and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper - was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and lunch."
Ian McEwan, Atonement
