The 25 most iconic first sentences I've ever read
An opening sentence = the analog hook
The opening sentence of a book is the analog equivalent of a hook in six-second videos designed to lure the viewer immediately. With attention spans short-circuiting and people (not everyone!) spending more time scrolling than reading, the first line is more powerful now than it has ever been.
I wanted to know how books continue to grab attention today, so I did some research in my bookshelves. I looked at contemporary titles designed to grab today’s readers, but I also looked at books that have been around so long the author wouldn’t know what scrolling was.
I pulled dozens upon dozens of novels to re-read their first lines. Some books I hadn’t read for a decade or more and the first lines rattled me anew, as if I had never read them before. Others I had memorized and deliberately went searching for, knowing they would be featured in this list.
The process was incredibly cathartic. I am a devout underliner in my books and revisiting passages that stood out to me is healing in the way only reading fiction can be.
While I didn’t cull a specific formula or identify made-to-repeat patterns for what makes an iconic first sentence, what I did find was that every one I considered for this list evoked a big emotion.
In all good stories, the character must be changed by the end. It turns out readers want to be changed similarly. In no specific order, these opening lines are the best I’ve read.
The 25 most iconic first sentences I’ve ever read
1. We didn’t believe when we first heard because you know how church folk can gossip.
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
What could be more interesting, more juicy, than church gossip? And if a group of church-goers didn’t believe the news when they first heard it, it must be good. Here’s a line that would make it exceedingly difficult for me to put down the book without learning more.
2. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
This line is both simple and memorable enough that most people I’ve connected with about Rebecca know it by heart. The unnamed protagonist settles us in her first-person narrative by telling us of the place, Manderley; that it was worth dreaming about for good or for bad; and that she is telling this story from a time in the future, therefore this story is a reflection.
The sentence is especially powerful given the final line in the book, which of course I won’t share. If you’ve already read Rebecca, I encourage you to open the book, read this line, and flip to the final line. It really is a wonder.
3. 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.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
This long first line tells us in no uncertain terms whose hands we will be in as we read. It’s got humor and personality, it’s got cultural references and nods to the narrator’s lousy childhood, lousy being an indication of the time this word was used more colloquially. This line works because it will either repel a reader who doesn’t like informality to that degree, or hook a reader who’s up for the adventure of being taken along on this particular brand of narration.
4. The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
I feel like an absolute criminal for saying this, but I did not like this book. I underlined many, many passages and I think the prose is breathtaking from end to end, I just couldn’t hang with the spirits who guide the protagonist. Something didn’t work for me, and that’s okay.
Of the supernatural elements in the book, Jesmyn Ward is quoted saying, “I understood pretty early on that I couldn’t write about the experience of being caught in the system of American chattel slavery without the existence of a world beyond this one.” I respect that so much, and I’m glad this book found its place in the zeitgeist. It just wasn’t for me. That said, this opening line obliterates. Just gorgeous.
5. Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Experiencing this sentence for the first time in15 years made me want to read the book again. In this line, Steinbeck establishes the setting and probes us with curiosity seeds: why is it both a poem and a stink? Why is it both a specific (presumably lovely) quality of light and also a grating noise? It’s a nostalgia, so does that mean the narration is happening long after the events of the story took place?
It’s a perfect sentence.
6. Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly.
The Lying Life of Adults | Written by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein
I have a newspaper clipping of the first paragraph of this book tucked away in my habit tracking journal. I was enamored by the grit and candor, which Ferrante writes with such seduction that I can’t look away. This is classic Ferrante. It’s ugly — she even uses the word — and it punches you in the gut because, could you imagine hearing your father say that to your mother? The questions that follow a thread like that are what keep readers turning pages. Curiosity takes you far.
7. The snow in the mountains was melting, and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Tartt masterfully places a body not just in the opening scene, but in the opening line. She couldn’t grab our attention quicker. Furthermore, who is Bunny? Why is his name Bunny? What’s the grave situation they are in, and who is “we?”
Tartt’s later title, The Goldfinch, opens nicely but it has less of a hook: “While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.” This line prompts questions, too (why was he dreaming about his mother, and why has it been years since? How long has he been in Amsterdam and for what?) But it doesn’t compare to the opening of The Secret History.
8. It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Smell seems to be the sense covered least in literature, which interests me because it’s the most evocative of all senses. When I smell fresh pesto, I am immediately in my second-floor apartment in Italy spreading it on a panino with mozzarella and tomatoes. When the protagonist smells the scent of bitter almonds, he feels the stab of one-sided love; something many of us can relate to.
9. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This line dispels long-held beliefs about happiness: wealth, class, and a brood of descendants are the recipe for a happy life. For the Kareninas and all the many peripheral characters in the book, they had the so-called pillars of happiness, yet they were unhappy in their own very specific way. The establishes right away that we are beginning a great (given the size) story of discontent.
10. When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.
Vladímír by Julia May Jonas
What does this make you think of? Lolita? Me too, and it seems as though the author wanted readers to connect this to Lolita. The name of the book, after all, is Vladímír, and the author of Lolita is Vladimir Nabokov. The line is perverse — a young girl loving old men? Old men loving a young girl? It pushes buttons, quite like Lolita does, and it compels a curious reader to find out more about how this could be and, more interestingly, what the narrator is like now as she tells her story.
11. In a broad valley, at the foot of a sloping hillside, beside a clear bubbling stream, Tom was building a house.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
The words that come to mind when I read this are simple and idyllic. This sentence captures my attention today, even when Substack exists and my new puppy is running around, and even though the book is 975 pages, because it illustrates a place of quiet respite. Couldn’t we all use some of that right now? With our minds zinging and racing and working, working, working, who wouldn’t want to build a house with Tom at the foot of a sloping hillside beside a clear bubbling stream?
12. The bed is empty.
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
An empty bed in a summer camp? Yes. Drama, high stakes, possible death — these make for a compelling first sentence. Even if the reader doesn’t know this takes place at a summer camp, an empty bed is a clear indication of complicated plot to follow.
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