#opening

My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered. ↗

— Alice Sebold

#inspirational #life-and-death #opening-lines #death

Awakened by a thousand dogs, a passing truck, the tailspin of a poisoned mosquito (or, perhaps, merely the silence of my dreams), I had, before remembering who and where I was, seen only that green sun suspended in the firmament of my room (her uterus bottled in preserving fluids) and, through seconds that became millennia, millennia aeons, felt the steadfastness of my orbit around that cold glow of love, a marvelous fatal steadfastness, before my pupils dilated and shadows and unease once more defined reality, the steel box naked but for a mattress and insomnious bugs where I had lived, in a coma of heartbreak and drunkenness, the six months since Primavera's death. ↗

— Richard Calder

#death

Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond. ↗

— Richard Carlson

#learning #realisation #truth #life

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#first-sentence #opening-lines #roses #first-sentence

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#opening-lines #opening-sentences #walks #first-sentence

Some people will go to the opening of an envelope. They live their lives in the public eye and get off on it, they need it. They need that kind of adoration. If their name isn't in the tabloids once a week they feel like a failure. ↗

— Jensen Ackles

#envelope #eye #failure #feel #get

It's just a matter of me opening up the page and whatever is written on the page, that's what I'm here to do. ↗

— Anthony Anderson

#i #just #matter #me #opening

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. ↗

— Lois Lowry

#opening-lines #first-sentence

People talked to me in a way I think they would not have talked to somebody who hadn't shared the experience; they gave me their papers, they gave me their diaries. I found people constantly opening up to me. And I think they did because I had shared that experience with them. ↗

— Neil Sheehan

#constantly #diaries #did #experience #found

I'm hoping that maybe everyone on the Olympic team thinks that I'm worthy to carry the flag. That's my next goal, to carry the flag during the opening ceremonies, if everyone chooses me. ↗

— Picabo Street

#ceremonies #chooses #during #everyone #flag