#sentence

As he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows, the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning sobs. ↗

— Edgar Rice Burroughs

#opening-lines #men

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#human-nature #opening-lines #nature

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

— Dorothy L. Sayers

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

I know what you want to hear, doctor, but I'm sorry, you're not going to pry some sordid confession out of me. ↗

— Bárbara Mujica

#first-sentence

Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. ↗

— Isabel Allende

#first-sentence

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

— Charlotte Brontë

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

Granted: I AM an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peep-hole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. ↗

— Günter Grass

#first-sentence

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. ↗

— Dylan Thomas

#first-sentence

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#first-sentence

Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#first-sentence