Explore First sentence
Sort by:
Sort by:
Greg Jackson | First Sentence
Greg Jackson
‘I am being, I believe, about as forthright as I am being coy.’
Héctor Abad | First Sentence
Héctor Abad
‘Ever since this happened to me, I haven’t really believed in free will.’
Hero of Tiananmen Square
Orville Schell
‘The spring of 1989 was so apocalyptic that at the time it had seemed unthinkable that the year's events would fade or that China would ever be able to forget them.'
Jianan Qian | First Sentence
Jianan Qian
‘For every witness, history unfolded at some other time, and in some other place.’ Jianan Qian on the first sentence of her story, ‘To the Dogs’.
Julia Armfield | First Sentence
Julia Armfield
‘A first line is a threat, I think.’ Julia Armfield on the first sentence of her story ‘Longshore Drift’.
Laura Kasischke | First Sentence
Laura Kasischke
‘There really was a moth I found in a toolbox (not as musical or interesting as ‘strongbox’), alive, in the attic, in that box.’
Melinda Moustakis | First Sentence
Melinda Moustakis
‘We all would like to think that with one line, one brush, we could make a reader fall madly in love, and there are writers that elicit such a response with the appropriately gorgeous.’
Miroslav Penkov | First Sentence
Miroslav Penkov
‘It was an old woman’s racism that inspired the first line of ‘Blood Money’.’
Mona Simpson | First Sentence
Mona Simpson
‘A year later, still in third person, I’d taken five days off my character’s long wait. I’d moved to present tense, though, for more immediacy.’
Patrick French | First Sentence
Patrick French
‘In Edwardian days, if you were growing up in England (though Maurice was from Ireland) your life was regimented.’
