A Celebration of
Great Opening Lines
in World Literature

Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)

Some modern readers may find these words a bit too formal or old-fashioned, but I can’t read them without admiring the beautiful phrasing. Read it again—slowly this time, and pausing after each comma to let the words sink in—and I think you will know what I mean. I first read this opening paragraph many, many decades ago, and one phrase in particular—where character is formless but nevertheless settling into lines of future development—still comes to mind when I observe prepubescent children.

How to Speak, How to Listen (1983)

I've got to be honest, I can't think of a better opening sentence for a book on the twin subjects of how to speak and how to listen.

Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

This is a wonderful opening paragraph to what many people regard as the best non-fiction book of 1997—and one of the most touching and inspirational books of all time. In 1995, Albom was an acclaimed sports reporter at the Detroit Free Press when he learned that one of his favorite Brandeis University professors, Morrie Schwartz, was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. The two men had been close in the 1970s, and Albom felt guilty about letting sixteen years pass with no contact. After reaching out to his former professor, Albom flew every week from Detroit to Boston to visit the 78-year-old Schwartz at his home (a newspaper strike in Detroit dictated the timing of the visits: every Tuesday for fourteen weeks).

Albom hoped the proceeds from an anticipated book might help to pay Schwartz’s medical bills, but he didn’t expect much. But after Tuesdays with Morrie was published in 1997, it spent four years on The New York Times Best Seller list, selling nearly twenty million copies (it was adapted into a popular 1999 made-for-tv film, with Jack Lemmon as Schwartz and Hank Azaria as Albom. The film received four Emmy nominations, winning three (Best Motion Picture Made for Television, Best Actor in a Motion Picture for Lemmon, and Best Supporting Actor for Azaria).

As a Man Thinketh (1903)

Opening a book—especially a non-fiction work—with a great quotation is a time-honored practice, and it is especially effective when the quotation updates a legendary biblical passage (Proverbs 23:7). In the opening paragraph, Allen continued with one of his most widely quoted thoughts: “ A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.“

It is not a stretch to regard Allen’s book as the father of modern self-help books, and one can see key elements of it in later works by Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Og Mandino, and other giants of the genre. It is also a small irony that the great American self-help book publishing empire all began with a small book by an English philosophical writer.

Getting What You Want (1993)

These are legitimate words of wisdom—expressed eloquently, I might add—and I was delighted to discover them at the beginning of the Preface to Anderson’s book. These two sentences illustrate something I’ve often said about Great Opening Lines in non-fiction books: the best way to begin is to say something important, and to say it well.

A few pages later, in the opening sentence of Chapter One, Anderson also began nicely by employing the time-honored practice of posing a question that attempts to “frame” the matter under discussion: “Do you ever avoid saying what you want or how you feel for fear of how someone will react?”

Moving From Me to We (2012)

This is an unusual—and intriguing—way to begin a self-help book, and it turns out to be 100% true. Anderson continued: “In fact what she did was turned into a Showtime TV series. She wanted to step into a dramatically different adventure for the next chapter of her life story. She was moved to express another side of herself, and then write about it. You see, in her other life, she’s ‘a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.’”

The woman’s real name was Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a highly trained English medical professional. In 2003, under the nom de plume Belle de Jour, she began writing a blog about her secret life as a sex worker. After receiving the Guardian’s Best Blog Award, de Jour’s profile increased dramatically, and she went on to write a number of bestselling books, some with terrific opening lines (see them here).

Mutuality Matters (2018)

After piquing our curiosity in her opening words, Anderson continued: “Santana explained, ‘To a greater degree over time, these friends, musical or not, seem to infuse my music and my life. And my friends say the same has happened to them.’ Then looking gently at the reporter, Santana asked, ‘Have you had that gratifying feeling of mutuality?’”

"Why We're So Nice: We're Wired to Cooperate," in The New York Times (July 23, 2002)

Angier continued: "Hard as it may be to believe in these days of infectious greed and sabers unsheathed, scientists have discovered that the small brave act of cooperating with another person, of choosing trust over cynicism, generosity over selfishness, makes the brain light up with quiet joy."

The Bible: A Biography (2006)

Mary Kay (Rev. Ed.; 1987)

The first edition of Ash’s memoir, originally published in 1981, opened in a very different way: “When I was seven years old, my daddy came home from the sanatorium. His tuberculosis had been arrested but not completely cured in his three years there, and he remained an invalid for the rest of my years at home, in need of a great deal of tender, loving care.”

In the revised edition, the paragraph about her father was retained, but placed a few paragraphs later—after she clearly took someone’s advice to open with words that would better convey her trademark wit and charm.

“Of Revenge,” in Essays (1625)

And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir (1987)

Typically, readers might be turned off by someone who starts off by saying, “I was born gifted,“ but Baez quickly forestalls such a reaction by clarifying what a gift actually means—something given to people, and, therefore, not something they can take credit for.

In her second paragraph, Baez continued: “My greatest gift, given to me by forces which confound genetics, environment, race, or ambition, is a singing voice. My second greatest gift, without which I would be an entirely different person with an entirely different story to tell, is a desire to share that voice, and the bounties it has heaped upon me, with others. From that combination of gifts has developed an immeasurable wealth—a wealth of adventures, of friendships, and of plain joys.“

What’s It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life (2005)

A Condition of Doubt: The Meanings of Hypochondria (2012)

Belling continued: “If a doctor examines such a patient and announces that no evidence of disease can be found, the patient (who would love to be able to believe the doctor) is not finally convinced. The patient concludes that this particular doctor is just not good enough to have found the horror that must—surely?—be hidden somewhere within.”

“Getting to the ‘Click’: Teaching the MFA at Bennington,” in Los Angeles Review of Books (Oct. 12, 2021)

Birket’s powerful opening sentence opened my eyes about the teaching of writing, and helped me see it in a whole new way. With all the emphasis on style, technique, mechanics, and craft, it turns out that the most important thing about the teaching of writing is the personal relationship between the teacher and the student, and what the teacher is able to bring out in the aspiring writer.

Girl Gone Mad: A Novel (2020)

The opening words come from Emily Bennett, a 28-year-old Pennsylvania therapist who works with troubled teen and pre-teen girls—and herself a former troubled middle school girl whose past is about to be resurrected.

In her opening words, Bennett continued: “It was one of the things I would eventually get to, but not today. Today was the girl’s first appointment. An intake, really. All I had was the referral that she had been sent from the psychiatric inpatient facility where she’d been for eight days.”

The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder (2010)

In the Introduction to her debut book, Blakemore begins by advancing an argument that she goes on to completely demolish: “Call me a coward if you will, but when the line between duty and sanity blurs, you can usually find me curled up with a battered book, reading as if my mental health depended on it. And it does, for inside the books I love I find good, respite, escape and perspective. I find something else, too: heroines and authors, hundreds of them, women whose real and fictitious lives have covered the terrain I too must tread.”

Continuing on the theme of Great Opening Lines, you will also enjoy the first sentence of Chapter One of Blakemore’s book—a magnificent tweak of Jane Austen’s classic opening:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that going back on a proposal of marriage isn’t the best way to start the day.”

How to Love Your Daughter (2023)

In the opening sentence, our heartstrings have already been seriously tugged—and we will shortly learn the tragic backstory. A middle-aged woman is so estranged from her daughter that she has never been allowed to see her two granddaughters. In a desperate attempt to cope with this enormous loss, she goes to great pains to make sure her presence is not discovered as she surreptitiously attempts to catch a glimpse of the girls from afar.

In the novel’s opening paragraph, the narrator—who we will shortly discover is an Israeli woman named Yoella—continued:

“The windows in the suburban neighborhoods of Groningen hang large and low—I was embarrassed by how effortlessly I’d got what I’d come for, frightened by how easily they could be gobbled up by my gaze. But I, too, was exposed. The slightest turn of their heads and they would have seen me.”

In a New York Times book review, Flynn Berry described the book as “A stone-cold masterwork of psychological tension.“ I was pleased to include Ward’s exceptional opener in my compilation of “23 of the Best Opening Lines of 2023” on Smerconish.com (see the full list here).

What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love (2023)

Primarily because of the magnificent phrase, “draped like hormonal Dalí clocks,” these opening words of the Prologue are so delicious that we feel compelled to read on in hopes of finding similar tasty morsels in what is to come. And, believe me, they do come.

Humankind: A Hopeful History (2019)

The Power of Crisis (2022)

Opening a non-fiction book with a little-known anecdote involving famous figures is always a good idea, and this one is particularly impressive. It is almost unbelievable that a summit conference of the American and Russian leaders would begin in this way, and I was delighted to honor the intriguing opener in my compilation of “The Best Opening Lines of 2022” on Smerconish.com (see the full list here).

In the opening paragraph, Bremmer, one of America’s leading political scientists, continued:

“Gorbachev didn’t hesitate. ‘No doubt about it,’ he replied. ‘We would too,’ Reagan assured him. That moment took place in a cabin in Geneva on November 19, 1985, but it wasn’t publicly known until Gorbachev told the story in front of a live audience at the Rainbow Room in New York City in March 2009. Only Reagan, Gorbachev, and their interpreters were present when that first exchange took place.”

The Road to Character (2015)

Brooks continued: “The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.“

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023)

I’m a sucker for openers that begin by taking readers down a certain path—and then abruptly moving in another, completely unexpected direction. In the book’s third paragraph, Brooks continued:

“The culture of my upbringing should be summed up by the phrase ‘Think Yiddish, act British.’ We were reserved, stiff-upper-lip types.”

I enjoyed Brook’s opening words so much that they came very close to making my end-of-year compilation of “23 of the Best Opening Lines of 2023” (sadly, it got nosed out at the last minute). See the full list here).

Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman’s Guide to Men (1962)

These are the opening words of a book that exploded on the publishing scene, selling well over two million books in the month after it was published. The book remained on all the major bestseller lists for over a year, and in 1964 was loosely adapted into a popular film, starring Natalie Wood. Published a year before The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, Sex and the Single Girl is now regarded as a ground-breaking work in women’s literature.

In the book, after describing the couple’s glamorous, upscale life, Brown sent an important If-I-can-do-it-so-can-you message to her female readers: “I am not beautiful, or even pretty. I once had the world’s worst case of acne. I am not bosomy or brilliant. I grew up in a small town. I didn’t go to college. My family was, and is, desperately poor and I have always helped support them. I’m an introvert and I am sometimes mean and cranky. But I don’t think it’s a miracle that I married my husband. I think I deserved him!”

After graduating from secretarial school in 1941, Brown worked as a secretary for well over a decade before finally landing a job as a copywriter for a Los Angeles advertising agency. Within a few years, she became the highest paid female copywriter on the West Coast, and in 1959 married the successful Hollywood film producer David Brown. It was Brown’s idea for her to write Sex and the Single Girl, but, as Dwight Garner put it in a New York Times article, “It was her bright, no-nonsense voice that brought the book to life.”

Loose Lips (1999)

The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found (2022)

In 2017, New York Times columnist Bruni woke up one morning with significantly blurred vision in his right eye, the result of a stroke that had cut off the blood supply to one of his optic nerves. Rendered functionally blind in that eye, he soon learned that he was in danger of losing sight in the left eye as well. In the memoir’s second paragraph, Bruni continued about the life-altering event:

“I went to bed believing that I was more or less in control of my life—that the unfinished business, unrealized dreams and other disappointments were essentially failures of industry and imagination and could probably be redeemed with a fierce enough effort. I woke up to the realization of how ludicrous that was.”

Junk (1996)

With these simple—but highly evocative—words, we are introduced to Gemma Brogan and David “Tar” Lawson, both fourteen years old and on the verge of escaping their highly dysfunctional home environments. Little do they know at this point of their journey that an even more dismal future awaits.

Burgess’s dark and gritty tale about teenage drug addiction went on to win the 1996 Carnegie Medal, awarded annually by England’s Library Association for the outstanding children’s book by a British writer. In 2007, on the 70th anniversary of the Carnegie Medal, Junk was named one of the Top Ten winners of the award. In 1997, the book was published in America under the title Smack, yet another slang term for heroin.

When the novel came out in a 25th Anniversary edition in 2021, the Guardian’s Julia Eccleshare wrote about it: “Melvin Burgess’s ground-breaking Junk remains the best book about teenagers and drugs to this day.”

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021)

Some opening lines are like a whack on the side of the head, and Burkeman does his best here to grab—or better, to arrest—the reader’s attention.

In the opening paragraph, he continued: “Here’s one way of putting things in perspective: the first modern humans appeared on the plains of Africa at least 200,000 years ago, and scientists estimate that life, in some form, will persist for another 1.5 billion years or more, until the intensifying heat of the sun condemns the last organism to death. But you? Assuming you live to be eighty, you’ll have had about four thousand weeks.”

The idea about whacking readers with an opening sentence was first advanced by H. G. Wells in an 1898 essay on the subject of writing essays (see the Wells entry here).

Living, Loving & Learning (1982)

Living, Loving & Learning is a collection of speeches from earlier in Buscaglia’s career, and these opening words from the book’s Foreword eloquently captured how Buscaglia viewed them.

The Stranger (1942)

This simple reflection has achieved an iconic status in modern literature. The narrator and protagonist is a French Algerian known only by the name Meursault. He continued: “The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.“

Meursault seems incapable of expressing normal, or expected, emotions. As a result, he went on to become the personification of a form of emotional detachment now commonly called alienation.

“An Absurd Reasoning,“ in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1955)

These are the powerful opening words of the first essay in the collection. Camus continued: “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.“

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and It’s All Small Stuff (1997)

Carlson’s opening paragraph couldn’t be more straightforward—when things go bad, people often do things to make matters worse. When I read the words for the first time, I found myself nodding in agreement, for they comported with what I had long observed in my therapy practice. Some people have such poor coping skills that almost every problematic situation that presents itself is made worse by the questionable methods they employ to deal with it.

As soon as Carlson’s book was published, his many thought-provoking observations struck a major chord with readers. The book remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 101 weeks, spawned a host of similarly-titled spinoffs (for moms, dads, teens, and others), and made Carlson one of the era’s most popular self-help writers.

In 2006, after the 45-year-old Carlson died unexpectedly of a heart attack, his former literary agent Patti Breitman said of him: “He preached what the Buddha preached, but without the preaching.”

“Kindred Spirits,” in The New Yorker (May 31, 2021)

Cep continued: “Almost a third of Americans say they have communicated with someone who has died, and they collectively spend more than two billion dollars a year for psychic services on platforms old and new. Facebook, Tik Tok, television: whatever the medium, there’s a medium.“ This was one of my choices for a Smerconish.com post on “Twenty-One of the Best Opening Lines of 2021.“

Manic: A Memoir (2008)

Cheney, a successful Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer, continued: “It doesn’t go from Point A to Point B in a familiar, friendly pattern. It’s chaotic, unpredictable. You never know where you’re headed next. I wanted this book to mirror the disease, to give the reader a visceral experience.”

Modern Madness: An Owner’s Manual (2020)

In this sequel to Manic, a 2008 bestselling memoir detailing her lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder, Cheney’s first paragraph goes on to offer a few more details about the superstar athlete’s physical appearance and persona. It is in the second paragraph where the book really begins to take off:

“Looking back, there was indeed something extraordinary in that room, only it had nothing to do with Michael Jackson’s feet. It was the mere fact that I was sitting there as one of his attorneys, representing him in a big, messy lawsuit involving one of the most successful albums of all time. That was me, all right—counselor to the stars. The voice of reason and restraint, in a gray Armani suit and a gorgeous white silk shirt I’d bought especially for the deposition, because it had these long, elegant French cuffs that would just about hide the virulent red slashes across my wrists I’d acquired from a recent suicide attempt.”

“Some Blind Alleys: A Letter,” in Phillip Lopate, ed., The Art of the Personal Essay (1994)

Right out of the gate, Cioran helps us see a familiar topic in a whole new way. A first-class first sentence.

Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient (1979)

In many non-fiction works, the best beginnings are often simple and straightforward—and that is certainly true with Cousins’s account of his famous attempt to treat a serious connective tissue disease with massive amounts of Vitamin C and systematic viewing of episodes of the TV-show Candid Camera (a method he called “laugh therapy”).

Cousins continued: “However, references to the illness surfaced from time to time in the general and medical press. People wrote to ask whether it was true that I ‘laughed’ my way out of a crippling disease that doctors believed to be irreversible.

The Selfish Gene (1976)

Highly quotable opening lines are relatively rare in non-fiction writing, and this is especially true in science writing. In a refreshing exception to the rule, Dawkins begins his classic 1976 book with an observation we want to linger over—even savor—for a few moments before reading on. In the rest of the opening paragraph, Dawkins continued:

“If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: ‘Have they discovered evolution yet?’ Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin.”

Near the end of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins coined the word meme, a cultural analog to the concept of a gene in biology. The coinage quickly became a meme in itself, and life in The Internet Age would never be the same. Twenty-three years later, in 1999, Dawkins returned to the subject of memes in a Time magazine essay—and he introduced the subject in an interesting and effective way. See the entry below.

“The Selfish Meme,” in Time magazine (April 11, 1999)

In the essay’s opening paragraph, Dawkins continued: “I was amused by this and did an imitation of it to divert my colleagues after dinner. Among them was a distinguished Oxford philosopher. As soon as he saw my imitation, he immediately said, ‘That’s Wittgenstein! Is her surname ____ by any chance?’ Taken aback, I said that it was. ‘I thought so,’ said my colleague. ‘Both her parents are professional philosophers and devoted followers of Wittgenstein.’ The gesture had passed from the great philosopher, via one or both of her parents, to my pupil.”

Here, Dawkins nicely demonstrates how a well-chosen anecdote can achieve two important goals at the same time—engaging the reader and illustrating the topic under discussion. He continued in the second paragraph:

“Our cultural life is full of things that seem to propagate virus-like from one mind to another: tunes, ideas, catchphrases, fashions, ways of making pots or building arches. In 1976 I coined the word meme (rhymes with cream) for these self-replicating units of culture that have a life of their own.”

The Second Sex, Vol. 2 (1949)

Epigrammatic opening lines have always been popular with readers, and this one has become de Beauvoir’s most famous observation (one could almost argue that it is her signature line). In nine simple words, she encapsulated her groundbreaking thesis that being female is a cultural rather than a biological construct. It’s a perfect opening line, in my opinion, and I only wish she had used it to begin the first volume of her classic work, not the second. Volume I opened memorably, but I think you will agree that it isn’t in the same league:

“Woman? Very simple, say the fanciers of simple formulas: she is a womb, an ovary; she is a female—this word is sufficient to define her. In the mouth of a man the epithet female has the sound of an insult….”

The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence (1997)

These opening words look a lot like the beginning of a suspense thriller, but they actually opened a non-fiction book that has become a classic in the literature on violence against women.

In his book, de Becker went well beyond the cliche of learning to trust one’s “gut instincts” by pinpointing a number of key warning signs—he called them pre-incident indicators, or PINS—that were precursors to violence.

Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men (2009)

With the “teaser” comment at the end, we wonder where, exactly, de Jour is going—but we’re damn sure going to continue reading to find out.

Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy (2023)

This intriguing—and exceedingly timely— opening sentence is the book’s entire first paragraph. In the second, Dickey, a cultural historian at National University in Los Angeles, explained:

“It has been with this country from the very beginning, shadowing it ever since. From the earliest European settlers to reach this land to the present day, we have mused about secret plots, hidden conspirators, invisible groups that threaten to control us.”

The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things: Fourteen Natural Steps to Health and Happiness (2007)

We’ve seen many times in these pages how effective it is to open a book—especially a non-fiction book—with a powerful quotation, biblical passage, or proverbial saying, and Dossey demonstrates that very nicely here. He continued in the second paragraph: “In the pages that follow, we will explore things that are in plain sight, but whose healing power and ability to add to life’s fulfillment have been overlooked or forgotten.”

The Power of Premonitions (2009)

Dossey continued in the first paragraph: “That’s what it’s been like with premonitions for me. I’ve been wrestling with them for a long time, unable to detach, rather like Jacob’s struggle with the angel in the Old Testament. The main difference is that Jacob’s brawl lasted only one night. My tussle with premonitions has persisted for more than three decades and shows no signs of ending.“

Reinventing Medicine: Beyond Mind-Body to a New Era of Healing (2009)

Go ahead, with the book in your hand, read this opening sentence—and try not to read on.

“Spirituality, Healing and Science,” in Ervin Laszlo and Kingsley L. Dennis, The New Science and Spirituality Reader (2012)

Dossey continued: “I distinguish spirituality from religion, which is a codified system of beliefs, practices, and behaviors that usually take place in a community of like-minded believers. Religion may or may not include a sense of the spiritual, and spiritual individuals may or may not be religious.”

The Sign of the Four (1890)

After this dramatic opening, Dr. John Watson—the beloved sidekick and chronicler of literary history’s greatest consulting detective—continued: “For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.”

For more than a hundred and thirty years, new readers have been stunned to learn of Holmes’s addiction to cocaine (his famous “seven-percent solution”). Dr. Watson describes the scene masterfully above, and in the very next paragraph, reveals what can only be called—in modern terms—his own codependency: “Three times a day for many months I had witnessed this performance, but custom had not reconciled my mind to it. On the contrary, from day to day I had become more irritable at the sight, and my conscience swelled nightly within me at the thought that I lacked the courage to protest.”

Adventures of a Bystander (1978)

Drucker continued: “But standing in the wings—much like the fireman in the theater—the bystander sees things neither actor nor audience notices. Above all, he sees differently from the way actors or audience see.”

“Managing Oneself,“ in Harvard Business Review (January 2005)

When most people use the term manage, they think of it as directing the activities of others—mainly subordinates—but Drucker, often described as “The Father of Modern Management,“ helpfully reminds us here that great achievers are great in large part because they are skilled at managing themselves.

Surviving the Toxic Workplace (2010)

Beginning a book with a series of pointed questions is a classic way to begin a self-help book—and that approach is enhanced when a little wordplay is added, as we see with the clever tweak of the medical term staph infections in the very next sentence: “These are all signs of Staff Infections—the difficulties you experience in dealing with toxic people and workplace conditions.

Your Erroneous Zones (1976)

In the early 1970s, while a professor at St. John’s University (New York), Dyer’s lectures were so popular with students that a Manhattan literary agent convinced him to put his ideas together in a book. The result was the cleverly-titled and eminently readable self-help book Your Erroneous Zones.

After the book was published, initial sales were so sluggish that Dyer decided to take matters into his own hands. He quit his job, loaded the back of his station wagon with books, and embarked on a national promotional tour in which he tenaciously pursued radio stations for interviews and bookstores for book signings. His efforts paid off—handsomely. The book gradually became a word-of-mouth bestseller. It ultimately sold over 30 million copies, and built a foundation upon which Dyer forged one of the most successful writing careers in history, with well over forty books published before his death at age 75 in 2015.

“Who Are You?” in I Remember Nothing (2010)

Ephron continued: “We’re at a big party. We’ve kissed hello. We’ve had a delightful conversation about how we are the last two people on the face of the earth who don’t kiss on both cheeks. Now we’re having a conversation about how phony all the people are who do kiss on both cheeks. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. You’re so charming. If only I could remember your name.”

Ambition: The Secret Passion (1980)

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1992)

This is the entire first paragraph of a book that is now regarded as a classic in feminist thought. The book, written by a Jungian psychoanalyst, drew heavily from folk tales, fairy tales, and worldwide mythology. It remained on The New York Times bestseller list for nearly three years—145 weeks in all (Estés was the first Latina to make the coveted list).

In the second paragraph, Estés continued: “Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. For several thousand years, as soon and as often as we turn our backs, it is relegated to the poorest land in the psyche. The spiritual lands of Wild Woman have, throughout history, been plundered or burnt, dens bulldozed, and natural cycles forced into unnatural rhythms to please others.”

Then There Was Larry: A Memoir (2021)

Estorge’s memoir had me in the first four words. I immediately thought, “Who doesn’t?” And then I put down the book for a moment, reflected on a few of my secrets, and wondered how many other readers might do the same thing.

In her first paragraph, Estorge continued: “Some secrets are as endearing as a caterpillar tickling its way across your toes. Like telling your friend that her baby is adorable despite the newborn’s resemblance to E.T. Some secrets are as harmless as a personal pet peeve. Like when your coworker says, ‘I seen that movie,’ and you want to grip her by the shoulders and say, ‘It’s I have seen that movie.’ Some secrets, however, are as poisonous as the Cone Snail with their harpoon-like teeth and paralysis-causing venom—a creature you don’t want to brush up against accidentally.”

Proof (1985)

The words come from Tony Beach, a young wine merchant whose wife died six months earlier. He continued: “Ah well, they say, he’ll get over it. There’s always another pretty lady. Time’s a great healer, they say. No doubt they’re right. But oh dear God…the emptiness in my house.”

The Diary of Anne Frank (1947; originally titled The Annex)

This was the very first entry written by Anne Frank in a diary she’d been given on her 13th birthday. Bound with red-and-white checkered cloth, the book had a small lock on the front, giving the newly minted teenager a secure feeling that no one but her would be able to read the contents. An exceptional student in a local Montessori school, Anne was already dreaming of a literary career—and the diary’s opening words reveal a sophistication beyond her years.

In February of 1934, Frank was four-and-a-half-years-old and living temporarily with her grandmother when she joined her parents and older sister Margot in Amsterdam, Netherlands. A year earlier, after the Nazi Party won the federal elections and Hitler became Chancellor, thousands of Jewish families began fleeing their native Germany and settling in neighboring European countries. The Franks lived a comfortable (if slightly uneasy) life until May of 1940, when Germany formally occupied the Netherlands and began to identify and deport the country’s Jews.

In the summer of 1942, just after Margot received a letter ordering her to report to a work camp, the family began hiding in a secret room in a building where her father worked. The “secret annex,” as they sometimes called it, was hidden behind a bookcase, and it kept them and a number of other Amsterdam Jews safe until they were arrested by the Gestapo in 1944. Anne and Margot were first sent to Auschwitz, and then the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died—most likely of typhus—several months later.

After the war, Anne’s father Otto—the only surviving member of the Frank family—returned to Amsterdam to discover that his secretary had saved Anne’s diary. To honor his daughter’s dream of becoming a writer, he published a Dutch version in 1947.

First published in English as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl in 1952, the book failed to find an audience and was out of print the following year. In 1955, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, a play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, debuted on Broadway. A critical success, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1956 and greatly fueled interest in Anne’s story. In 1959, the play was adapted into the “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a film starring Millie Perkins (it was nominated for seven Oscars, winning three.) Now regarded as a cinematic classic, the film re-ignited interest in Anne’s diary, which went on to become one of the world’s most popular books, translated into more than 70 languages and selling more than 35 million copies.

Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)

These are the opening lines of one of the most influential books of the 20th century. In 1942, Frankl was a Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist when he, his wife, and his parents were transported to a Czechoslovakian concentration camp. Two years later, they were all sent to Auschwitz, where his wife and parents perished.

In 1945, after Allied forces liberated many of the Nazi concentration camps, Frankl put the finishing touches on a memoir he began while reflecting on his experiences as a prisoner. The original title of his book, first published in 1946, was Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. After the book was published in English in 1956 (under the title Man’s Search for Meaning), it became an international best-seller and Frankl was hailed as one of modern psychology’s most influential figures.

This is How Your Marriage Ends (2022)

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

This is the opening paragraph of the first chapter (titled “The Problem That Has No Name“ ) of one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. In 1957, as her 15th Smith College reunion approached, Friedan—a married woman with three growing children—was asked to do a survey of her classmates, almost all of whom were leading what looked like idyllic lives as suburban mothers and homemakers. Just below the comfortable-looking surface, though, Friedan discovered a deep strain of frustration, discontent, and lack of fulfillment. Nobody had written about this phenomenon, and she began to think about it as a problem without a name. A few years later, she gave it an unforgettable name—The Feminine Mystique—and explored it in detail in a book that launched the modern women’s movement.

In a 50th anniversary edition of the book in 2013, writer Gail Collins described the three-word concluding question (Is this all?) as “an earthshaking query.“ Three years after publication of the book, in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded, and Friedan was one of the cofounders.

What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World (2008)

Friedman continued: “Millions upon millions of people, however, have gladly and gratefully taken bad advice, foolish advice, pop advice, and glib advice. Why is this? No doubt it’s partly because of the perversity of human nature. This notwithstanding, the other part, I believe, is because of the sanctimonious, constipated, pompous, smug, and self-righteous way that good advice is usually given.”

The Art of Loving (1956)

Opening a book with a rhetorical question is a time-honored way to immediately engage the reader, and Fromm—one of the great popularizers of psychological concepts to a lay audience—does that very nicely here.

In the opening paragraph, he continued: “Then it requires knowledge and effort. Or is love a pleasant sensation, which to experience is a matter of chance, something one ‘falls into’ if one is lucky? This little book is based on the former premise, while undoubtedly the majority of people today believe in the latter.”

Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? (1961)

Gardner continued: “Most human societies have been beautifully organized to keep good men down. Of course there are irrepressible spirits who burst all barriers; but on the whole, human societies have severely and successfully limited the realization of human promise. They did not set out consciously to achieve that goal. It is just that full realization of individual promise is not possible on a wide scale in societies of hereditary privilege—and most human societies have had precisely that characteristic.”

In his 1984 revised edition of the book, Gardner retained the exact wording of the first sentence, but changed the second paragraph in this way: “Most human societies of which we have any historical record have been beautifully organized to keep good men and women down. The reasons are many, but the most obvious is that throughout most of recorded history societies of hereditary privilege have predominated.”

Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (2018)

“A Most Ingenious Paradox,” in The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History (1985)

“The Rule of Five,” in The Flamingo’s Smile: Reflections in Natural History (1985)

Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism (1995)

Grandin is one of the truly great heroes in the autism community (her life and work was memorably portrayed by Clair Danes in the 2010 HBO movie “Temple Grandin”). In the book’s opening paragraph, Dr. Grandin continued:

“Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures.”

Ordinary People (1976)

This is one of my all-time favorite opening lines—a grand philosophical declaration with a dash of wit. In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “People in cars on busy freeways call to each other Boycott Grapes, comfort each other Honk if You Love Jesus, joke with each other Be Kind to Animals—Kiss a Beaver. They identify, they summarize, they antagonize with statements of faith: I Have a Dream, Too—Law and Order; Jesus Saves at Chicago Fed; Rod McKuen for President.”

The opening words are the reflections of Conrad Jarrett, a 17-year-old Illinois high school student who eight months earlier attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor blade (six months before that, his older brother Buck was killed in a sailing accident on Lake Michigan). Recently released from a psychiatric hospital, the still-struggling Conrad is about to return to high school. The narrator continued about him:

“Lying on his back in bed, he gazes around the walls of his room, musing about what has happened to his collection of statements. They had been discreetly mounted on cardboard, and fastened up with push pins so as not to deface the walls. Gone now. Probably tossed out with the rest of the junk—all those eight-by-ten colorprints of the Cubs, White Sox, and Bears, junior-high mementos. Too bad. It would be comforting to have something to look up to.”

Guest’s debut novel, the book had not yet been published when galley proofs were brought to Robert Redford’s attention. He immediately saw its potential and flew to Minneapolis to personally secure the film rights. One can only imagine how thrilling it must have been for Guest, a 40-year-old former teacher and aspiring novelist, to open her front door and see Redford standing there with her book in his hands. In 1980, Ordinary People became one of the year’s most popular films, ultimately winning four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Redford in his directorial debut.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)

So begins the debut adult novel of a 41-year-old English writer who had previously penned more than a dozen children’s books. As the opening paragraph continues, readers are almost irresistibly drawn into the story by the intriguing “voice” of the narrator and protagonist, a 15-year-old autistic English boy named Christopher John Francis Boone:

“There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this.”

From the day the book was published, it garnered the highest critical praise, and few were surprised when it was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book of the year. If anything, the novel’s reputation has only heightened over the years, with The Guardian ranking it Number 19 in its 2019 list of “The 100 Best Books of the 21st century.”

If the title of the novel has a familiar ring, it’s because you’re thinking of a famous bit of dialogue between Sherlock Holmes and a Scotland Yard detective in Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze.” Here’s exactly how it appeared in the tale 130 years ago:

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Reasons to Stay Alive (2015)

With these opening words of Chapter One, Haig begins his memoir—and the story of his longtime struggle with depression and anxiety disorder. They are not the first words the reader sees, however. In a note to the reader at the very beginning of the memoir (titled “This Book is Impossible”), Haig wrote:

“Thirteen years ago I knew this couldn’t happen.

“I was going to die, you see. Or go mad.

“There was no way I would still be here. Sometimes I doubted I would even make the next ten minutes. And the idea that I would be well enough and confident enough to write about it in this way would have been just far too much to believe.

“One of the key symptoms of depression is to see no hope. No future.”

The Drinking Life: A Memoir (1995)

John Irving is widely quoted as saying, “Whenever possible tell the whole story of the novel in the first sentence,“ and Hamill proves in the opening words of his book that the advice applies equally well to memoirs and autobiographies.“

When I first read Hamill’s memoir, I had two major reactions to the opening paragraph. The first was to view it as an absolutely remarkable way for a recovering alcoholic to begin a memoir about his time in the drinking life. The second was to think to myself, “The tale may not have had any heroes, but I’m sure there were plenty of victims.“

The Fear of Crime (1969; an expanded version of a 1968 New Yorker magazine article)

Harris opens with an eminently quotable observation, which is always a great way to begin a book on any topic.

Lying (2013)

In crafting the first sentence of a non-fiction work, it’s hard to beat an emphatic assertion that is single-mindedly designed to get the reader’s attention. When I read this opener for the first time, it stopped me in my tracks—and I felt compelled to set the book down for a moment to reflect on the significance of Harris’s grand declaration.

In the remainder of his opening paragraph, Harris elaborated on his thesis by identifying one culprit in particular: “Many of us spend our lives marching with open eyes toward remorse, guilt, and disappointment. And nowhere do our injuries seem more casually self-inflicted, or the suffering we create more disproportionate to the needs of the moment, than in the lies we tell to other human beings. Lying is the royal road to chaos.”

Damage (1991)

This is a magnificent first line—equally as good, in my opinion, as any of history’s classic aphoristic or epigrammatic openings. The words come from an introspective narrator who appears to be an older man reflecting on tragic mistakes he made not in his youth, but in his later, mature years. If you appreciate the quality of this first line, you will also likely appreciate the entire opening paragraph:

“There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.”

Had he died at fifty, the narrator goes on to suggest, he would have been remembered as a doctor, an established politician, and a loving husband and father. But he concludes his opening reflections by saying, “But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now who do not regard that as a tragedy.” And with that remarkable conclusion, the reader is left wondering, “What exactly happened in this man’s sad life?”

Beach Read (2020)

We all have fatal flaws, but what makes them so dangerously self-destructive is that they’re almost always ignored, minimized, explained away, dismissed, or just plain denied. To see someone so readily admit to a fatal flaw, even in a novel, is unusual and refreshing.

The frank admission comes from January Andrews, a 29-year-old author of romance novels. After a taste of commercial success a few years earlier, Andrews is now broke and almost homeless. She continued on the subject of fatal flaws: “I like to think we all do. Or at least that makes it easier for me when I’m writing—building my heroines and heroes up around this one self-sabotaging trait, hinging everything that happens to them on a specific characteristic: the thing they learned to do to protect themselves and can’t let go of, even when it stops serving them.”

The opening line of Henry’s novel resonated so much with me that I selected it as one of “Twenty of the Best Opening Lines of 2020” in a Smerconish.com post (to be seen here).

Think and Grow Rich (1937)

These are the opening words of the book’s Introduction, but in an earlier “Author’s Preface,” Hill already tantalized readers with these two paragraphs:

“In every chapter of this book, mention has been made of the money-making secret which has made fortunes for more than five hundred exceedingly wealthy men whom I have carefully analyzed over a long period of years.

“The secret was brought to my attention by Andrew Carnegie more than a quarter of a century ago. The canny, lovable old Scotsman carelessly tossed it into my mind when I was a young boy. Then he sat back in his chair, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, and watched carefully to see if I had brains enough to understand the full significance of what he had said to me.”

Lost Horizon (1933)

This is a wonderful opening line, perfectly capturing the mixture of sadness and disappointment that has been experienced by countless middle-aged people over the years when they’ve had some kind of reunion with childhood or adolescent friends.

"The Platonist", in Essays: Moral, Political, & Literary (1741-42)

“Soap Opera,” in The Progressive (October 1967)

“Say So,” in Rosie magazine (2001, Vol. 128)

“Mr. Right is Dead,“ title story of Mr. Right is Dead (1965)

The opening lines of many works of fiction read as if they were passages from a textbook of psychology--and that is the case here. In Jaffe’s short story, the narrator continued: “I guess that’s because it’s the one weakness we all secretly feel should be the easiest to overcome, and we secretly feel guilty that we can’t.“

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)

This opening sentence is from the book’s Prologue, and it captures in a nutshell Jung’s view of the powerful role the unconscious plays in human affairs. He continued:

“Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience itself as a whole. I cannot employ the language of science to trace this process of growth in myself, for I cannot experience myself as a scientific problem.”

“An Answer to the Question: ’What is Enlightenment?’“ in Berlin Monthly (Dec. 1784)

Kant continued: “Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding.”

Sapere aude! is a Latin proverb generally translated as “Dare to know!” or “Dare to be wise!” In modern usage, it has also come to mean something close to: “Dare to think for yourself!”

Girl, Interrupted (1993)

In her best-selling memoir, Kaysen chronicled her eighteen-month experience as a patient at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts (the book was adapted into an award-winning 1999 film, starring Angelina Jolie in an Oscar-winning performance and Winona Ryder in the role of the author).

Kaysen continued in the next paragraph: “And it is easy to slip into a parallel universe. There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it.“

A Most Dangerous Method (1993)

Kerr continued: “The last time the two men were together in the same room was at the Fourth International Psychoanalytic Congress, held in Munich on 7-8 September 1913. On that occasion, so far as is known, they said not a single word to each other. So it was in silence that one of the most vexed partnerships in the history of ideas ended.”

Strength to Love (1963)

These are the opening words of the book’s first chapter, titled “A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart.” The French philosopher in question is Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), and the observation comes from his 1669 defense of Christian thought, Pensées (literally, “Thoughts”).

In the book, Dr. King continued: “Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”

Drinking: A Love Story (1996)

This is a powerful introduction to a powerful and, if you will excuse the word, sobering memoir. Three months after the incident with her friend’s daughters, Knapp quit drinking—for good.

The two sentences above come from the Prologue to the book, and they are so captivating that I’m featuring them instead of the opening words of Chapter One, which begins simply: “I drank.“

In the second paragraph of Chapter One, Knapp continued: “I drank Fumé Blanc at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and I drank double-shots of Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks at a dingy Chinese restaurant across the street from my office, and I drank at home. For a long time I drank expensive red wine, and I learned to appreciate the subtle differences between a silky Merlot and a tart Cabernet Sauvignon and a soft, earthy Beaucastel from the south of France, but I never really cared about those nuances because, honestly, they were beside the point.“

I Know This Much Is True (2008)

In a 2023 Guardian article, Irish writer Liz Nugent included this opener in her list of “The Top Ten First Lines in Fiction,” writing:

“The first part of this sentence points to an average man on an average day. The second part indicates something huge is about to happen. Thomas is no average character. Who chooses a library to make a sacrifice? Reading it today, one might suspect Thomas to be a suicide bomber, but in 1998, when I first read it, that didn’t enter my mind. Even if it had, I would have been wrong. What sacrifice is about to be made? Why the library? What’s going on between Thomas and his twin brother?”

In 2020, the novel was adapted into an HBO-TV miniseries, with Mark Ruffalo playing the roles of both twin brothers, Dominick and Thomas Birdsey.

“It’s Good to Remember: We Are All on Borrowed Time,” in The New York Times (October 30, 2023)

In the opening paragraph, Lamott—writing at age sixty-nine—continued:

“At the Safeway sushi bar during lunchtime, I look at the teenage girls in their crop tops with their stupid flat tummies and I feel bad about what lies beneath my big, forgiving shirts but—and this is one of the blessings of aging—not for long.”

The Country of the Blind: A Memoir of the End of Sight (2023)

These are the stark—and startling—opening words of a memoir that seemed to come out of nowhere in the middle of the year and ended up on numerous “best books of the year” lists. Leland continued in the opening paragraph:

“It feels less dramatic than it sounds. The words aren’t disappearing as I type. I’m sitting comfortably in the sunroom. The sun is rising like it’s supposed to. I can plainly see Lily sitting next to me, reading in her striped pajamas. The visible world is disappearing, but it’s not in a hurry.”

Leland—a Massachusetts writer, teacher, editor, and audio producer—has retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a progressive eye disease that slowly but inexorably leads to blindness. When the book was published, he could see only about six percent of what a person with normal vision sees.

I was so impressed with Leland’s opening sentence that I included it in my annual Smerconish.com post on “23 of the Best Opening Lines of 2023” (see the full list here).

Education and Ecstasy (1968)

It is generally inadvisable to begin a book with a sarcasm-laced observation, but Leonard—a leader of the human potential movement and critic of the educational establishment—was clearly trying to get people’s attention. In the first paragraph, he continued:

“What energy it takes to make a torrent into a trickle, to train that trickle along narrow, well-marked channels!“

The Ultimate Athlete (1974)

Leonard continued: “Every body that moves about on this planet, if you look at it that way, may well be inhabited by a strong and graceful athlete, capable of Olympian feats.“

The Dance of Anger (1985)

This is a brilliant opening line, succinctly capturing in nine simple words the essence of an entire book. They also begin a full paragraph that is one of psychology history’s clearest and most lucid descriptions of a complex emotion:

“Anger is a signal, and one worth listening to. Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something is not right. Our anger may tell us that we are not addressing an important emotional issue in our lives, or that too much of our self—our beliefs, values, desires, or ambitions—is being compromised in a relationship. Our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. Or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth. Just as physical pain tells us to take our hand off the hot stove, the pain of our anger preserves the very integrity of our self. Our anger can motivate us to say ‘no’ to the ways in which we are defined by others and ‘yes’ to the dictates of our inner self.”

Successful Aging (2020)

Levitin, a neuroscientist who authored four previous New York Times bestsellers, turned his attention to aging in this latest book, also a bestseller. He continued: “I saw my grandfather suffer aches and pains. Once agile and proudly self-sufficient, by his sixties he struggled to swing a hammer and was unable to read the label on a box of Triscuit crackers without his glasses. I listened as my grandmother forgot words, and I cried when eventually she forgot what year it was.”

Managing Thought: Think Differently. Think Powerful. Achieve New Levels of Success (2008)

A bold declaration is always a good way to begin any book, especially a non-fiction work, and Lore’s impressive explication of her thesis had the added benefit of helping readers reframe their thinking about the future.

In a later paragraph, Lore, a popular platform speaker as well as an award-winning author, went on to add: “We achieve results by focusing on the moment. And the results we achieve—bad, good, or significant—depend on what we focus on in the moment.”

Adventures in Staying Young (1955)

I still recall the moment when I first came across this opening line more than a half-century ago. It perfectly phrased something I’d personally experienced but had never consciously thought about—or seen put into words.

The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology (1964)

Maltz continued: “All these feelings will pulse through you—and more. For the picture you will see is about the most fascinating person in the world—yourself. In this theatre, which is in the mind and heart of each of us, you are the producer, director, writer, actor or actress, hero and the villain. You are the film technician up in the booth—and the audience which reacts to this thrilling drama.”

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (2016)

How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind (2023) A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind (2023)

It’s a grisly first sentence, true, but it’s hard to imagine a better opening line for a nonfiction book addressed to people who are attempting to cope with suicidal thoughts. After his “hook” has been implanted in readers, Martin—a philosophy professor with a long history of failed suicide attempts—reels them in with the following explanation:

“As usual, I didn’t write a note. I carried down a green leather and wood chair from my office while my dog watched from the stairs. She’s afraid of the basement. I took the heavy blue canvas leash, looped it over a beam, made a noose by snaking the leash through the handle, latched it, and checked it for strength. Then I kicked the chair away like the gentle old institutionalized suicide Brooks Hatlen does toward the end of The Shawshank Redemption.”

I was delighted to include Martin’s first sentence in my end-of-year Smerconish.com post of “23 of the Best Opening Lines of 2023” (see the full list here).

Toward a Psychology of Being (1962)

These are the hopeful opening words of a book that helped launch the humanistic psychology movement in America. The introductory chapter was based on a 1954 lecture Maslow originally delivered at the Cooper Union in New York City.

Man’s Search for Himself (1953)

These are the opening words of the Preface to the book. May continued: “When our society, in its time of upheaval in standards and values, can give us no clear picture of ‘what we are and what we ought to be,’ as Matthew Arnold puts it, we are thrown back on the search for ourselves. The painful insecurity on all sides gives us new incentive to ask, Is there perhaps some important source of guidance and strength we have overlooked?”

Love and Will (1989)

Brightness Falls (1992)

This is a magnificent opening sentence, perfectly capturing how folks in the 1990s recovery world viewed their lives—with addicts and depressives playing baseball as natural and matter-of-fact as the Red Sox and Yankees. The opening words begin a kind of prologue to the novel, although it is not formally titled as such, and the unnamed narrator continued with an impressive display of writing talent:

“The quality of play was erratic, the recovering addicts being depressed from lack of their chosen medications and the depressives heavily dosed with exotic chemical bullets aimed at their elusive despair. Being myself among the clinically numb, I don’t remember the outcome of the game now, though I submit that taken together we were as representative a group as you could hope to field at that juncture in history. It was the fall of 1987.”

Dead Man in the Silver Market: An Autobiographical Essay on National Prides (1954)

Menen has been largely forgotten by modern readers, but he was popular enough to be remembered in a warm New York Times obituary after his death in 1989. A prolific writer of two-dozen novels, travel books, and non-fiction works, Menen was born in London in 1912 to an Irish mother and Indian father. He was also known as a gifted satirist, as he proves in this magnificent opening line. Menen’s book is often described as an autobiography, but it is in reality a series of essays, many of a semi-autobiographical nature.

No Man is an Island (1955)

These are the opening words of Chapter I, which is memorably titled “Love Can Be Kept Only By Being Given Away.“ This single observation went on to become one of Merton’s most popular quotations.

In the second paragraph, Merton continued: “There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared,”

Of Merton’s many spiritual and philosophical works, No Man is an Island is my favorite, and one I have returned to again and again over the years (technically, it is a collection of essays rather than a single non-fiction work). The title, of course, comes from a famous line in John Donne’s classic prose work, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

The Maidens: A Novel (2021)

The protagonist is Mariana Andros, an English psychotherapist—and also a recent widow—who shows up at Cambridge University to comfort her niece Zoe, a student who is grieving the recent murder of a classmate. The murdered girl belonged to a secret society of beautiful young female students known as The Maidens, all acolytes of a charismatic professor of Greek tragedy named Edward Fosca.

Mariana soon begins to suspect the smug professor, who has an alibi, and she becomes convinced of his guilt when another body is found. The narrator continued about her: “And yet—she couldn’t prove it, and might never prove it. This man, this monster, who had killed at least two people, might, in all likelihood, walk free.”

Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991)

This is a powerful opening line, and it is all the more impressive because compelling “hooks” like this generally come from novels, and not personal growth/self-discovery books. The first sentence is also the complete first paragraph, thereby ensuring maximum impact. In the book’s second paragraph, Millman continued with a poignant description of the inner turmoil and psychic pain that can result from losing our way in life:

“Linda and I were married on a Sunday in the spring of 1967, during my senior year at U.C. Berkeley. After a special dinner, we spent our brief honeymoon in a Berkeley hotel. I remember waking before dawn, unaccountably depressed. With the world still cloaked in darkness, I slipped out from under the rumpled covers and stepped softly out onto the balcony so as not to disturb Linda. As soon as I closed the sliding glass door, my chest began to heave and the tears came. I could not understand why I felt so sad, except for a troubling intuition that I had forgotten something important, and that my life had somehow gone awry.”

Everyday Enlightenment: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth (1998)

Beginning a non-fiction work with an important self-revelation is almost always a good idea, but it works especially well in a book inviting readers on a journey of personal discovery. The impact of Millman’s first sentence was further enhanced by the exceptional candor—and, in my view, the emotional courage—he showed as he continued in the opening paragraph:

“We had been married for six years and were living in a cottage at Stanford University where we served as dormitory directors. My wife had become enamored of a handsome tennis player. When he entered our cottage to speak with her, as students did on occasion, her eyes sparkled as they no longer sparkled for me. They spoke and laughed into the night, lost in conversation.”

Black Swan Green (2006)

The opening words come from 13-year-old Jason Taylor, described in a Boston Globe review as “one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel.” The novel was widely praised—winning several Best of the Year awards—and almost everyone likened the narrator and protagonist to Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield. In the first paragraph, Jason continued:

“Dad’s got an answering machine like James Garner’s in The Rockford Files with big reels of tape. But he’s stopped leaving it on recently. Thirty rings, the phone got to. Julia couldn’t hear it up in her converted attic ’cause “Don’t You Want Me?” by Human League was thumping out dead loud. Forty rings. Mum couldn’t hear ’cause the washing machine was on berserk cycle and she was hoovering the living room. Fifty rings. That’s just not normal. S’pose Dad’d been mangled by a juggernaut on the M5 and the police only had this office number ’cause all his other I.D.’d got incinerated? We could lose our final chance to see our charred father in the terminal ward.”

The entire opening paragraph is wonderful, but the first words of the second paragraph match it in quality: “So I went in, thinking of a bride going into Bluebeard’s chamber after being told not to.”

In this heavily autobiographical novel, Jason is a stammerer (in America, we generally say stutterer instead), a speech disorder the author also struggled with in his early years. In a 2011 article in Prospect magazine, Mitchell bemoaned the fact that stammering is rarely discussed openly and constructively (he tweaked a famous Oscar Wilde observation by saying, “Stammering is the disability which cannot say its name”). In his article, he continued: “This silence is even common in the homes of stammerers…my open and kind parents and I discussed my speech impediment exactly never, and this ‘don’t mention the stammer’ policy was continued by friends and colleagues into my thirties. I’d probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13-year-old.”

The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (1967)

Morris, a zoologist and former curator of mammals at the London Zoo, said his purpose in writing the book was to examine human beings in the same way that members of his profession had previously studied animals. In his opening words, he continued: “This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time studiously ignoring his fundamental ones.”

Shortly after publication, the book became an international bestseller, translated into more than two dozen languages. Part of the book’s popularity came from Morris’s clear and often captivating prose—as seen in his opening words. But it is also clear that many readers were attracted by the book’s titillating details, including Morris’s assertion that, compared to other mammals, male human beings had the highest ratio of penis size to body mass (it was for this and a few other reasons that Morris described human beings as “the sexiest primate alive”).

The Scar (2011)

These are among the most powerful words to ever open a children’s book. In a Booklist review, writer and editor Daniel Kraus wrote: “This is not a book for everyone, but it could be an important one for those in need. From the opening line—“Mom died this morning”—it’s clear that this is going to be a hard book to get through, and it is, with the unnamed little boy struggling with wild fluctuations of emotion: anger at being left behind; sympathy for his grieving dad; and panic about forgetting his mother, which he tries to counteract by closing all the windows, holding his breath, and running around until his heart pounds, since he was told that she’ll always be ‘in your heart.’”

Loneliness (1961)

Moustakas continued: “In the past I tried to overcome my sense of isolation by plunging into work projects and entering into social activities. By keeping busy and by committing myself to interesting and challenging work, I never had to face, in any direct or open way, the nature of my own existence as an isolated and solitary individual.”

Loneliness and Love (1972)

Moustakas continued: “This awareness is usually thrust upon me when the spirit of my life is broken, when the person who I am is clearly not being received, when I am being judged, examined, questioned.”

Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard (2010)

Wiving: A Memoir of Loving Then Leaving the Patriarchy (2020)

This was one of my choices for The 20 Best Opening Lines of 2020 (to see the full list, go here). I had expected Myers’s memoir to be a relatively straightforward tale of self-discovery, but her opening words quickly set me straight. In addition to being a moving tale about her personal journey from young, devout Mormon girl to strong, independent woman, it is also a stirring polemic about life for women in a male-dominated world.

Myer continued: “In the story, a woman who is—according to an occult and capricious geometry of features and culture and a man’s particular taste—’beautiful’ must be attached to a man. To be unattached at my age is a violation of the story. This man wants an explanation. If my answer isn’t plausible, if there is no man waiting around the corner or recently dead or banging a college student, I should be grateful he is offering me a happy ending.

“His desire lands on my shoulders like a bird of prey.

“What he means is, I need you to fill the gap in me.“

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

These are the very first words of the book, coming from what is essentially an untitled Preface. When Noah, the popular host of The Daily Show, was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1984, his father had Swiss-German heritage and his mother was of Xhosa descent (a people native to the region). At the time, South Africa was governed by a strict policy of apartheid, which made interracial marriage—and, in fact, all intimate interracial relationships—illegal. A year after Noah’s birth, interracial relationships were decriminalized, but the very notion that he was born a crime went on to become a defining feature of his life, and it was no surprise when he chose the phrase as the title of his memoir.

In the opening paragraph above, Noah succinctly summarized the political strategy behind apartheid rule. In the second, he continued: “At the time, black South Africans outnumbered white south Africans nearly five to one, yet we were divided into different tribes with different languages…. Long before apartheid existed these tribal factions clashed and warred with one another. Then white rule used that animosity to divide and conquer. All nonwhites were systematically classified into various groups and subgroups. Then these groups were given differing levels of rights and privileges in order to keep them at odds.”

In the formal first Chapter of his memoir, titled “Run,” Noah began with what are usually described as the opening words of the book: “Sometimes in big Hollywood movies they’ll have these crazy chase scenes where somebody jumps or gets thrown from a moving car. The person hits the ground and rolls for a bit. Then they come to a stop and pop up and dust themselves off, like it was no big deal. Whenever I see that I think, That’s rubbish. Getting thrown out of a moving car hurts way worse than that.”

And then, in the next paragraph, he added: “I was nine years old when my mother threw me out of a moving car.” This unusual and, quite frankly, intriguing revelation pretty much ensured that readers would want to find out more about the incident—and why he would choose to begin his memoir with it.

How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (1993)

“Song Without Words,” in Argosy magazine (Dec., 1951); reprinted in Collected Stories (1982)

As a psychologist, I have a special fondness for opening words that express a fundamental truth about the human experience, and this is one of the very best. O’Connor’s name is not familiar to many modern readers, but he was one of the most popular short story writers of his era. From 2005 to 2015, The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award was given in his honor.

Janusian Days: Memoirs of an Almost-Old Psychiatrist (2019)

Olsson continued: “Mom reads me books about these famous missionary doctors. I pledge to selflessly help African natives with cures of bodies, minds, and souls. I go with Mom to weekly Bible study and missionary prayer meetings at our Baptist church. I pray for missionaries in Africa, China, and India. I help box up clothes, canned goods, bandages, and medicines for shipment to them. My church community embraces such efforts to help others. Mom smiles. I feel love and importance.“

Near-Field Optics (1996)

If you’re looking for great opening lines in works of non-fiction, one of the last places you might consider is a graduate-level physics textbook. But, every now and then, as we saw in the David L. Goodstein entry earlier on this page, you will be very pleasantly surprised.

In Near-Field Optics, the authors continued: “Across a broad range of human cultures, the visual sense has risen to such a position of prominence that to envision often means to understand.”

The Last Lecture (2008; with Jeffrey Zaslow)

Few people would describe imminent death from cancer as an “engineering problem,” but Randy Pausch was hardly a typical person. As a book, The Last Lecture was an expanded version of a literal “last lecture” that Pausch delivered to students at Carnegie Mellon University on Sep. 18, 2007 (the lecture’s formal title was “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”).

Earlier in the year, Pausch had been invited to deliver a hypothetical “final talk,” a lecture in which professors were asked to imagine what they would say to students if they could deliver only one more lecture. In 2006, Pausch had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he and his doctors were aggressively fighting it. A month before the lecture, though, he learned that he had only a few more months to live.

On the night of the lecture, over 400 students and faculty members—fully aware of the situation—gave Pausch a prolonged standing ovation before the lecture. When he finally said, “Make me earn it,” and motioned for the audience to sit down, a voice from the crowd shouted out, “You did!” His inspirational lecture that evening became a immediate YouTube sensation, and Hyperion Books soon offered him a 6.7 million dollar book advance. Pausch was 47-years-old when be died on July 25, 2008, but he lived long enough to see his book make The New York Times bestseller list. It remained on the list for 85 consecutive weeks, ultimately selling over five million copies.

The Road Less Travelled (1978)

This is the entire first paragraph. Peck continued in the second: “This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

People of the Lie (1983)

A dangerous book? Peck had me in the opening line!

Lancelot (1977)

The narrator is a New Orleans lawyer named Lancelot Andrews Lamar. As the novel unfolds, we learn he has murdered his wife after discovering another man has fathered his youngest daughter.

Here, at the beginning, Lamar continued: “Don’t I know you? You look very familiar. I’ve been feeling rather depressed and I don’t remember things very well. I think I am here because of that or because I committed a crime. Perhaps both. Is this a prison or a hospital or a prison hospital? A Center for Aberrant Behavior? So that’s it. I have behaved aberrantly. In short, I’m in the nuthouse.”

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity (2017)

In nonfiction works especially, a no-nonsense opening line that gets right to the heart of the matter is hard to beat—and Perel does that very nicely here. In her opening paragraph, she continued:

“Yet this extremely common act is poorly understood.”

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir (2022)

These are the stark opening words of the Prologue to Perry’s much-anticipated memoir, a candid and often harrowing story about his lifelong struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction (he ultimately went through detox an incredible 65 times). The book was widely praised for its unflinching honesty, but a review in People magazine may have said it best: “A heartbreakingly beautiful memoir.”

Your Best Destiny: Becoming the Person You Were Created to Be (2015; with James Lund)

The best openers establish an immediate connection with readers, as Phipps does here in the book’s first paragraph. In the second, he continued: “Perhaps you sense that your life is off-kilter. Maybe you’ve just noticed it, or maybe you’ve lived with a feeling of frustration for years. Perhaps you’ve just closed a chapter in your life and aren’t sure where to turn next. Whatever led you to this point, though, you now realize you’re not moving. You’re not growing. You’re unsatisfied and seeking more—but more what?

House Rules (2010)

The first paragraph is a classic hook. As soon as readers take the bait, the next two paragraphs begin to reel them in:

“He is sprawled like a starfish in front of the fireplace. Blood covers his temple and his hands. For a moment, I can’t move, can’t breathe.

Suddenly, he sits up. “Mom,” Jacob says, “you’re not even trying.”

The Bell Jar (1963)

The opening words come from Esther Greenwood—a thinly disguised version of the author—a Massachusetts college student who descends into mental illness while serving as a summer intern at a prominent magazine in New York City.

In a 2012 Guardian article, writer and critic Robert McCrum called this one of “The 10 Best First Lines in Fiction,” writing: “Postwar American first lines don’t come much more angsty or zeitgeisty than this.”

Commonly described as a roman à clef, The Bell Jar was American poet Sylvia Plath’s only novel, and it was originally published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lewis. Plath died by suicide a month after the book was published, and her own name would not appear on any editions of the book until 1967.

The Disappearance of Childhood (1982)

This is not simply a Great Opening Line, it is one of the best things ever said on the topic of children (one day, I’m hoping to do a book titled The Single Best Thing Ever Said on Just About Any Topic You Can Think Of, and this is my Number One choice for observations about children).

Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)

Postman’s book, written before Facebook, Twitter, and the rise of Social Media, can only be considered prescient, as we see in his second paragraph: “But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

The Echo Maker (2006)

It’s always nice to see a novel begin with a beautiful description, but this one also contains the interesting tidbit that a flock of cranes may also be correctly called a kettle (technically, a kettle is a gathering of any group of soaring birds—including cranes and vultures—that utilize circular updrafts of warm air to gain elevation).

In the opening paragraph, the narrator continued: “Scores of Grus canadensis settle on the thawing river. They gather on the island flats, grazing, beating their wings, trumpeting: the advance wave of a mass evacuation. More birds land by the minute, the air red with calls.”

You2: A High Velocity Formula for Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps (1994) [NOTE: The title should read as if it were saying “You Squared”]

These are the first words one sees when opening the book, and they are presented almost as if they were an epigraph—centered in the middle of the page. As it turns out, though, it’s not really an epigraph, but rather the opening words of the author, and they are clearly designed to get our attention. It works, which makes it a highly effective hook—and one of the best I’ve seen in a self-help book. As I eagerly read on, Pritchett implanted the hook even deeper:

“There’s a small fly burning out the last of its short life’s energies in a futile attempt to fly through the glass of the windowpane. The whining wings tell a poignant story of the fly’s strategy—try harder. But it’s not working.”

As Pritchett goes on to describe the last moments of the fly’s life, it becomes apparent that the story is a metaphorical attempt to capture the central thesis of his book—which he eventually expresses this way: “If you stake your hopes for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever, you may kill your chances for success.”

It’s Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life (2019)

In these opening words, we immediately sense an author who’s not going to beat around the bush. Like a demanding coach who has our best interests at heart or a tough-as-nails uncle with a caring heart, he’s going to give it to us straight.

Rath continued in the same vein in the book’s third paragraph: “Yet external forces keep pulling you toward self-centered pursuits. From books pushing ‘happiness’ to advertisements convincing you that consumption leads to adoration, these messages tempt you to focus inward. That is all a trap (and a load of crap).”

The Cracker Factory (1977)

These are the dramatic opening words of a best-selling autobiographical novel about a smart-talking Cleveland woman with a major drinking problem. The novel was adapted into a 1979 ABC-TV “Movie of the Week,” with Natalie Wood in the starring role.

Rebeta-Burditt was a writer and television network executive best known for creating the TV series Diagnosis: Murder. Her Cracker Factory book contains what I regard as the single best observation ever offered on the subject of alcoholism: “Alcoholism isn’t a spectator sport. Eventually the whole family gets to play.“

Still Me (1998)

This is a fantastic opener, so provocative and “on point” that I set the book down for a moment to think about what I had just read before continuing to move into the rest of the book.

In Pursuit of Laughter (1936) (1936)

Books that begin with a grand, sweeping generalization carry an aura of authority, and this one is no exception. In her beautifully-phrased opening observation, Repplier immediately comes across as someone who knows what she’s talking about—and there is a clear suggestion she is about to edify us on the subject. In this case, the opening words also provide a strong clue as to the thesis of the book: humans pursue laughter the most when there is little true humor in their lives.

Repplier continued in the first paragraph: “Those who listen to the Middle Ages instead of writing about them at monstrous length and with undue horror and commiseration, can hear the echo of laughter ringing from every side, from every hole and corner where human life existed. Through the welter of wars and famine and pestilence, through every conceivable disaster, through an atmosphere darkened with ignorance and cruelty and needless pain there emerges, clear and unmistakable, that will to live that man shares with the beast, and which means that, consciously or unconsciously, he finds life worth the living.”

On Violence and On Violence Against Women (2021)

Take Back Your Life! Regaining Your Footing After Life Throws You a Curve (2003)

Rossetti, who went on to become an acclaimed inspirational speaker and Universal Design advocate, continued: “It was too late. An 80-foot tree was falling on our path. In an instant, I was crushed by a 3 1/2 ton tree and surrounded by live electric power lines.” In three simple, cleanly written paragraphs, Rossetti perfectly captures the circumstances of a freak accident that forever changed her life. Who wouldn’t want to read further?

“Havelock Ellis: Life as an Art,“ in The Dial (November 1923)

Russell continued: “Psychoanalyzed, such moralists would be found to be moved principally by envy: being themselves too old or too sour or too stiff for the pleasures of life, they feel a discomfort, when they see others enjoying themselves, which appears in consciousness as moral reprobation.“

The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

“Our Sexual Ethics“ (1936); reprinted in Why I Am Not a Christian (1957)

A simple assertion, crafted skillfully by a talented writer, can be a most effective way to begin an essay, as Russell demonstrates here. When I first read these opening words as a young man in the 1960s, my first reaction was, “How little things have changed.” And now, almost ninety years after Russell first penned the words, my reaction is exactly the same.

In his essay, Russell continued: “Homicide, pestilence, insanity, gold and precious stones—all the things, in fact, that are the objects of passionate hopes or fears—have been seen, in the past, through a mist of magic or mythology; but the sun of reason has now dispelled the mist, except here and there. The densest cloud that remains is in the territory of sex, as is perhaps natural since sex is concerned in the most passionate part of people’s lives.“

Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace (2020)

These words open the book’s Prologue, and the ingredients of a great opening paragraph—especially in a work of non-fiction—are all here: it is very well written, has just the right amount of style or pizzazz, provides an overall sense of direction, and has a tone that we might call inviting or welcoming.

A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons (2001)

In Book Lust to Go (2010), American librarian Nancy Pearl wrote: “From its inviting (and very funny) first paragraph to its last heart-breaking chapter, A Primate’s Memoir by neuroscientist (and winner of a McArthur ‘genius grant’) Robert Sapolsky could hardly be better reading.”

For more than two decades, Sapolsky was associated with a national park in Kenya, where he continued the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey by attempting to fit into a troop of Savannah baboons. It was something he dreamed of doing since childhood, as he went on to explain in his opening words: “As a child in New York, I endlessly begged and cajoled my mother into taking me to the Museum of Natural History, where I would spend hours looking at the African dioramas, wishing to live in one.”

“It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” in The Atlantic (Feb. 9, 2022)

This is a stellar opening paragraph in two different ways. First, it insightfully advances the argument that, over the centuries, no reliable coping mechanisms have ever been developed for an age-old problem—the ending of friendships. And, second, it provides lovers of language with such delicious metaphorical flourishes as an insolent cliché, a proper script for ending friendships, and boilerplate dialogue to crib from.

In the second paragraph, Senior argued that something important might be learned from the ending of one particular friendship—all painstakingly documented in The Wellness Letters, an unpublished (so far, at least) manuscript that cheerfully began as a celebration of a friendship and, eighteen months later, documented its painful dissolution. In the article’s second paragraph, Senior wrote:

“Yet when Elisa Albert and Rebecca Wolff were in the final throes of their friendship, they managed, entirely by accident, to leave behind just such a script. The problem was that it read like an Edward Albee play—tart, unsparing, fluorescent with rage.”

Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life (1976)

Sheehy’s opening line refers to an event that is known in the history of Northern Ireland as “Bloody Sunday.” As a reporter for New York magazine, she was covering a civil rights march by Catholic citizens of Derry when a rifle shot from a British soldier struck a young Irish boy directly in the face. As he fell, no longer recognizable, he fell on top of Sheehy. Over the next harrowing minutes, as other Derry citizens were felled around her, she crawled to safety as bullets reigned all around.

In her opening paragraph, Sheehy continued: “It never occurred to me that while winging along in my happiest and most productive stage, all of a sudden simply staying afloat would require a massive exertion of will. Or of some power greater than will.”

Passages went on to become one of the most popular books of the era, on The New York Times Best-Seller list for three years and selling more than ten million copies. Sheehy’s groundbreaking exploration of the “predictable passages of life” had such an impact on contemporary thinking that The Library of Congress hailed it as one of the ten most influential books of modern times.

The Other Side of Me: A Memoir (2005)

Sheldon spent a career attempting to craft great opening lines for his eighteen novels—which collectively sold more than 300 million copies—and it seems only appropriate that he began his autobiography with one of his best (the memoir’s title, by the way, plays off the title of his 1973 novel The Other Side of Midnight).

Born in Chicago in 1917, Sheldon entered adolescence in the early years of the Great Depression. In 1934, at age 17, the grinding poverty was wearing on him, and his dreams of going to college seemed increasingly unlikely. To make matters worse, he was an aspiring writer who had submitted dozens of short stories to magazines like Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, only to have all of them rejected. He finally decided to bring an end to “this suffocating misery.”

In the opening paragraph, Sheldon continued: “I was not certain exactly how many pills I would need, so I arbitrarily decided on twenty, and I was careful to pocket only a few at a time so as not to arouse the suspicion of our pharmacist. I had read that whiskey and sleeping pills were a deadly combination, and I intended to mix them, to make sure I would die.”

At home alone on the day he’d chosen to die, he gulped down a first swig of whiskey and was about to toss the sleeping pills into his mouth when his father unexpectedly opened the door to their apartment. What happened then was as interesting as anything found in a Sheldon novel, but you’ll have to read it for yourself. Trust me, it will be worth it.

I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone (1991; with Stephen Cleary)

This is the opening paragraph of the Prologue to the book. Simone continued in the next paragraph: “When you sit down to think about your life, as I have had to for this book, you have to look back over some things you’ve kept out of the daylight of your mind for years, and they can catch you. It might be a photograph of an old boyfriend found at the back of a drawer: you look at it and then feel a bundle of different reactions tumbling inside you, and you say to yourself, “My God, I never knew he affected me so deeply!“

I always enjoy a memoir in which the author describes an important life lesson they’ve learned, identify the person who imparted that lesson, and then provide another delicious detail or two. Rarely though, does this happen in the book’s opening words—and rarely does the writer mention a person who was also highly influential in my own personal development. Simone does both here, and I think you will agree she does it very, very nicely.

The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself (2007)

Singer continued: “Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it? How much of what it says turned out to be true? How much of what it says is even important? And if right now you are hearing, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t have any voice inside my head!’—that’s the voice we’re talking about.”

Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering (2021)

The Common Sense of Baby and Child Care (1946)

These are among the most famous opening words in the history of non-fiction books (from a first chapter titled “Trust Yourself”). At the time, Spock was a 43-year-old practicing pediatrician who was vigorously opposed to a then-popular “scientific parenthood” movement that urged new parents to put their faith in “experts.” Spock’s goal was to reassure young mothers that they were already up for the challenge of parenting, and his first words couldn’t have been more perfectly phrased.

The book was an immediate—and spectacular—success, selling 500,000 copies in the first six months after publication. It went on to become one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, revolutionizing child-rearing methods for a generation of women born after WWI and now looking at a whole new post-WWII world. The book was ultimately revised ten times and has sold more than 50 million copies in forty different languages.

Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades (2021)

This is the first sentence of Chapter One, nicely titled: “Disguised as a Normal Person.” Steinberg continued:

“If you’ve had a great life and a wonderful bar mitzvah and you’ve been given a lot of money, you’d make a lousy comedian. You’re better off being the comedian’s lawyer.”

Steinberg opens his book with an assertion that is widely believed in the world of show business—comedians may make people laugh, but it is not laughter that produces comedians, but rather a constellation of qualities on the other end of the spectrum.

You’re Too Kind: A Brief History of Flattery (2002)

Stengel continued: “We like to think that the smarter a person is, the higher she ascends up the ladder of success, the less susceptible that individual is to flattery. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. People of high self-esteem and accomplishment generally see the praise directed at them as shrewd judgment rather than flattery.”

Human Aggression (1968)

Intellectual “hooks” in works of non-fiction are generally far less dramatic than those seen in novels and short stories, but they serve the purpose of getting a reader to read on—and therefore meet the criterion of a Great Opening Line. Storr continued: “With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate habitually destroys members of his own species. No other animal takes positive pleasure in the exercise of cruelty upon another of his own kind.“ As Storr continues, he goes on to make this remarkable generalization: “There is no parallel in nature to our savage treatment of each other. The somber fact is that we are the cruelest and most ruthless species that has ever walked the earth.“

"Churchill: The Man," in Churchill Revised (1969; A. J. P. Taylor, et. al., eds.)

“Isaac Newton,“ A Life in Reading in British Medical Journal (Dec. 21-28, 1985)

"Why Human Beings Become Violent," in Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind (1988)

Storr continued: "Nature is red in tooth and claw when one species preys upon another in search of food; but destructive violence between members of the same species is comparatively rare, and usually only occurs under special circumstances of overcrowding or shortage of food. Man is uniquely violent and cruel."

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990)

“Amity Street,” in The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher (1983)

Thomas, one of the most accomplished science writers of all time, continued in the opening paragraph:

“It isn’t so much that I forget things outright, I forget where I stored them. I need reminders, and when the reminders change, as most of them have changed from my childhood, there goes my memory as well.”

Walden: or, Life in the Woods (1854)

This is the opening paragraph of a book that turned my life around when I was a college undergraduate, more than sixty years ago (yes, you read that correctly!). I read the book during one of the darkest periods of my life, and it not only helped me weather the storm, it inspired me to become a quotation collector. For the fuller story, go here: https://www.drmardy.com/dmdmq/note

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction (2016)

In a first chapter that Vargas titled “Chasing the Glow,” the popular television news personality continued: “But the anxiety? It was there from the start. My earliest memories are infused with it. It was a steady theme throughout my childhood, and it is the background music of my adult life.”

Necessary Losses (1986)

“My Neighbor Lived to Be 109. This is What I Learned from Him,” The Washington Post (May 22, 2023)

When I think about Great Opening Lines, I don’t restrict my thinking to only the first sentence of the piece, or even the first paragraph, for it sometimes takes a few paragraphs to truly engage the reader. And that is most certainly the case with Von Drehles’s article, which continues:

“My new neighbor was washing a car. In my memory (this detail is a matter of some disagreement around the neighborhood), it was a shiny new Chrysler PT Cruiser, the color of grape soda pop. It belonged to my neighbor’s girlfriend, and I couldn’t help noting that the vehicle in question was parked in the same spot where she had left it the night before. I deduced that a Saturday night date with the glamorous driver had developed into the sort of sleepover that makes a man feel like being especially nice the next morning.

“My neighbor was bare-chested, dressed only in a pair of old swim trunks. With a garden hose in one hand and a soapy sponge in the other, he flexed his muscular chest with each splash and swirl, his wavy hair flopping rakishly over one eye. This was Dr. Charlie White. Age 102.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m certain I wasn’t the only reader to think, “I certainly didn’t see that coming.“ Later in the year, Von Drehle told the fuller story about his very special neighbor in The Book of Charlie (2023). And while I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I preferred the way he opened his earlier Washington Post article. I loved it so much, in fact, that I included it in my Smerconish.com compilation of “23 of the Best Opening Lines of 2023“ (see the full list here).

The Snake Pit (1946)

So begins one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century, responsible for bringing public attention to the substandard care in state psychiatric hospitals—and ultimately to much-needed reforms. After the novel was adapted into a 1948 film (starring Olivia de Havilland in an Oscar-nominated performance), a publicity release from 20th Century Fox claimed that Ward’s book had resulted in regulatory reform in twenty-six of the then forty-eight states.

The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (2002)

Pithy and powerful is the goal for many writers attempting to craft a great opening line, and the first four words of The Purpose Driven Life perfectly illustrate the point.

In the book’s second paragraph, Warren continued: “The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.”

Warren’s book capitalized on a huge word-of-mouth campaign to make the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for over 90 weeks. In 2020, Warren announced that more than 50 million copies of the book—in more than 85 languages—had been sold, making it one of the biggest selling religious books of all time.

The Science of Getting Rich (1910)

Wattles, one of America’s first “self-help” authors, continued: “No man can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money; for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has the money to buy them with.”

The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety (1951)

No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth (1979)

The “it” of the opening sentence, Wilber goes on to explain, is a heightened state of awareness in which “the individual comes to feel, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the he or she is fundamentally one with the entire universe, with all worlds, high or low, sacred or profane.”

“Paranoia,” in Leah, New Hampshire (1992)

After reading the opening words of this short story several decades ago, I could not get the intriguing phrase collector of paranoiacs out of my mind—and the notion that Benham was an unwilling collector of further fascinated me. In the opening paragraph, he continued:

“Like those who fear dogs only to excite in all dogs an immediate aggressive affection, I seem doomed to be the chosen confessor of those who have systematized their delusions. I wonder if they know how much they frighten me.”

How to Raise Successful People: Simple Lessons for Radical Results (2019)

One of America’s most respected educators, Wojcicki was named California Teacher of the Year in 2002. In this book, she outlined her TRICK approach to raising children as well as educating them: Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness. She continued in the first paragraph: “They are the two most important things we do in our society. How we raise and educate our children determines not only the people they become but the society we create.”

The Beauty Myth (1990)

After an opening that nods in the direction of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), Wolf continued: “In the two decades of radical action that followed the rebirth of feminism in the early 1970s, Western women gained legal and reproductive rights, pursued higher education, entered the trades and the professions, and overturned ancient and revered beliefs about their social role. A generation on, do women feel free?”

In the second paragraph, Wolf provided a partial answer to the question (they “do not feel as free as they want to”) and hinted at the thesis of her book (it “has to do with the relationship between female liberation and female beauty”).

When Nietzsche Wept (1992)

So begins a novel that ultimately leads to a fascinating and complex relationship between Breuer—a prominent Viennese physician who has recently established a friendship with a young colleague named Sigmund Freud—and the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

About the novel, writer and scholar Theodore Roszak wrote: “Deep thought wrapped up in superb storytelling. What more could one ask?”

The Schopenhauer Cure (2005)

Julius Hertzfeld is a 65-year-old psychotherapist with a thriving San Francisco practice. In the novel’s second paragraph, the narrator continued about him: “Though he believed these somber reflections to be useful to his patients, he never considered that they might have anything to do with him. That is, until a terrible moment four weeks earlier which forever changed his life.”