“If Charlotte Cushman’s life were a play, it would begin like something out of Shakespeare, with nature’s rebellion and man’s disquiet.”
Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity, by Tana Wojczuk.
“EXPLOSION ! CONCUSSION ! The vault doors burst open . And deep inside , the money is racked ready for pillage , rapine , loot . Who’s that? Who’s inside the vault?”
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
“Oh dear,” Linus Baker said, wiping the sweat from his brow.
The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune
“Vince Heller invited me to lunch at the Clarendon Club on Commonwealth Avenue with the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Taft University, Haller’s alma mater.”
Playmates by Robert B. Parker
“I can measure my entire life in leaves and petals.”
The Brief Life of Flowers by Fiona Stafford
Moby-Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville
This is from a sort of Overture to Melville’s magnum opus, an introductory pair of paragraphs followed by 81 “Extracts”, quotations in roughly chronological order from various books about whales (and, ominously, about mutinies. Melville might have originally intended to include even darker stuff in his novel. The trajectory of the book changes unpredictably several times, and there are hints of what was to be that are never fulfilled, and grand introductions of characters who don’t end up being very important.)
In any event, you have to wade through several pages of this stuff before you get to what most people think of as the opening line: “Call me Ishmael.”
We easily forget the intensive labour of being a writer before typewriters, and certainly before word-processors. It’s significant that the most frequently used term is “writer”, not “author” or “novelist”. The physical labour of dipping the quill in the ink, then writing for a bit, and re-dipping, by poor light in the evening that strained the eyes… it’s no wonder that 18th and 19th century novels sometimes had little digressions and side-ways that didn’t seem to go anywhere, and the finished volumes could be so thick. The writers may not have had the time or energy to go back and fix them or cut out extraneous bits.
“When the multiverse was confirmed, the spiritual and scientific communities both counted it as evidence of their validity.”
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
“On a muggy Florida night in March 2007, Pete and I walked out onto the stage at the Ford Amphitheatre in Tampa.”
-Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite, by Roger Daltrey
“In 1995 Pepsi ran a promotion where people could collect Pepsi Points and then trade them in for Pepsi Stuff.”
Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors, by Matt Parker
“The Reach is wide and quiet this morning, the pale blue sky streaked with pink mackerel-belly clouds, the shallow sea barely rippling in the slight breeze, and so the sound of the dog barking breaks into the calm like gunshots, setting flocks of gulls crying and wheeling in the air.”
The Lying Game, by Ruth Ware
“John F. Kennedy spent most of the morning of February 20, 1962, as the rest of America did: in front of a television.”
Mercury Rising: John Glenn, John Kennedy, and the New Battleground of the Cold War by Jeff Shesol
“Sima pushed a large woman in a wheelchair to the A71 Nurses’ station to catch a bit of breeze.”
The Care of Strangers, by Ellen Michaelson
“In 1958, when my father had his famous affair with Carroll Byrd, I knew it before anybody.”
Blue Marlin, by Lee Smith
“Sliding headfirst down a vagina with no clothes on and landing in the freshly shaven crotch of a screaming woman did not seem to be part of God’s plan for me.”
- Last Words, by George Carlin
“Woodridge Academy, a private school in Heath Cliff, Pennsylvania, had once been the home of William Heath, after whom the town had been named.”
Fuzzy Mud, by Louis Sachar
“I like to walk early in the morning, before I begin my chores, even in this crisp November weather.”
Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte
In 1692 the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed fourteen women, five men, and two dogs for witchcraft.
The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Shiff
“I’m not sure I’d like to be one of the people featured on the New York Times weddings page, but I know I’d like to be the father of one of them.”
BOBOs in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, by David Brooks.
“It was supposed to rain for real and that would have put a damper on the annual rain of lead.”
– The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly