Books with Great Opening Lines

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

We asked for your favorite opening lines from books, and boy, did you all deliver.

We heard from Tim Lancelot in Pueblo, Colorado. He said, I immediately thought of a line I read as a fifth grader in the 1970s, and surprisingly, it was still unchanged in my memory. It goes, the great fish moves silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

Do you know what that is, Grant?

Ooh, I don’t know. That sounds mysterious.

Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

It does, doesn’t it?

Oh, is it Jaws?

Yes, yes.

It’s the beginning of Jaws by Peter Benchley.

Peter Benchley.

Oh, the great fish.

Yeah.

What a classic.

What else do you have, Martha?

Well, I got one more for you, and I think you’ll appreciate this. It’s from Keith Chafee, who lives in West Hollywood, California. And the line is from Patrick Ness’s novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go. And it begins this way. The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.

It’s true.

We all suspect that about our pets, don’t we?

Yeah, what if that dog could learn to talk? We’re like, yeah, I don’t want to hear that. Thanks.

I mean, yeah, I guess I imagine, you know, that my own bear has, you know, he always looks worried, you know, like he’s thinking about.

Just note for the listeners, Martha does not have a bear. She has a dog named Bear.

No, no, named Bear.

Oh, you’re right. I do not have a bear. I have a big old pit bull mix named Bear. He’s a lovely fellow. He’s the handsomest thing ever.

We would still love to hear from you about your favorite opening lines from books. And I’m going to tack on a request for your favorite closing lines as well. What’s that final oomph that an author has just delivered you that left you reeling?

Send them to us by text 1-877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.