A Good First Line.

 If you Google “pick-up lines,” you’ll find oodles of suggestions. Funny pick-up lines, cute, clean, cheesy, dirty … They’re all there. One site has a list of 920. It appears that pick-up lines is an extremely popular subject. And for good reason. When you meet (or would like to meet) someone, all he or she has to go on is your appearance and the first few words out of your mouth. So those first words had better be darn good.

The same holds true for books. When we’re in the market for a new book, first we look at the title and cover; then we open up the book and read a few sentences. Some opening lines are better than others.

Here are a few I like:

 

“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus.”

—Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

 

“Afterward, he tried to reduce it to abstract terms, an accident in a world of accidents, the collision of opposing forces—the bumper of his car and the frail scrambling hunched-over form of a dark little man with a wild look in his eye—but he wasn’t very successful.”

—The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle

 

“A mile above Oz, the Witch balanced on the wind’s forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the land itself, flung up and sent wheeling away by the turbulent air.”

—Wicked by Gregory Maguire

“It was said that boys should go on their first sea voyage at the age of ten, but surely this notion was never put forth by anyone’s mother.”

—Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman

 

“Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.”

—The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

 

“Anna was a good wife, mostly.”

—Hausfrau: A Novel by Jill Alexander Essbaum

 

“Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.”

            —Everything I Never Told You: A Novel by Celeste Ng

 

“Wars came early to Shanghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese Bund.”

—Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

—Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

 

“When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her.”

—Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

 

“Shanghai slept early in those days, already settling down at eight o’clock, the blue-green evening sky clearing s the sediments of darkness and hubbub slowly sank to the bottom.”

—The Rouge of the North by Eileen Chang

 

Do you like some of these opening lines? Do you have some favorite first sentences to add? I’d love to hear them.

After this distinguished list, I hesitate to add the first sentence of my novel, but here goes:

 

“I was pregnant when Yu-ming went missing.”

—Tiger Tail Soup: A Novel of China at War by Nicki Chen