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1 " There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you. "
― Beatrix Potter
2 " All the systems which explain so precisely why the world is as it is and why it can never be otherwise, have always called forth in me the same kind of uneasiness one has when face to face with the regulations displayed under the glaring lights of a prison cell. Even if one had been born in prison and had never seen the stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space.My evil star, however, had fated me to be born in times when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable where in fashion.... " Of course, I am on the Right, on the Left, in the Centre; I descend from the monkey; I believe only what I see; the universe is going to explode at this or that speed" - we hear such remarks after the first words we exchange, from people whom we would not have expected to introduce themselves as idiots. If one is unfortunate enough to meet them again in five years, everything is different except their authoritative and mostly brutal assuredness. Now they wear a different badge in their buttonhole; and the universe now shrinks at such a speed that your hair stands on end. "
3 " You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say " Here at last is the thing I was made for" . We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all. "
4 " The first time Enokizu met me, the first words he said were: " You look like an ape." When someone is that outrageously rude, it's hard to be angry. "
5 " Of course you're sorry. The first words out of the mouths of men who are caught doing something they're only too happy to continue until they're caught. "
― Julie Anne Long , What I Did for a Duke (Pennyroyal Green, #5)
6 " The second the door closed after him Laire started jumping, a huge smile on her face and her body shaking in repressed excitement. “I’ll go, I’ll go, I’ll go. You don’t even like the Oracle. Let me.”Before the first words were out of Laire’s mouth, Fallon started to shake her head, and as soon as the green-haired woman took a breath, Fallon used it as her opportunity to say, “No way.”“Please please please.”“Let me rephrase. No way in hell.”Laire stopped jumping, a small pout coming to her lips. How she had been able to prevent an ankle fracture while jumping on those spikes, Larissa would never know. “Why not?”“Because if they have an orgy going on, you’ll want to join. And if they don’t have an orgy going on, you’ll want to start one. I’ll take Aislynn with me. "
― Danielle Monsch , Stone Guardian (Entwined Realms, #1)
7 " ...[F]rom me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language... decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be a straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different. "
― Plato , Apology/Crito/Phaedo
8 " Ser Tomaso,” she said. “It is very likely we will all die.” “Or worse,” said Brown, the first words he’d said in days. Ser Tomaso made a brave face. “Perhaps,” he said. “But we will eat well. "
― Miles Cameron , A Plague of Swords (The Traitor Son Cycle, #4)
9 " If the first words out of your mouth are to cry ‘political correctness!’, … chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem. "
― N.K. Jemisin
10 " At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?” In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)
11 " Conversation starters. Icebreakers. Openers. However you choose to label them, that moment when the first words come out of your mouth can make or break the outcome of your entire conversation. Been there, done that, right? "
― Susan C. Young , The Art of Communication: 8 Ways to Confirm Clarity & Understanding for Positive Impact(The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #5)