Books by First Lines

First Line

Book

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

___, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.

Harry locked his mother in the closet. Harold. Please. Not again the TV.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split ups, in chronological order:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

'FOR MADMEN ONLY'

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I am a sick man... I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man.

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down on to the street from the little room he rented from some tenants in S-- Lane and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards K--n Bridge.

Dear friend,

I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow.