Rotten First Lines for Novels
He was a manly man, a rugged veteran of the Northern ranges, with features chiseled from granite and great sinewy arms that could fell the tallest pine with but one swing of an axe no other man could lift, a bearded colossus whose roar echoed through the mountains and shook birds from trees, a man of iron forged in the wilderness he now bent to his will, and only his closest companions dared address him by his true name: Thweetie Pie.
Of all her brothers, Amy loved Roger the most, because he didn't stink much for a dead guy.
As Wiener Schnitzel looked back on his career as a mathematician, he rued the fast life he'd led; his angry, drunken proofs, the cheap tawdry theorems scrawled in lipstick on the naked bellies of unconscious groupies, the lemmas he'd hustled for fixes in the smoke-filled back rooms of conferences, and determined to go back to his origin, to rationalize his singular life with the common denominator.
Leroy began his day with a trip to the insurance agency, where he purchased exhaustive life insurance, which was fortunate since he dies at the end of the book.
xHrps'tphlng manuevered his gleaming hover car over the hot sands of Ybl'g'fnrPqn, pondering his conversation with Ambassador ffFFptbh|lknguf concerning his suspicions of treaty violations by the Iuq_nuHcnwef'kjcbaygqwtt in the BbBbBqr&'hrAwnk sector.
Rex Stone, a senior CIA operative who'd faced danger on a hundred foreign continents and wore his years with the agency on his face like an old hankie, strode briskly into the office of the President, who at that time was a small green parakeet named Alphonse, and who needed fresh newspaper, right away.
Percival's mind often wandered as he worked, and he would think endlessly, thinking about thinking, thinking about thinking about thoughts about thinking, and thoughts thereupon thunk, until in his reverie he fell from the mizzen mast into the briny depths of the great sea and was never heard from again, which is why this story does not involve him.
"'"'They'd cried "No!"' Arthur said," was what Leslie intoned', muttered Max, to no one in particular," Henry recounted.
Jerome's life was particularly dull at that time, and showed no prospect of improvement in the near future, so you might as well hop ahead to page 53 so you won't be bored out of your skull.
He walked into the place, looking at the stuff the guy had given him, comparing it to the things at the other place, and his face erupted in a big expression.
Her face faced his face, because they were face-to-face, their faces facing one another's faced faces, and then his head exploded.
It was many years before Timmy realized how much growing up he'd done that day, when he'd said goodbye to his cherished pet and closest companion, the best buddy who'd been with him as he romped through sundrenched meadows and splashed through babbling forest brooks in the great woods behind Grandma's cottage, sharing her gingerbread cookies hot from the oven and fragrant pies left to cool in country breezes; only old Doctor Burrows could separate the two, and Timmy had emptied the specimen jar containing his beloved tapeworm Ralph into the great brass commode with a tear in his eye.