Beautiful First Sentences of Books
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I love a gorgeous first sentence.
Novels are home to some of the most gorgeous first sentences ever written. Think about it.
When someone picks up a book, an author has to convince them to spend days, if not weeks, of their lives reading hundreds of thousands of words.
While this convincing certainly happens with the book’s title and cover, it also happens with the first sentence a person reads upon cracking it open.
I often tell aspiring copywriters to reach for novels rather than books about copywriting, advertising and marketing.
If Octavia Butler would have gotten into advertising, she would have written circles around us.
Thank God she didn’t.
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Over the years, I’ve curated a long list of gorgeous first sentences. I’ve brought seventeen of these sentences to life in this conceptual campaign for Barnes & Noble.
Imagine walking down the street, seeing a line of prose that stops you in your tracks accompanied by a two-word challenge.
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I’m very obviously biased. But I would walk straight to Barnes & Noble after such an experience.
Ten opening lines
Ten examples from the conceptual campaign are collected here, each credited to the novelist and book shown in the supplied artwork.
