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September 09, 2007

Twelve First Lines (and One of Mine)

(1) "On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide--it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese--the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope." (Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides)

(2) "I wish I could eat the salt off of your lost faded lips" (Interpol, "Obstacle 1")

(3) “September 21, 1945... that was the night I died.” (Grave of the Fireflies)

(4) "Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up." (Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away)

(5) "I'm a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl" (Björk, "Bachelorette")

(6) "Never having known a mother, her mother had died when Janey was a year old, Janey depended on her father for everything and regarded her father as boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father." (Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts In High School)

(7) "Have you ever seen so many gulls?" (The Birds)

(8) "'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast." (E.B. White, Charlotte's Web)

(9) "Babs, Babs, why isn't the egg man here? I'm starving to death for some eggs." (Pink Flamingos)

(10) "In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together." (Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)

(11) "It doesn't matter if we all die" (The Cure, "One Hundred Years")

(12) "High school is like the training wheels for the bicycle of real life." (Ghost World)

(And, with absolutely no assumptions that mine is anywhere equal to any of these, I'll add this to the list):

"The little girls who found the body of the missing boy were not angels, although that is how the newspaper described them, the following morning, beneath the headline."