Potential First Sentences
(Fade in)
Yahweh, a drumroll, please.
In the beginning, there was a big bang.
I’m a poet one verse short of a couplet.
Beneath the façade nothing but artifice.
They cut down the prettiest flowers first.
A rich inner life trumps all other treasures.
If you can find it, follow that hidden sense.
Only fools profit from self-aggrandizement.
Ultimately, change takes more than it gives.
A good student finds a lesson in everything.
We are never so popular as we are in death.
Operating instructions. — Read me out loud.
I’ve a jingle in my soul, but not in my pockets.
I write for two audiences: myself and posterity.
You bring the bread, and I’ll supply the circus.
I’m a patrician with a plebeian’s bank account.
Free time is best when it's paid for, not financed.
I like the feeling of being in-between your hands.
Great expressions leave an indelible impression.
Nothing fleets like pleasure nor endures like pain.
A love scene ain’t such a bad way to start a career.
They will tell you it cannot be done. Do not listen.
In my cradle, I sensed a cosmos outside my crib.
I would tell you a tale, but I don’t want to lie to you.
Making sentences is a lot easier than raising them.
On the cutting room floor lay his hopes and dreams.
My mama said the Blues gave birth to Rock ‘n’ Roll.
I was conceived on a davenport in Davenport, Iowa.
Not made in Motown, but was born and raised there.
The universe asked for a toy, and God gave her man.
I’ve crossed the Rubicon and canceled the round trip.
When I walked the earth, everyone drove automobiles.
As the legs gradually slow, the years quickly speed up.
I can think of nothing more edifying than a good quote.
How many sunny days I’ve wasted thinking them grey.
I want to be the first tragic figure with a shit-eating grin.
You will never understand anything if you judge it first.
Vanquish your greatest enemy. Kill the naysayer within.
If you want to know the future, work on your imagination.
She was a precious spark of creation and I was her light.
The first step in achieving anything is thinking it possible.
Poorhouse or penthouse, rise above your circumstances.
Urgency is the jet fuel of greatness, said the mad captain.
Never trust a commentator who’s never been in the arena.
I don’t mind if my body fails as long as my soul succeeds.
There is something about poverty that makes you creative.
You must bear the curse of your gifts as well as its bounty.
The title on my business card reads Professional Dreamer.
My progress is so darn slow it almost looks like regression.
My will to power is impotent, but I still get it up on occasion.
Following orders usually pays better than questioning them.
No successful persuasion begins with the words you should.
I don’t know why people fight over trifles as if they’re truffles.
My favorite Holiday is Thanksgiving. Fat Tuesday is second.
Out of all the duties, I’m most qualified for light responsibility.
When you’re shallow, you have to overwhelm them with style.
She was my soul mate and platonic ideal, all wrapped in one.
I don’t care how you crack the American Dream. It’s a winner.
Do your due diligence. Then dive headfirst into the unknown!
If you can’t play yourself confidently, let your understudy do it.
The best part about writing is that you get to do all the talking.
All we think of as modern will one day wear the label primitive.
I just want a quick flash in the pan before the worms eat me up.
My favorite theories are the ones that don’t require any practice.
A good rule of thumb is to worship no one and respect everyone.
Help! — I seem to have lost my editor somewhere down the line.
I tried to do everything in my first work just in case it was my last.
Of course, I have a technique. It’s based wholly on improvisation.
Distill the essence. Then put it through the screen one more time.
I was wise beyond my years when I was still wet behind the ears.
I’m not afraid of looking stupid if I become smarter in the process.
It took me a long time to become myself, and I’m still not there yet.
Brimming with aphorisms and a smile, a boy goes about the world.
Learning things the hard way is better than not learning them at all.
Without the originals, the copies would be nothing but blank pages.
Go ahead. Steal my ideas. The most they’ll get you for is petty theft.
The Dabbler. — I dabble here. I dabble there. I dabble everywhere.
On many a dark day, I have found solace in the words of dead men.
None of the products of man are equal to one sunrise or one sunset.
Get in gear. — I’ve been idling for so long my drive feels like neutral.
The risk-taker has fewer regrets even if he must live with more scars.
I had to travel down a very long and difficult path to reach your eyes.
Early in the morning, I was shaving, and a thought crossed my mind.
In the squirrel kingdom, I wonder if the have-nuts exploit the no-nuts.
Paradise is a state only recognized and fully celebrated by her exiles.
Please, don’t pop. — Inside the bubble of my art, everything is groovy.
Puff, puff, give. — You can’t take it with you, but you can pass it along.
To the Martians, all earthlings speak one brand or another of nonsense.
The sweet days of innocence were over before I even knew they began.
How I long for peace and quiet and how I run when they come my way.
You weren’t born to be like everyone else. No one ever was. Be original.
I write to the hearts of sixteen-year-old girls and to the minds of old men.
This ain’t no dress rehearsal. I treat every day as if it were opening night.
Before walking in another man’s shoes, you should ask for his permission.
Sally smiled coquettishly and said a kiss was the best form of introduction.
The historians might own the past, but the future belongs to the dreamers.
No matter how inspired the chords, there’s always a chance they’ll fall flat.
I’m more of a nightingale than an early bird. I prefer champagne to worms.
Like Michelangelo’s David, I like a stripped-down style better than Rococo.
I wanted this to have a classic feel, so I decided to do it in black and white.
Even the darkest night of the soul must eventually yield to the morning light.
Once you get old enough, you realize that there’s nothing new in this world.
It is much easier to find a new audience than it is to create a new character.
People are a lot less critical of your acting when you have leading man looks.
The only act that is truly good is the one that gets you through the show alive.
I met my waterloo before I had the good pleasure of knowing my first triumph.
Until I realized that I was going to die, I was just like all the rest of the animals.
Everywhere Paul looked, he saw suits without souls and heads without hearts.
I’m the quiet eye in the crowd searching for a story and casting for a character.
I wish I could tell things from the female perspective. Then, I’d be right for once.
Do not build your dreams around the world. Build the world around your dreams.
I no longer bound out of bed and chase greatness. These days, I roll and saunter.
It’s much harder to build than it is to destroy. Work on being a mason, not a vandal.
You’re right. Everything has been said. The question is whether anyone remembers.
You cannot outsource self-knowledge. It’s an in-house job with no alternative supplier.
His life was heavy, for he had to carry the burden of being different wherever he went.
You spend the first half of your life finding your voice and the second half getting it in tune.
There’s no reason to buy experience at a premium when you can lease wisdom at a discount.
My formal education consists of thousands of half-read books and hundreds of art-house flicks.
A once in a lifetime opportunity comes along every day, yet we seldom see it and rarely greet it.
So timorous was the spirit of our protagonist that his last courageous act was leaving the womb.
On the stage alone, he was genuine. As soon as someone else entered the scene, he began to act.
Mother Nature blessed him with the gift of gab, but he wasn’t as well endowed in the art of listening.
To be properly prepared for life’s conversations, one should have a ready-made answer for everything.
I wanted to become a thinker, but aptitude tests showed that I would make a much better matinee idol.
My nature is so damn sentimental that I was suffering from nostalgia before I even left the maternity ward.
The only property that I own is intellectual, with recent appraisals reaching as high as a cheap paperback.
First off, I would like to thank all those who made this possible, especially Visa, Mastercard, and Discover.
If you have the power to stay true to your character, then you can go ahead and take a little liberty with your story.
When the interviewers asked him how he did it, he smiled a big smile and replied, "Much risk and even greater daring."
When the nurses put me on the scale as a newborn, I weighed in at a little over 7 pounds 11 ounces of infinite potential.
The French Pretender & American Prince. — I can live without a great many things in this life. Joie de vivre is not one of them.
His dream was simple. He just wanted to wake up at a late hour, put on his old black bathrobe, brew some big bold marching coffee, and punch his fading typewriter keys until dark.
The real 1%. — You may talk and talk about everything you’re going to do. But until you actually do it, you’re just a lazy dreamer like the other 99% of humanity.
People are quick to make fun of the man who misses the boat until he flies past them in the airplane, which he invented while they were laughing at him.
You won’t produce anything of great worth or enduring significance if you take the easy and common way. Don’t fit into the mold. Break it.
An American Creed. — Anything worth having requires sacrifice and struggle. Otherwise, everyone would possess it. We always appreciate what we have earned more than what we have inherited. The heir is not in the same class as the self-made man.
As the farmer sweats and toils in the field all year long for his brief autumn harvest, so must the cultivators of the heart and mind.
Royalties and syndication. — If you accumulate a big enough name, you can live off it for the rest of your life. Trust me. I’m a financial advisor.
When you hedge your bets on what profession to pursue, don’t short your heart. Even if you succeed, that’s a gamble that never pays off.
To be a success, start by dispensing with comparisons and then begin the brave pilgrimage into the absolute singularity of your own individual experience.
Cathedral Hill, San Francisco. — The reason I put this together so hastily is that I could hear the old church bell tolling every hour on the hour in the background. Time was stalking me.
All I’ve really attempted to do here is to summarize everything I’ve ever felt, learned, or experienced, whether I received it first or second-hand.
She said, he said. — She “What do you do?” He said, “I write.” She said, “What do you write?” He said, “Whatever comes to my mind.”
History teaches that the truth changes over time. The only consistency is the tendency for each age and every man to believe that they alone have a monopoly on it.
Donald was the type of personality that always needed to be the center of attention, and hence, operated under the premise that bad press was better than none at all.
The shepherd convincingly explained to his sheep that it is better to have economic problems than spiritual ones. Then he shipped them off to be shorn of the little wool they had left.
The foreword. — Any hint of forethought you might detect in the structure of this book is strictly accidental.
Cut to. — The opening scene of a movie usually begins outdoors. So, envision yourself in the Garden of Eden pre-expulsion and pre-loincloth. Ain’t it a pretty picture?
The only part of the man, the myth, and the legend I could live up to was the myth piece.
The early evening sun shined courageously, yet futilely, on the beige-colored buildings as the sensuous twilight overhead innocently mingled with the hungry darkness underneath.