This is how it begins

All the first sentences of all the books I own. Plus a photo illustration or movie adaptation.

[allthefirstsentences]

Larry Crabb, Understanding People

[allthefirstsentences]

I sometimes wonder if the solutions to life's problems are perhaps much simpler than our psychologically sophisticated culture expects them to be.

Dr. Larry Crabb, Understanding People

[allthefirstsentences]

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[allthefirstsentences]

We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[allthefirstsentences]

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

[allthefirstsentences]

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place.

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

[allthefirstsentences]

Georgette Heyer, The Corinthian 

[allthefirstsentences]

The company, ushered by a disapproving butler into the yellow saloon of Sir Richard Wyndham's house in St James's Square, comprised two ladies and one reluctant gentleman.

Georgette Heyer, The Corinthian

[allthefirstsentences]

Connie Willis, Crosstalk

[allthefirstsentences]

By the time Briddey pulled into the parking garage at Commspan, there were forty-two messages on her phone.

Connie Willis, Crosstalk

[most4rdently]

“I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.”  ― A.S. Byatt, Possession.

[allthefirstsentences]

[allthefirstsentences]

These things are there.

A.S. Byatt, Possession

[allthefirstsentences]

My dear Father, I have made up my mind to write to you... to bring our conversations about my case to a conclusion - that is to say, pending further developments.

Simone Weil, Waiting for God

[allthefirstsentences]

A glowing sun-orb fills an August sky the day this story begins, the day I am born, the day I begin to live.

Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

[allthefirstsentences]

[allthefirstsentences]

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel