🔥Swipe these 18 hall-of-fame opening sentences

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Hey, Inbox Hackers. Nice to join you this morning. Or vice versa. Whatever.

Today’s Main Thing is simple. I’m slinging the 18 best opening lines at you. Epic sentences from great books you can twist around to use in your marketing copy, headlines, ad designs, etc.

Appetizer: Jordan Peele tells how to get projects done & the thing that stops most people from even beginning. 

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The Main Thing

Top 18 Opening Sentences to Great Books

1. "Call me Ishmael." ~Moby-Dick

• Why it works: Three words create instant intimacy. Talks directly to the reader. 

2. "It was a pleasure to burn." ~Fahrenheit 451

• Why it works: Shocking reversal of expectations. Creates tension from the jump. Crystal clear yet pretty disturbing.

3. "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure." ~The Stranger

• Why it works: Emotionally charged subject delivered with eerie detachment. The uncertainty in the second sentence amps the eeriness.

4. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." ~1984

• Why it works: Normal becoming abnormal. One detail changes the line. Builds a world instantly.

5. "A screaming comes across the sky." ~Gravity's Rainbow

• Why it works: Sensory and visceral. "Screaming" without a screamer is unsettling. Active, immediate danger.

6. "I am an invisible man." ~Invisible Man

• Why it works: Impossible claim stated as fact. 

7. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." ~One Hundred Years of Solitude

• Why it works: Life and death. Epic scope in one sentence.

8. "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." ~Neuromancer

• Why it works: Decay and emptiness. Creates atmosphere instantly.

9. "All children, except one, grow up." ~Peter Pan

• Why it works: Universal truth with one exception. That exception is the entire story.

10. "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested." ~The Trial

• Why it works: Injustice. Confusion. The nightmare of bureaucracy. Generates sympathy.

11. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." ~Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

• Why it works: Casual tone about chaos.

12. "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." ~Anna Karenina

• Why it works: Philosophical claim that reframes perception. Sets up exploration of difference.

13. "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." ~Murphy 

• Why it works: Existential dread disguised as description. 

14. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." ~The Catcher in the Rye

• Why it works: Authentic teenage voice. Rejection of conventions. 

15. "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." ~The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

• Why it works: Humor, judgment, and character in one breath. The name alone is funny.

16. "All this happened, more or less." ~Slaughterhouse-Five

• Why it works: Undermines traditional narrative authority.

17. "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." ~Mrs. Dalloway 

• Why it works: Mundane decision hints at character assertion. 

18. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." ~The Bible, Genesis

• Why it works: Ultimate statement of origin. Simple, declarative, authoritative.

Key Marketing Takeaways

1. Most of those lines use 10 words or fewer

2. The twist is more important than the setup

3. Be specific "thirteen" beats "late"

4. Death, danger, or wrongness in the first breath

5. Personality can overcome conventional structure

6. Contrast works (e.g., "Pleasure to burn" & "bright cold day")

And a little bonus for ya…

Top 5 Opening Lines from Films

1. "Rosebud." ~Citizen Kane 

2. "I believe in America." ~The Godfather 

3. "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." ~Goodfellas 

4. "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air." ~The Lord of the Rings 

5. "Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker." ~Rounders

Those lines are for swiping and adapting to your marketing copy. But remember, the writers of those legendary lines used their own brains, experiences, and weirdness to make the lines their own.

Now let us dip into Monday Marketing News…

Please share Inbox Hacking with a fellow marketing genius or business owner. I appreciate you reading & sharing.

Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin

"If you don't fall in love with the character you're lost. I don't care how big the explosions are."~Jerry Bruckheimer, Producer (Top Gun, Pirates of the Caribbean, Black Hawk Down)