“In the ballroom at the Airport Sheraton Hotel, a team of men and women sit inside separate booths, curtained off from each other. They each sit at a small table, the curtains enclosing a space just big enough for the table and two chairs. And they listen. All day, they sit and listen.” Chuck Palahniuk
I’ve read four of Chuck Palahniuk’s books. He’s a MASTER of the Great Opening Line, the kind that keeps you reading. If you write or want to, here’s a sample of opening lines from his book of essays, Stranger than Fiction:
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“They come over the hills, sacrifices on their way here to die.”
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“It takes a couple of hours before your notice what’s wrong with everyone.”
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“A friend of mine lives in a ‘haunted’ house. It’s a nice white farmhouse in the country, surrounded with gardens, and ever few weeks he’ll call in the middle of the night to say, ‘Someone is screaming in the basement. I’m going down with my gun, and if I don’t call you back in five minutes, send the police!’”
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“It’s almost midnight in Marilyn Manson’s attic.”
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“In college, we had to read about people shown gum disease.”
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“The infection in my shaved head is finally starting to heal when I get the package in the mail today.”
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“In this one bar you couldn’t set your beer bottle on the table or cockroaches would climb up the label and drown themselves.”
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“Item: Twenty-seven boxes of Valentine’s candy cost $298.”
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