Create five different opening lines to your memoir
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.”
—The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
“I was five years old the first time I ever set foot in prison.”
–A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca
“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.”
— The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
“The little red light had been flashing for five minutes before Bhangoo paid it any attention. ‘The fuel gauges on these old aircraft are notoriously unreliable.”
–Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
“Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople.”
–Undertaking: Life studies from the dismal trade by Thomas Lynch
“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.”
–Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
“Do you want a big rat or a small rat?” the waitress asked.
–“A Rat in My Soup,” Peter Hessler, The New Yorker