First Lines of Novels I Never Expect to Write

For whatever reason, I haven't managed to make a real post over these past few days -- possibly due to shock from having to go back to work -- so I'm pulling something out of the archives, just to prove that I'm still alive. So have this bit of frivolity, which came from a first lines thread on the Straight Dope Message Board back in 2000:

Understand, first of all, that I take no responsibility for what happened in Taos.

(or)

That bastard always had it in for me, since the day we met in Basic.

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Lester was a perfectly ordinary man in all respects, save one: he had abnormally large elbows.

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When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bands that have connected their neighbors with life, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. I hold these truths to be self-evident: that Arthur Gallo deserved to die and is now burning in hell.

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There's no good way to tell a man he's already dead.