pride and pregudice | Matthew Dicks

Great first sentences (and an analysis of the first sentences of my own novels)

By Matthew Dicks | October 21, 2016 |

I have no definitive favorite first line of a novel, though I am partial to the first line of Slaughterhouse Five: “All this happened, more or less.” Also, Fahrenheit 451: “It was a pleasure to burn.” Of all my books, I like the first sentence of Chicken Shack, my unpublished novel that will hopefully see…

Neither true nor universally acknowledged

By Matthew Dicks | August 13, 2013 |

My wife’s favorite first line from literature comes Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Many people like this first line. While I have always appreciated the line, it has never felt right to me. It’s…

I’m an Elizabeth Bennet.

By Matthew Dicks | February 3, 2013 |

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is 200 years old this week. In celebration of this anniversary, Anglerfish Magazine created a “Which Pride and Prejudice Character Are You?” flowchart. Usually these flowcharts are nonsense, but this one seems, at least for me, spot on. It turns out that I am a Lizzie (Elizabeth Bennet), which is described as:…