2. An Assertion  “Babies are citizens of the world, whether they’re born into a world of high-rises or tundra, jackhammers or machine guns.” – Diane Ackerman  “Our age is retrospective.” – Emerson  “The fantasy of an America free of blacks is at least as old as the dream of creating a truly democratic society.” –Ralph Ellison

3. Narrative or anecdote  “Long before I began Dumpster diving I was impressed with Dumpsters, enough so that I wrote the Merriam-Webster research service to discover what I could about the word ‘Dumpster.’” –Lars Eighner  “When I saw Dirty Harry for the first time in 1973, the year after its initial release, I knew little about film noir ….” –Gerald Early

4. Other ways to begin  Rhetorical question “If a tree hugger falls in the forest, does he make a sound?”  Classification “Half of our time is spent worrying; the other half is spent feeling bad about worrying.”

5.  Epigraph – opening quotation, set off from text “Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.” – Jack London

6.  Metaphor “Time is a tree that sucks deep to feed its far-reaches.”