What are your favorite opening lines?

[bradrn]

More Nabokov (Pale Fire):

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

And then, of course, the opening lines of Lolita are pretty well-known too (though it’s a book I haven’t read and feel no desire to).

[bradrn]

One of the best I’ve seen yet:

Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father—an act which made a deep impression on me at the time.

—Ambrose Bierce, An Imperfect Conflagration