Classic first lines of novels

[substitute]

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard".

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"This is not an ordinary cookbook."

"Call me Ishmael."

What are yours?

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extras

[stimps.livejournal.com]

He -- for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it -- was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.

A cool heavenly breeze took possession of him.

The actors by their presence always convince me, to my horror, that most of what I've written about them until now is false.

The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born -- we weren't even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg.