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?

Comments

First lines

[torgo-x.livejournal.com]

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." -- from Neuromancer, a book that has survived twenty years of crap being derived from it. Its flakey French translation:
"Le ciel au-dessus du port était couleur télé calée sur un émetteur
hors service."

It's intereresting when good novels don't go for the showy first line. For example, here's Naked Lunch:
"I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and
in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of
borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... Most survivors
do not remember the delirium in detail. I apparently took detailed notes
on sickness and delirium...". Altho if I remember right, Burroughs never saw galley proofs, and the publisher just decided to print the book in the semirandom order in which the chapters arrived in the mail -- which would mean that this wasn't actually meant to be the first line of the book.