Favourite opening line/chapter to a book?

[Tanya]

Introductions can sometimes say a lot about a book, we have to admit that they can be quite influential.

What's your favourite opening line/opening chapter to a book?

[Lisanne]

"Dear Osama they want you dead or alive so the terror will stop. Well I wouldn't know about that I mean rock n roll didn't stop when Elvis died on the khazi it just got worse."

- Chris Cleave, Incendiary

[Christy Earp]

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

[Lauren Anderson]

I Love the Opening to I Am The Messenger!

"The gunman is useless. He knows it. I know it. Even my best mate Marv knows it. And he's more Useless then the gunman." Love it!

I also like the opener to The Book Thief, with all the colors.

[Tanya]

Oh I know, 'The Book Thief' was beautiful. :)

[Steve Graham]

"My desert-island, all time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order: 1) Alison Ashworth 2) Penny Hardwick 3) Jackie Allen 4) Charlie Nicholson 5) Sarah Kendrew. These were the ones that really hurt. Can you see your name in that lot, Laura? I reckon you'd sneak into the top ten, but there's no place for you in the top five; those places are reserved for the kind of humiliations and heartbreaks that you're just not capable of delivering."
~High Fidelity (also one of my favorite movies of all time)

"This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet that was dying fast."
~Breakfast of Champions
"Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John."
~Cat's Cradle
"A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees."
~God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Obviously I love Kurt Vonnegut quite a bit

[Stalking Sanity]

My favorite opening line of any book EVER? No contest.

"There once was a boy named Eustace Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

While the book itself wasn't my favorite, I absolutely adore that sentence.

[Clover]

The first pages of The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness were amazing.

[Morgan Landon]

Seeing this topic makes me even more regretful of the fact that I really really miss my "library" at home.

The only one I can think of now is,"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains,". Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

[Enika (anti-worldsuck NM)]

My name is Ed, and I'm a stupid stinking drug addict and alcoholic.

[Kenny]

Listen, Bill Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

[President Clive-φ-Davidson]

Ladies and gentlemen,
I come before you to stand behind you,
To tell you something I know nothing about.
On Monday, which is Good Friday,
There will be a mothers' meeting for fathers only.
Admission is free,
You pay at the door.
Bring your own seats,
We'll sit on the floor.

[Carly Koneska]

"The sky was the color of cat vomit."
-Uglies (opening line)