100 best first lines:

http://www.litline.org/ABR/100bestfirstlines.html

Top 10 sample:

"1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, /Moby-Dick/ (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen,
/Pride and Prejudice/ (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, /Gravity's
Rainbow/ (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano
Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him
to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez,/ One Hundred Years of
Solitude/ (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov,
/Lolita/ (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its
own way. —Leo Tolstoy, /Anna Karenina/ (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and
Environs. —James Joyce,/ Finnegans Wake/ (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteen. —George Orwell, /1984/ (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age
of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair. —Charles Dickens, /A Tale of Two Cities/ (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, /Invisible Man/ (1952)"

So, which is your favourite?