This is a collection of my 20 favorite opening lines from books. Fairly self-explanatory, i guess.
If you're of the MySpace persuasion, feel free to add your favorites here.

-cpb 2/28/07

1. "It was a pleasure to burn."
   -Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
   
   
2. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
   -Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas: A Savage Journey To The Heart Of The American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
   
   
3. "All this happened, more or less."
   -Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
   
   
4. "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."
   -The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
   
5. "Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost."
   -The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
   
   
6. "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
   -The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
   
   
7. "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed."
   -The New Life by Orhan Pamuk (trans. Guneli Gun)
   
   
8. "It is a sin to write this."
   -Anthem by Ayn Rand
   
   
9. "It is a long trip."
   -The Ticket That Exploded by William S. Burroughs
   
   
10. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix..."
    -Howl by Allen Ginsberg
    
    
11. "I stand naked before the mirror."
    -Autobiography Of A Brown Buffalo by Oscar Zeta Acosta
    
    
12. "I am a sick man."
    -Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (trans. Richard Pevear)
    
    
13. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."
    -I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith
    
    
14. "'Where's Papa going with that axe?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."
    -Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
    
    
15. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fourtune must be in want of a wife."
    -Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
    
    
16. "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy."
    -The Odyssey by Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
    
    
17. "This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it."
    -The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale Of True Love And High Adventure by William Goldman
    
    
18. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."
    -Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
    
    
19. "We are at rest five miles behind the front."
    -All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (trans. A.W. Wheen)
    
    
20. "Ypsilanti, Michigan."
    -The Michigan Murders by Edward Keyes