Great opening lines - book, song or speech

[Dave7]

Mine is very simple. I was approx 10 years old when I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and I recall it well.
Opening word was "TOM".

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.

 

[Dogtrousers]

To begin at the beginning:
...
Under Milk Wood - Dylan Thomas.

One of my favourites so far.

All you need is Richard Burton reading those 5 words.

 

[Dogtrousers]

One morning, as Gregor Samsa awoke from anxious dreams, he discovered that during the night he had been transformed into a monstrous bug.

Also: "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K" - The Trial

 

[further]

Ive got a bike you can ride it if you like

 

[swee'pea99]

"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the last wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt been none for a long time before him nor I aint looking to see none agen."

 

[swee'pea99]

"We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

(First line of an ad - hope that squeezes under the wire.)

 

[Alex321]

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.

Opening line of Titus Groan, the first book in the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake.

 

[matticus]

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.

Opening line of Titus Groan, the first book in the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake.

Snappy!

 

[stephec]

In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem... if no one else can help... and if you can find them... maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

 

[matticus]

In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem... if no one else can help... and if you can find them... maybe you can hire... The A-Team.

That sounds familiar ... was it a TV show?

 

[numbnuts]

I had a dream
We shall never surrender

 

[Dogtrousers]

Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl and her name was Emily, and she had a Shop...

Bagpuss

 

[Tenkaykev]

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands...