Great Beginnings

Ernest Hemingway advised that when stuck to write one true sentence. He wasn't talking about factual truth, but emotional honesty. That single honest sentence can form the nucleus of a great story or novel. To prove this, just look at a few powerful literary works that began with a single true sentence. I'll do this from memory, so please forgive and correct me if I get any of them wrong.

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Fahrenheit 541, by Ray Bradbury: "It was a pleasure to burn."

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville: Call me Ishmael.

1984, by George Orwell: It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13.

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. [This one I had to look up to get it right].

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway: "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." [I had to look up this one as well].

The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway: "The marvelous thing is that it's painless," he said.

What are some of your favorite great beginnings, or great endings, in literature? Or, for that matter, great lines anywhere in the midst of a story?