Favorite opening passage or sentence thread

post your favorite or what you think is the best opening to a book or a novel. I'll start:

>The long, long road over the moors and up into the forest—who trod it into being first of all? Man, a human being, the first that came here. There was no path before he came. Afterward, some beast or other, following the faint tracks over marsh and moorland, wearing them deeper; after these again some Lapp gained scent of the path, and took that way from field to field, looking to his reindeer. Thus was made the road through the great Almenning—the common tracts without an owner; no-man's-land.
Growth of the Soil - Hamsun

Attached: Caspar_David_Friedrich_-_On_the_Sailing_Boat_-_WGA8255.jpg (465x600, 46K)

Paraphrasing a tad but

All happy families are the same, but every unhappy family is unhappy in their own unique way.

Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death.

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

>I have a good mind/ take into my head/ to start off singing/ begin reciting/ reeling off a tale of kin/ and singing a tale of kind./ The words unfreeze in my mouth/ and the phrases are tumbling/ upon my tongue they scramble/ along my teeth they scatter./ Brother dear, little brother/ fair one who grew up with me/ start off now singing with me/ begin reciting with me/ since we have got together/ since we have come from two ways!/ We seldom get together/ and meet each other/ on these poor borders/ the luckless lands of the North./ Let's strike hand to hand/ fingers into finger-gaps/ that we may sing some good things/ set some of the best things forth/ for those darling ones to hear/ for those with a mind to know/ among the youngsters rising/ among the people growing--

where dis from?

>those words we have got/ tales we have kindled/ from old Vainamoinen's belt/ up from Ilmarinen's forge/ from the tip of Farmind's brand/ from the path of Joukahainen's bow/ from the North's furthest fields/ from the heaths of Kalevala.

-- Kalevala, the Finnish national epic

Anna Karenina

I don't have a favourite, the recent decent one I read was:
>I was in Classis on business. I needed sixty miles of second-grade four-inch hemp rope–I build pontoon bridges–and all the military rope in the empire goes through Classis. What you’re supposed to do is put in a requisition to Divisional Supply, who send it on to Central Supply, who send it on to the Treasurer General, who approves it and sends it back to Divisional Supply, who send it on to Central Supply, who forward it to Classis, where the quartermaster says, sorry, we have no rope. Or you can hire a clever forger in Herennis to cut you an exact copy of the treasury seal, which you use to stamp your requisition, which you then take personally to the office of the deputy quartermaster in Classis, where there’s a senior clerk who’d have done time in the slate quarries if you hadn’t pulled certain documents out of the file a few years back. Of course, you burned the documents as soon as you took them, but he doesn’t know that. And that’s how you get sixty miles of rope in this man’s army.

What's this from?