Opening Sentences

 I have been thinking about sentences and about opening sentences in particular.
Good opening sentences stick in the memory. Offhand, I can think of several that have stayed with me, although it is years since I read the stories they introduce (an exception being The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford which I have read more times than I can remember). 

“In the town there were two mutes and they were always together.” (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. “There is a fort in the South where some years ago a murder was committed. (Reflections in a Golden Eye, also by Carson McCullers, a mistress of the opening sentence.)
“In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.” (Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell.)
“It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”(Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen)
“Take my camel, dear, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.” (The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macauley.)
“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.” (Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.
“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” (The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford.)
"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; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.)

In short: A good opening sentence should make you sit up and want to read more.