100 Best First Lines from Novels from the American Book Review

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Do you think there are any that were missed? Or any that just do not belong. Some of them I questioned, but I think that is part because I have not read the novel, so the context is lost. Like the Slaughterhouse Five first line is good, but more textured when put into context of the novel(All this happened, more or less.). Same with Morrison's Beloved first line (124 was spiteful.).

But others are just brilliant on their own (at least to me):

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
—C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
—Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
—Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
—James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss