Famous First Lines From a BOOK...

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night (London 1040)

I am headed out of town, right into the mouth of a monster hurricane hitting the East Coast, so here's a quick one from the archives.  Some background from Wikipedia:  "It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase written by English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton in the opening sentence of his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford."  The phrase is considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing," also known as purple prose.