Bulwer Lytton's meme forms the basis of an infinitely recursive story (with many variations):
It was a dark and stormy night, and we said to the captain "Tell us a story!" And this is the story the captain told: "It was a dark and stormy night, and we said to the captain, 'Tell us a story!' And this is the story the captain told: ...'"
When I was but a sprat, my father used to tell us this story, using a different regional accent for each iteration; I found it hysterically funny, but I guess you had to be there. And probably to be aged not more than 9, and possibly overtired and having been allowed to drink a small glass of wine with your dinner. But I digress.
As noted elsewhere in the node, this phrase was used by Charles M. Schultz for the perennial opening phrase of the various literary efforts of Snoopy. In the Italian edition of Peanuts this has always been rendered non-literally by the equally trite "Era una bella mattina di fine novembre" - "it was a fine morning in late November". No great problem there. Unfortunately (at least, for a translator) Italian postmodernist Umberto Eco chose Snoopy's line as the opening words of the narrative of Il nome della Rosa, describing the protagonists' arrival at the monastery. Naturally, there was no way that this could be translated into English preserving both the reference and the integrity of the plot (William Weaver opted to render it literally, probably the only sane choice). A fine intance, thus, of untranslatable postmodernism.