Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

 -opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude,

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.

 -opening line of A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

 -opening line of The Towers of Trebizond,

Rose MacAuley

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

 -opening line of 1984, George Orwell

I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.

 -opening line of The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

 -opening line of The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

 -opening line of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy,

Douglas Adams

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap - I have to tell you, I know, but I really don't want to go into it to tell you the truth.

 -opening line of The Catcher In The Rye,

J.D. Salinger

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

 -opening line of Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.

 -opening line of A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean

All children, except one, grow up.

 -opening line of Winnie The Pooh, A.A. Milne

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

 - opening line of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

It was a dark and stormy night.

-opening (and only) line of Snoopy's unfinished novel