Openers

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

–Jeffrey Eugenides, first sentence of Middlesex

The big man lived in the janitor’s closet behind the bar, and through the night you could hear him building birdhouses.

–Christopher Goffard, first sentence of Snitch Jacket

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.

–Gabriel Garcia Marquez, first sentence of One Hundred Years Of Solitude

What’s your favorite first sentence of a novel?