"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."

It must have been September 1986. At some point that month, I picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude (whose author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, turns 80 today), read the first sentence, and stopped when I got to the word "ice": I wanted to savor that sentence. So I memorized it, and for a few days, I walked around quoting it to people.

This led to two distinct responses. Some people said, "Oh, you're reading One Hundred Years of Solitude." I always said that no, I was not reading it; I had only read the first sentence and stopped. To which they always said, "You're weird, Andrew."

Others said, "Wow, what's that?" When I told them it was the first sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude, they said, "Are you reading that? Is it as good as people say it is?" I always said that I did not know, as I had only read the first sentence and stopped. To which they always said, "You're weird, Andrew."

I did go on to read the whole book (and again a few years later). That opening sentence is still my favorite opening sentence of a novel, but the first sentence of Love in the Time of Cholera (which I have read three times) is almost as good:

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

It does not end with a little bomb like the word "ice," but otherwise it's great. And that novel has a final sentence that I could only agree with when I read it:

"'Forever,' he said."

That's how long I wanted the book to go on when I finished it.