“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: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a master of remarkable opening sentences. The Nobel Prize-winning Colombian writer who has inspired writers and readers around the world, died April 17 at his home in Mexico City.

Gabo, as he was known, created the “magic realism”, a literary style that blended reality, myth, love and loss. He was a reporter with an eye for marvel and a writer with an insatiable creativity. And he will be remembered for his utter mastery of the opening sentence.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can judge it by its opening line. And although there are all sorts of theories about what constitutes a good opening line, you know what…