The first step to getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.

The only place to begin is at the beginning.  I always find the very first sentence of books as equally intriguing as the last. A couple of my favorites, albeit not the most famous of beginnings:

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables.  The radish, admittedly, is  more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion.  Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity.  Beets are deadly serious."

"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."

"I am an invisible man."