[Error: unknown template qotd] True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my sense--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and teh earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story. --Edgar Allan Poe "The Tell-Tale Heart"

First one that pops to mind. Just damn. Damn damn damn. Best beginning to a story ever.

"Where's Papa going with that axe?" --E.B. White "Charlotte's Web"

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic vermin. --Franz  Kafka "The Metamorphosis"

*insert any beginning by Roald Dahl here*

Whoo-oo-oo-oo-hooh-hoo-oo! Oh, look at me, I am perishing in this gateway.The blizzard roars a prayer for the dying, and I howl with it. I am finished, finished. That bastard in the dirty cap--the cook of the Normal Diet Cafeteria for employees of the People's Central Economic Soviet--threw boiling water at me and scalded my left side. The scum, and he calls himself a proletarian! Lord, oh lord, how it hurts! My side is cooked to the bone. And now I howl and howl, but what's the good of howling? -- Mikhail Bulgakov "Heart of a Dog"

Also awesome: The Little Prince, 1984, The Phantom of the Opera and Lolita.

As for Movies/Musicals? Simply this:

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. --Stephen Sondheim.