# What's Your Favorite Line



## SimonWood (Nov 13, 2009)

Do you have a favorite line in a book? It can be the opening line or the last line or anywhere in between.

Two of my favorites are:

"You're a good man, sister." 
From Dashiell Hammett's _*The Maltese Falcon*_.

I turned the Chrysler onto the Florida Turnpike with Rollo Kramer's headless body in the trunk, and all the time I'm thinking I should've put some plastic down. 
From Victor Gischler's _*Gun Monkeys*_


----------



## RavenRozier (Sep 8, 2009)

"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." Auntie Mame


----------



## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

My latest favorite line, from *Almost Like Being in Love *by Steve Kluger:

"I'm wearing an earring and size 28 jeans," I retorted. "Does it _look_ like I have a problem with that?"


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

*"I heard where it's a misery wrapped in an enema. That doesn't sound too good."*
~ Sgt. Fred Colon in _The Fifth Elephant_ by Terry Pratchett

*"While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love."*
~ Corwin in _The Guns of Avalon_ by Roger Zelazny

Plus: see my sig, below...


----------



## TC Beacham (Nov 23, 2009)

"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?"

From Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen


----------



## Carol Hanrahan (Mar 31, 2009)

These are great!  I'll have to think a bit...


----------



## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

RavenRozier said:


> "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death." Auntie Mame


There was a musical a few years ago titled "The Musical of Musicals, The Musical" in which they had a paraphrase of that line,

"Life is a star vehicle, and most poor suckers are stuck in a bus and truck."


----------



## Sparkplug (Feb 13, 2009)

I just finished reading _Persuasion_ by Jane Austen last month, and I found this line quite amusing:

"If there is anything disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it."


----------



## SimonWood (Nov 13, 2009)

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Last night, I dreamt of Mandalay."


----------



## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

SimonWood said:


> I'm surprised no one has mentioned "Last night, I dreamt of Mandalay."


Maybe because it's so predictable as a favorite? Sort of like "It was the best of times, it was the best of times."


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Ah, yes:

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." . . . . first line of _Rebecca_. . . . .my brother can recite the whole paragraph. Lamentably, the book is not yet kindlized!

Of course, we can all recite "Barbara Fritchie" by Whittier:

Up from the meadows, rich with corn,
Clear in the cool, September morn,
The Clustered Spires of Frederick stand
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

etc., etc., etc.

We grew up in Frederick, MD and were required to learn it in High School. Our mother, too, grew up in Frederick and knew it by heart . . . .she loved poetry so might have learned it on her own. Family legend is that when my mother met my father's parents and they learned she was from Frederick, my grandfather began reciting the poem and she finished it with him. Now, my grandfather had grown up in a little town in Ireland north of Galway. . .it was a favorite poem of his and, clearly, he knew by heart so it was taken as a good sign that his son wanted to marry someone from the town mentioned.

The rest, as they say, is history.


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

"It's not what you don't know that can hurt you -- it's the things that
you do know that AREN'T true..." (_The Notebooks of Lazarus Long_, by Robert Heinlein)


----------



## R. M. Reed (Nov 11, 2009)

scarlet said:


> Maybe because it's so predictable as a favorite? Sort of like "It was the best of times, it was the best of times."


I don't know who wrote that, but Charles Dickens wrote. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,"


----------



## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

R. Reed said:


> I don't know who wrote that, but Charles Dickens wrote. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,"


Whoops! Thanks. Not enough sleep the last couple of days.


----------



## SimonWood (Nov 13, 2009)

scarlet said:


> Maybe because it's so predictable as a favorite? Sort of like "It was the best of times, it was the best of times."


Dammit!!!


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

This is a bit more than a line, but it struck me as very perspicacious, and also somewhat pleasantly unexpected in the context of an urban fantasy I was reading simply for entertainment:

*The rebel becomes the establishment, always, inevitably. People in power come to believe their power is deserved, and not just a quirk of luck, and they convince themselves that power equals wisdom.*

~ T.A. Pratt, _Dead Reign_


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

One of my favorite "lines" doesn't make any sense without the adjacent couple of lines. From "Silver Blaze", a Sherlock Holmes story, a Scotland Yard inspector asks Holmes what clues he thinks are important:

 "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

"The dog did nothing in the night-time."

"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes. 

If you haven't read this, you simply must go to the following link and read the story! It's short. Go now, I'll wait! 

http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=DoyBlaz.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

This one has stuck in my mind since I first read the book, years ago:

"It is impossible to protect anyone completely without enslaving them."
-Vonda MacIntyre, _Dreamsnake_, 1978

And one which I have thought about at length without coming to any conclusions:

"Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book."
-Nero Wolfe (name of book unknown)


----------



## CegAbq (Mar 17, 2009)

These are from Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones by Derek Landy (unfortunately not available for the Kindles, but a WONDERFUL listen, narrated by Rupert Degas):

Professor Kenspeckle Grouse to Skulduggery Pleasant:
"Detective, Have you ever considered the fact that violence is the recourse of the uncivilized man?"
Skulduggery Pleasant to the Professor:
"I'm sophisticated, charming, suave, and debonair, Professor, but I have never claimed to be civilized."

"I don't show off; I merely demonstrate my abilities at opportune times."
--Skulduggery Pleasant

"I am old & cranky & have long ago decided that people are an annoyance I can do without." --Professor Kenspeckle Grouse


----------



## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

CegAbq said:


> "I don't show off; I merely demonstrate my abilities at opportune times."
> --Skulduggery Pleasant
> 
> "I am old & cranky & have long ago decided that people are an annoyance I can do without." --Professor Kenspeckle Grouse


My new mottos!


----------



## Richard in W.Orange (Nov 24, 2009)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Ah, yes:
> 
> "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." . . . . first line of _Rebecca_. . . . .my brother can recite the whole paragraph. Lamentably, the book is not yet kindlized!



Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley - Manderley - secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls. Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, and suddenly it seemed to me that light came from the windows. And then a cloud came upon the moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of a past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain. But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back to the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France...



> Of course, we can all recite "Barbara Fritchie" by Whittier:
> 
> Up from the meadows, rich with corn,
> Clear in the cool, September morn,
> ...


Round about them Orchards Sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep
Fair as the garden of hte Lord to the eyes of the famished rebel hoarde. ...



> We grew up in Frederick, MD and were required to learn it in High School. Our mother, too, grew up in Frederick and knew it by heart . . . .she loved poetry so might have learned it on her own. Family legend is that when my mother met my father's parents and they learned she was from Frederick, my grandfather began reciting the poem and she finished it with him. Now, my grandfather had grown up in a little town in Ireland north of Galway. . .it was a favorite poem of his and, clearly, he knew by heart so it was taken as a good sign that his son wanted to marry someone from the town mentioned.
> 
> The rest, as they say, is history.


(9th Grade English...we were expected to learn it. But this is at the highschool where the first field trip you got in US History was to the edge of the property where a marker noted that (Ann can fill in the whos on this) General A surrendered command to General B in a classroom on the first floor.


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Richard in W.Orange said:


> [size=9pt]
> . . . . But this is at the highschool where the first field trip you got in US History was to the edge of the property where a marker noted that (Ann can fill in the whos on this) General A surrendered command to General B in a classroom on the first floor.


I think it was Hooker who turned over command of the Army of the Potomac to Meade just before the battle of Gettysburg. . . .and it was in the Library of the HS which had been the grand hall of the original antebellum (c. 1803) mansion (a room large enough that you could, if you wished, turn a coach and four horses. ) But, yeah, there's a rock at the edge of the property that points one toward the building and explains what happened, and yeah, it was a "field trip": walk down the hill to read the plaque on the marker, then walk back up and go to the library for the rest of the lesson.


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

I've forgotten which work of Mark Twain I got this from, but I like it:

"The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful." -- Mark Twain.

I tend to type these things into my Mac notes file when I come across them.

Mike


----------



## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

jmiked said:


> I've forgotten which work of Mark Twain I got this from, but I like it:


Ooh, thanks for reminding me about Twain. This is one of my favorite bits from him (I seem constitutionally incapable of restricting these to one line, don't I?):

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.


----------



## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

Not from a book, but a favorite:  "I cannot live without books."  Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams.

The one that sticks in my mind from a book (undoubtedly because I worked with and raised horses for over 20 years):  "Break your heart, horses do."  From one of Dick Francis' books.  Can't remember which one at the moment.


----------



## Paegan (Jul 20, 2009)

A great line from the Lemony Snicket books:

*Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.*


----------



## geoffthomas (Feb 27, 2009)

Well I will happily jump in here with a line and a maxim:

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"

Spoken by Salvor Hardin a character in the Foundation series of Isaac Asimov.


----------



## PraiseGod13 (Oct 27, 2008)

Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series is one of my very favorite... and those of us who love it are so touched by the love that Jamie (who is from Scotland in case you aren't familiar with the series) and Claire have for each other.
The closing paragraph from The Fiery Cross: Jamie is speaking to Claire&#8230;&#8230; "When the day shall come, that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you' - ye'll ken it was because I didna have time."


----------



## shalom israel (Dec 8, 2009)

From March by Geraldine Brooks "I have not scaled the cliffs of knowledge, only meandered in the foothills."

Great book by the way


----------



## mmefford (Dec 9, 2009)

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. J.R.R. Tolkien


----------



## angelad (Jun 19, 2009)

Paegan said:


> A great line from the Lemony Snicket books:
> 
> *Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.*


That's poetically beatiful.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Just read this one the other night, and it goes well with this thread. 

*In retrospect, after having grown up somewhat, and having lived, died, and been resurrected from the dust, I realize that there may be nothing more obnoxious than a teenager who knows everything.*
~ Levi "Biff" bar Alphaeus in _Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend_, by Christopher Moore


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

For some reason this totally cracked me up the other night when I saw it, so I had to take a screen shot.


----------



## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Okay, it's cheating a little bit, but one of my favorite lines is from an opera libretto. (So it's literary in its own way.)

*What is an answer that is not trivial?*

from _Capriccio,_ libretto by Richard Strauss and Clemens Krauss.

Here's the context to this line:

"Capriccio" was Strauss' last opera and it is about a Countess Madeline who has two suitors: a Poet and a Composer, and on her birthday they bring her their gifts. The Poet brings her a poem and the Composer a String Sextet. They try to woo her throughout the evening and the opera essentially becomes an argument on what is more important in opera: words or music. (The libretto is brilliantly self-referential.) The Countess has agreed to meet both of her suitors in the library the following day to tell them which one she has chosen and hence, to us in the audience, she will declare which she considers more important: words or music. In the opera's final scene she reads the poem and plays the music on her harp, trying to decide which she loves more. In the end she looks at herself in the mirror and says: "What is an answer that is not trivial?" At which point her butler walks into the room and says, "Madam, dinner is served." She silently leaves the room to eat. Curtain.

Here endeth the lesson about opera, but that line itself has always struck me as remarkably profound.


----------



## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

Over the weekend I re-read The Open Window by Saki and was reminded of the very great closing sentence:

*Romance at short notice was her speciality.*


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

My favorite line is:

"Hi, come here often?"

But it doesn't work very frequently. 

No wonder I live with a cat.

Mike


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Leslie said:


> Over the weekend I re-read The Open Window by Saki and was reminded of the very great closing sentence:
> 
> *Romance at short notice was her speciality.*


_The Open Window_ is a classic story, one of the ones I re-read from time to time.

Wasn't it made into a _Twilight Zone_ or some such?

Mike


----------



## mdkohm (Feb 9, 2009)

One of my favorites:

"When you're ten years old, and a car drives by and splashes a puddle of water all over you, it's hard to decide if you should go to school like that or try to go home and change and probably be late. So while he was trying to decide, I drove by and splashed him again." - Jack Handey

What I'd Say to the Martians by Jack Handey


----------



## austenfiend (Nov 17, 2009)

NogDog:

Okay, I'll have to admit, that made me laugh out loud!  (Duh...I don't know how to put your original response in...I've got to get more technical knowledge).

BTW, I'm very impressed with all of you having answers to the question about your favorite line.  My memory is so spotty that I can barely remember what I just read!


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

austenfiend said:


> . . . (Duh...I don't know how to put your original response in...I've got to get more technical knowledge). . . .


Just click the "Quote" button at the top right of the post to which you want to respond.


----------



## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

jmiked said:


> _The Open Window_ is a classic story, one of the ones I re-read from time to time.
> 
> Wasn't it made into a _Twilight Zone_ or some such?
> 
> Mike


I am not finding evidence of that...what I did find is that the story Sredni Vashtar, also by Saki, was adapted for American television and aired on a ghost anthology series called Great Ghost Tales, in the summer of 1961. Is that the one you are thinking of?

L


----------



## xianfox (Dec 7, 2009)

I'm reminded of this quote every four years:

*"...anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." *-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


----------



## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

*I enjoy slaughtering animals and I think of my relatives often.*
~ Julian in _Nine Princes in Amber_ by Roger Zelazny

This may give you some idea of the level of court intrigue in Amber, as Julian is one of those "nine princes."


----------



## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Leslie said:


> I am not finding evidence of that...what I did find is that the story Sredni Vashtar, also by Saki, was adapted for American television and aired on a ghost anthology series called Great Ghost Tales, in the summer of 1961. Is that the one you are thinking of?
> 
> L


I think it was on an episode of _Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected_ in 1979. I remember watching that series.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075592/

Just to keep the thread on track, here's a favorite quote of mine from one of Simon R. Green's books that Nogdog's Amber quote reminded me of:

"Families: Can't live with them, can't take them down to the river and drown them all in sacks."
-Eddie Drood

Mike


----------



## RiddleMeThis (Sep 15, 2009)

I have two...

"All was well."

and

"He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: 'To Harry Potter -- the boy who lived!'"


----------



## Kristus412 (Nov 22, 2008)

Awww this has been my favorite quote from the Outlander series for years. It was the first one I thought of when I saw this thread.


PraiseGod13 said:


> Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series is one of my very favorite... and those of us who love it are so touched by the love that Jamie (who is from Scotland in case you aren't familiar with the series) and Claire have for each other.
> The closing paragraph from The Fiery Cross: Jamie is speaking to Claire&#8230;&#8230; "When the day shall come, that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you' - ye'll ken it was because I didna have time."


----------

