# What is your favorite line in literature?



## Dee Ernst (Jan 10, 2011)

Here's mine -

"Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

It's from To Kill A Mockingbird, of course. It's not just the image that I love, it's also the rhythm of the words. I recently saw a dramatization of the book, and I was worried until the actress on stage spoke this line, and spoke it just as I knew Scout would say it. After hearing it, I relaxed, and the play was wonderful.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Hmmm, not sure I have a clear favorite.  But one that jumps out from a book I'm re-reading currently:

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." (The Great Gatsby)

Always liked the opening few lines of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as well.  

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."


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## Guest (Jan 18, 2012)

"All right, then, I'll go to hell" by Huck Finn in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. Here was the moral high point of this the great American novel.


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

Douglas Adams description of the destruction of the Earth:

There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

The first thing that jumped to my mind is from Charles Stross's _Halting State_:


 _Nobody ever imagined a band of Orcs would steal a database table._

If you aren't a bit of a geek/nerd, that might not be as funny to you as it was to me when I first read it.

I quite liked this one from one of my favorite reads of 2011, _Death and the Penguin_ by Andrey Kurkov:


 _The past believed in dates. And everyone's life consisted of dates, giving life a rhythm and sense of gradation, as if from the eminence of a date one could look back and down, and see the past itself. A clear, comprehensible past, divided up into squares of events, lines of paths taken._

This is a lot more than a line, but I've always loved this bit from Roger Zelazny's _The Gun's of Avalon_:


 _It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself._


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

"The nighttime wrote a check that daylight couldn't cash."  Thomas McGuane — "Panama"


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## Geemont (Nov 18, 2008)

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." 
- V.S. Naipaul, _A Bend in the River_


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## rubymatthewserotica (Jan 7, 2012)

MikeAngel said:


> "All right, then, I'll go to hell" by Huck Finn in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. Here was the moral high point of this the great American novel.


Love Huck Finn. Am plowing through Twain's Autobiography as we speak.


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## Ryan Harvey (May 18, 2011)

Mine is from _The Haunting of Hill House_, the concluding sentence of what I think is the best opening paragraph from any book I've read

*Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.*

This was one of the times when reading a book that I realized for certain I would love it just from the first paragraph.


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## StephenLivingston (May 10, 2011)

Tough question.  There are so many great lines to choose from but the one that springs to mind most is:

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

Spoken by Gandalf to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.  Written by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Best wishes, Stephen Livingston.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

*"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.*

Raymond Chandler's debut novel -- 'The Big Sleep'


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

*"We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact," Tyler said. "So don't **** with us."*

Chuck Palahniuk -- _Fight Club_


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## Tony Rabig (Oct 11, 2010)

I don't think I could possibly narrow it down either.  The opening of Gatsby has already been quoted.  But the closing of Gatsby is just as strong: 

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Tony Rabig said:


> I don't think I could possibly narrow it down either. The opening of Gatsby has already been quoted. But the closing of Gatsby is just as strong:
> 
> "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."


Agreed. One of the best endings to any book IMO.

Another great line from near the end of the book:

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money of their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made."


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## 4eyesbooks (Jan 9, 2012)

I have to go with a local Atlanta author  

“Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” –Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind


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## SusanKL (Sep 14, 2011)

"The last camel died at noon."    
It's the FIRST line in Ken Follet's novel "Key to Rebecca."


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## Ryan Harvey (May 18, 2011)

Tony Richards said:


> *"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.*
> 
> Raymond Chandler's debut novel -- 'The Big Sleep'


That's a close one for me too. Also love Marlowe's final speech to "Señor Maioranos" at the conclusion of _The Long Goodye_: "I won't say goodbye. I said it to you when it meant something. I said it when it was sad and lonely and final."


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## JohnCStipa (Feb 19, 2010)

I always come back to Melville: "...to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last beath at thee." Nothing quite like it has ever captured the essence of a character.


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## Beth Dolgner (Nov 11, 2011)

*"Not all those who wander are lost." *
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

I love this quote so much that I wear a bracelet inscribed with it. As a freelance writer, I think it's an apt description of my career.


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## grahampowell (Feb 10, 2011)

From _One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch_ by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, after we learn that Ivan spent 3,653 days in the gulag:

"The three extra days were for leap years."

Doesn't sound like much, but coming at the end of the novel it reinforces that the State took _everything_ away from you.

Graham


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## Nick Steckel (Sep 2, 2010)

My favorite from H.G. Wells' _The War of the Worlds_: "And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?"


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## FrankZubek (Aug 31, 2010)

"After wishing a whole company into existence, Rub would settle for a forty-hour-a-week job at union scale, as if he feared some sort of cosmic retaliation for an arrogant imagination." 

From "Nobody's Fool" (1993) by Richard Russo
This line is on page 81 where Sully's friend, Rub, plays a wishing game to pass the time. And there is a whole two paragraph sequence involved here that begins on page 80 but that's a favorite line of mine from the book

The whole first half of the book is so rich in humor

In fact I wish Russo would hurry up and release another book. I had heard he was working on a sequel to this very book.


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## Candee15 (Jan 31, 2010)

Mike McIntyre said:


> "The nighttime wrote a check that daylight couldn't cash." Thomas McGuane - "Panama"


Wow. That is soooooo powerful. Thank you for sharing!!!


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## Kim Sheard (Nov 13, 2011)

The one that always comes to mind and makes me shake my head is:

Mother, he hath slain me.

from _Macbeth_ But that is mostly because it is practically the only line the poor kid has and it is so brutally unnecessary! I have to love Shakespeare for putting it in there at all.

Though that doesn't have the meaning that some of the previous ones does.... will have to think about that kind of a line....


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

Kim Sheard said:


> The one that always comes to mind and makes me shake my head is:
> 
> Mother, he hath slain me.
> 
> ...


Reminds me of this line from _The Spoon River Anthology_ by Edgar Lee Masters, which has stuck with me all these decades later since I read it in school:

_When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had stayed at home and gone to jail_

I had to look up the entire verse on the web, in case you want its context:

_*Knowit Hoheimer*

I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had stayed at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the country jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal
Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
What do they mean, anyway?_


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## JEV (Jan 7, 2012)

"Hey, Boo."  Which is also the name of a documentary about the making of To Kill a Mockingbird.


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## DH_Sayer (Dec 20, 2011)

"One semion that still works fine is holding your fist up and cranking it with the other hand so the finger you're giving somebody goes up like a drawbridge." - from Infinite Jest

Always wanted to try that...


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## EStoops (Oct 24, 2011)

I don't know where this is from, someone may help me out -- "Shut up," she explained." 

And from Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha: "a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give."


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

StephenLivingston said:


> "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
> 
> Spoken by Gandalf to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings. Written by J.R.R. Tolkien.


I love this one, too. And I love how Gandalf says it in the movie.


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## jumbojohnny (Dec 25, 2011)

Bilbo's leaving speech for me. I am not even going to try and type it out from memory as I am bound to mess it up. But the uncertainty from the party guests as to whether they've been insulted or not is a real gem, you can just visualise them mulling over what they've just heard and dissecting it line by line.


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## ciscokid (Oct 10, 2010)

Mine is the last lines from Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles....

_The Martians were there-in the canal-reflected in the water. Timothy and Michael and Robert and Mom and Dad. The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water......_


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## juliet1959 (Jan 25, 2012)

"It's a very plum plum," from 'The English Patient' by Anthony Minghella.
For some reason I always think of that line when I eat a plum and we have lots of plum trees, we eat lots of plums!

Another one is "The past is a foreign country they do things differently there" which is the opening line of 'The Go-Between' by L.P. Hartley. I remember studying the book at school and it affected me deeply.


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## miamiajp (Jan 28, 2012)

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.
Hemingway. 
"A farewell to arms."


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## Ergodic Mage (Jan 23, 2012)

"It takes strength to judge the weakness of others, I am not so mighty." By Lord Mhoram in Stephen Donaldson's _The Illearth War_.


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## StephenZimmer (Feb 2, 2012)

A few have already pointed this one out, but I have to say

*"Not all who wander are lost."* from J.R.R. Tolkien

Just so I'm not completely unoriginal, I will add:
*"Further up, and further in!"* from C.S. Lewis, in The Last Battle. Everything about that statement is wonderful!


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

"Poo-tee-weet?"

(The last line of both _Slaughterhouse-Five_ and _God Bess You, Mr. Rosewater_ by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)


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## Jeff Shelby (Oct 2, 2011)

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking a beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

From James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss.  Gets me every time


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## AnitaBartholomew (Jun 27, 2011)

_Rented-a-tent-a tent-a-tent. Rented-a-tent-a tent_

Ten points and a gold star to anyone who knows the source (my favorite novel by one of the best American authors).

Anita


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## deckard (Jan 13, 2011)

AnitaBartholomew said:


> _Rented-a-tent-a tent-a-tent. Rented-a-tent-a tent_
> 
> Ten points and a gold star to anyone who knows the source (my favorite novel by one of the best American authors).
> 
> Anita


Would that be Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan?

Deckard


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## Not Here (May 23, 2011)

"Nobody can tell what I suffer! -- But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied." Mrs. Bennet from _Pride and Prejudice_

"Night-lights are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children." Mrs. Darling from _Peter and Wendy_


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## deckard (Jan 13, 2011)

"My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call."

Pat Conroy in The Prince of Tides

Deckard


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## Jeff (Oct 28, 2008)

[quote author=William Shakespeare (HENRY V)]
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; 
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me 
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, 
This day shall gentle his condition; 
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed 
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, 
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks 
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
[/quote]


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## Seanathin23 (Jul 24, 2011)

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain *Dune by Frank Herbert*

I mutter this when doing things that scare the poo out of me.


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## tinytoy (Jun 15, 2011)

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones


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## Sean Patrick Fox (Dec 3, 2011)

MikeAngel said:


> "All right, then, I'll go to hell" by Huck Finn in _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_. Here was the moral high point of this the great American novel.


If I learned nothing else in my seemingly infinite number of American Lit classes, it was the importance of this scene.


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## John A. A. Logan (Jan 25, 2012)

“'...I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.' 

'What do you mean, babe? You a fine boy with a good education.' 

'Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe. This was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library.'” 
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces


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## AnitaBartholomew (Jun 27, 2011)

deckard said:


> Would that be Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan?
> 
> Deckard


Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

Anita


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## lauralouise (Feb 6, 2012)

There's this line that I read years ago in a relatively unknown children's book and scribbled it down in my diary. I love it and t's stuck with me ever since but I can't for the life of me remember what the book was so if anyone recognizes it please let me know!
The line is:

"That's someone with largeness of soul."


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## psychotick (Jan 26, 2012)

Hi,

From Dirk Gently's Detective Agency:

"... A few turnings later and I was thoroughly lost. There is a school of thought which says that you should consult a map on these occasions, but to such people I merely say, 'Ha! What if you have no map to consult? What if you have a map but it's of the Dordogne?' My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it is going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be. So what do you say to that?" 

"Piffle." 

"A robust response. I salute you." 


This is now my new method of navigation!

Cheers, Greg.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

For me it's always been: "*The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.*" from Stephen King's The Gunslinger. Probably the best opening line ever in a novel, IMHO.


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## deckard (Jan 13, 2011)

AnitaBartholomew said:


> Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
> 
> Anita


Yea! When do I get my gold star?

Deckard


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

psychotick said:


> Hi,
> 
> From Dirk Gently's Detective Agency:


A wonderful book, that along with _The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul_ tends to be wrongly overshadowed by hist "Hitchhiker" books (IMHO).


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## Jeroen Steenbeeke (Feb 3, 2012)

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't"
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


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## sandrasstories (Feb 1, 2012)

My favourite lines (admittedly) comes from The Lord of the Rings. I love Tolkien's writing. Here are a few of my favourites:

"And then her heart changed, or at least she understood it; and the winter passed, and the sun shone upon her."

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” 

“But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.” 

Also,

She spoke to the King, hoping he would forbid his son to go, but he said: "Well, dear, it's true that adventures are good for people even when they are very young. Adventures can get into a person's blood even if he doesn't remember having them."

-      Eva Ibbotson, "Secret of Platform 13"


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