So, Joe Hill, at his blog — http://joehillfiction.com/2012/08/good-lines/ — did a thing where he asked people to identify some of their favorite and most impactful sentences from books they’ve read, and I thought that was pretty rad. (Also rad, which is when Mister Joe said: “For me to really enjoy a book, I need to hear some music in the writer’s sentences. I know it shouldn’t matter. Story is more important than style… yet if I don’t like an author’s voice, if they don’t grab me with the sound and rhythms of their sentences, I can’t fall under the spell of the narrative.” Uh, hell yeah.)
Anyway.
I’m posing the same question to you.
Because I wanna know your answers.
So. Pick a sentence you love from a book — something you read years ago, something you read just the other day, whatever — and post it below in the comments.
I’ll pick a random commenter by the end of the day to get a free e-copy of BAIT DOG.
Dig it? Dug it? Do it.
Raechel Hudson says:
“He was as grave as a turnip.”
I can’t quite remember exactly which book it was, but it’s one of my favourite phrases and comes from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. The phrase was to describe a character who had been caught out laughing at another. Absolutely brilliant. How can you be graver than a turnip?
August 22, 2012 — 12:30 AM
Ian Rose says:
“I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite” – from Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft
August 22, 2012 — 12:32 AM
James says:
You were wearing black shoes and a black suit, carrying an umbrella, striding into trouble like a businessman into his office. The light of a cafe scribbled the violent word ‘berserk’ on a wall nearby. The gutter was already glittering with wasted glass.
– Geoff Dyer, “But Beautiful”
August 22, 2012 — 12:37 AM
Natalie says:
“The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.”
Patrick Rothfuss – “The Name of the Wind”
August 22, 2012 — 12:47 AM
Brenda says:
“I don’t care about whose DNA has recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching–they are your family.” ― Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
August 22, 2012 — 2:04 AM
Scott Fitzgerald Gray says:
“Who do you love?” the Finn’s voice asked.
August 22, 2012 — 3:56 AM
terribleminds says:
@Scott —
You actually have to tell us what book it’s from 🙂 I know that’s from Neuromancer, but don’t assume everybody will.
— c.
August 22, 2012 — 6:15 AM
Hudds says:
With one last look to be sure the evacuation is complete, the bearded geezer glances at us and raises his hand to sign okay and possibly thank you, and dives into his car, which waits a heartbeat for the juiced-up Saab in front to make some space and then there’s a noise like the old bull shaking his head at the young one (“No, son, we’re not gonna run down and fuck one of those cows, we’re gonna walk and fuck ’em all”) and the Roller disappers from view in a cloud of its own dust.”
– From “The Gone-Away World” by Nick Harkaway
August 22, 2012 — 5:14 AM
Sigil says:
‘This was the death that stood over you and knocked you again, and again, and as many times as necessary until you would not rise again, or until you were so disfigured that death could no longer bear to look at you, and moved off in disgust to find another soul to knock.’
Dan Abnett – “Prospero Burns”
August 22, 2012 — 5:20 AM
Alex Beecroft says:
“If this is the royal music, no wonder the kings of Karhide are all mad.”
Ursula LeGuin – The Left Hand of Darkness
August 22, 2012 — 5:29 AM
jeffo says:
‘True, Jedediah Halsey’s Sans Souci hadn’t been so much foolish as “visionary,” which, as everyone knew, was what you called a foolish idea that worked anyway.’
Richard Russo – “Nobody’s Fool”
August 22, 2012 — 5:43 AM
Phil Norris says:
“…death’s body-double.” – The Shadow Of The Soul by Sarah Pinborough. The best description I’ve ever seen for a bodyguard.
August 22, 2012 — 6:33 AM
Gregor Xane says:
“He’s a–a–a meat dog.” -Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz
August 22, 2012 — 6:35 AM
Vampy says:
‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
August 22, 2012 — 7:26 AM
Esme Pilbeam says:
“Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.” Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
August 22, 2012 — 7:29 AM
Stephen G. Zoldi says:
“But love, honest love, requires empathy.”
From: The Silent Blade
By: R. A. Salvatore
August 22, 2012 — 7:34 AM
Todd Moody says:
One by one he launched us solo in December skies he owned, cold wind whipping the ramp when I strapped in and taxied out without his breath in my headset–exciting silence, nothing but these two fists to save me, the runway thudding faster and faster and falling away, the moon floating up from Savannah, the force in my hand massive, banking with blazing power out of traffic, climbing through baffling darkness into the spendor of stars.
— Walt MacDonald from the poem Swaggering to the Flight Line
August 22, 2012 — 7:46 AM
Bex says:
Two lines from the same book that always manage to make me smile.
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”
“What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, ruff it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
These will only amuse or make sense to you if you too are a devoted Douglas Adams acolytes – both are from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Bex (Who rarely knows where that blessed towel went to.)
August 22, 2012 — 7:49 AM
Tina says:
I like things to be story-shaped.
Reality, however, is not story-shaped, and the eruptions of the odd into our lives are not story-shaped either. They do not end in entirely satisfactory ways. Recounting the strange is like telling one’s dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream, but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one’s entire day.
From on of the short stories in Neil Gaiman’s ‘Fragile Things’. Can’t believe I didn’t make a note of which story it was from exactly.
August 22, 2012 — 8:03 AM
mharvey816 says:
“His resolve was blown as quickly as the rest of him.” ― John Irving, The World According to Garp
August 22, 2012 — 9:03 AM
Dave Redman says:
He dies.
King Lear – William Shakespeare
August 22, 2012 — 9:09 AM
Raymond says:
This is not for you.
– Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
August 22, 2012 — 9:27 AM
DelilahSDawson says:
Keep your head down and inch towards daylight. Never surrender
Matt Stover, Heroes Die
(I already have my copy of BAIT DOG, but I love that line and have to post it once a day or I explode.)
August 22, 2012 — 9:28 AM
Rebecca J Fleming says:
“It’s time to abandon the elephant.”
Moment of Truth – Michael Pryor
August 22, 2012 — 9:29 AM
Jessica McHugh says:
“Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way.”
(Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis)
August 22, 2012 — 9:29 AM
H, aka Vee says:
“Alone, with not so much as a sperm left to accompany him, Alobar again directed his steps toward the east.” Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
“It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.” Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
August 22, 2012 — 9:33 AM
Paul Weimer (@princejvstin) says:
“If I had cared to lived, I would have died”
–Opening line to Silverlock, John Myers Myers
August 22, 2012 — 9:34 AM
Andrija Popovic says:
“He doesn’t know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life, and die your own death … or else you will die another’s.” Alfred Bester “Fondly Farenheit.”
August 22, 2012 — 9:39 AM
Dave says:
“Good,” I said. “But what about our room? And the golf shoes? We’re right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo! And somebody’s giving booze to these goddamn things! It won’t be long before they tear us to shreds. Jesus, look at the floor! Have you ever seen so much blood? How many have they killed already?” I pointed across the room to a group that seemed to be staring at us. “Holy shit, look at that bunch over there! They’ve spotted us!”
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson
August 22, 2012 — 9:40 AM
Brandi says:
I dreamed bee entrails alight with cosmic fire.
They were smeared across the walls of a cave, hung to decorate the cavity of a horse’s chest.
From “Affirmation” in Your Own Ox-Head Mask as Proof by George Kalamaras
August 22, 2012 — 9:41 AM
Susie Bertie says:
“The sun was low but the air was still balmy, and the sea was the shade of blue that black could have been if it hadn’t stepped over the line.”
– Tom Robbins in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
August 22, 2012 — 9:42 AM
Lauren says:
(Bet you saw this one coming.)
“I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by the silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present, and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand.”
–Robert R. McCammon, Boy’s Life
August 22, 2012 — 9:43 AM
Dan O'Shea says:
My grandfather used to spout bits of poetry when I was a kid, Irish guys, mostly. Didn’t see him that often, maybe once every month, six weeks. He unsettled me a little – the hint of brogue still, his quiet, the way he would look at me longer than most people. He was visiting the house one day and I was working on a model airplain – a WWI Spad. He recited this (An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by Yeats – know that now, didn’t then):
I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Not a sentence, I know. Not from a book, I know. But it is the moment when words became magic for me.
August 22, 2012 — 9:44 AM
Aurora says:
“Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound as if it was somebody else’s rain.”
–Raymond Chandler, THE BIG SLEEP
August 22, 2012 — 9:54 AM
sandrayln says:
I always find myself turning to Zelazny for memorable quotes:
“His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could.” ― Roger Zelazny, “Lord of Light”
“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, “I wish I had known this some time ago.”” ― Roger Zelazny, “Sign of the Unicorn”
August 22, 2012 — 10:08 AM
Mike (@NewGuyMike) says:
I have loads of lines scrawled in the margins of my pocket notebook, but the first one that popped into my head fully and correctly remembered….
“Sleep is good but books are better.” -Tyrion Lannister, A Clash Of Kings
August 22, 2012 — 10:18 AM
Kim says:
“I want a new past, new memories, a new first handshake with love. I want to start over in every possible way.”
– Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies
August 22, 2012 — 10:18 AM
C.D. Kintzer says:
“My Queen…it’s your move.” – Raistlin Majere
– Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, DRAGONLANCE LEGENDS Vol 3: TEST OF THE TWINS
August 22, 2012 — 10:18 AM
Paul Baxter says:
Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love.
— Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
August 22, 2012 — 10:22 AM
Nicki Hill says:
“No,” said a voice from the dark doorway. A weary voice, a voice for speaking long after midnight, a voice to be used when all paths are blocked, when castles have fallen to ruin, when morning will not come again.
~ Poppy Z. Brite, Lost Souls
August 22, 2012 — 10:33 AM
Holly says:
“I had learned enough from the books to realize that I had touched only the hem of knowledge’s garment.”
–Jack London, in “John Barleycorn”
August 22, 2012 — 10:33 AM
Travis Hickey says:
“In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him.”
– William Gibson, Count Zero
August 22, 2012 — 10:39 AM
Josh M. says:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
-Robert A. Heinlein, “Time Enough For Love”
August 22, 2012 — 10:51 AM
Alexa Muir says:
“Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” Dune, Frank Herbert.
I know the whole of the fear litany from Dune off by heart but this is my favourite bit of it: so true and has made me face my fears more than once in my life.
August 22, 2012 — 11:00 AM
Gru'ud says:
“You have built for yourselves psychic suits of armor, and clad in them, your vision is restricted, your movements are clumsy and painful, your skin is bruised, and your spirit is broiled in the sun.”
-Principia Discordia
August 22, 2012 — 11:12 AM
MikeS says:
“They brought the big man in on a winter night when the moon looked as hazy as the heart of an ice cube.”
This is the first line of Victor LaVelle’s new novel The Devil in Silver, which I just finished and found to be positively badass.
August 22, 2012 — 11:17 AM
Cameron W. says:
“In Arabic there is a word for the sound a stone makes when it’s thrown at a boy. Who’s doing the throwing, I’ve always wanted to know, and what’s the word for them?”
– Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, “The Man Who Danced With Dolls”
August 22, 2012 — 11:21 AM
Eric H. says:
My dad and I talk about this a lot. One of my favorite opening lines has to be from Stephen King, “The Gunslinger.”
“The man in black fled into the desert, and the gunslinger followed him.”
Two I have dried to keep in front of me as guides, both from Robert Frost:
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
and
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”
August 22, 2012 — 11:21 AM
wickedmurph says:
“What was that?” Belgarath asked, coming back around the corner.
“Brill,” Silk replied blandly, pulling his Murgo robe back on.
“Again?” Belgarath demanded with exasperation. “What was he doing this time?”
“Trying to fly, last time I saw him.” Silk smirked.
The old man looked puzzled.
“He wasn’t doing it very well,” Silk added.
Belgarath shrugged. “Maybe it’ll come to him in time.”
“He doesn’t really have all that much time.” Silk glanced out over the edge.
“From far below – terribly far below – there came a faint, muffled crash; then, after several seconds, another. “Does bouncing count?” Silk asked.
Belgarath made a wry face. “Not really.”
“Then I’d say he didn’t learn in time.” Silk said blithely.”
David Eddings, Magicians Gambit
August 22, 2012 — 11:33 AM
TheOriginalBURP says:
“Grover took his pipes from his mouth. “You are a very nice maple tree.”
Love this line from Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Last Olympian
August 22, 2012 — 11:34 AM
Jaye Wells says:
“I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.”
― Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
August 22, 2012 — 11:54 AM