What's your favorite sentence or paragraph from any novel?

Question

What's your favorite sentence or paragraph that has some meaning from any novel ever written? No movies please.

Answer 1

"Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking wiht his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, "of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy. It is such a conventional superstition, such parrot gabble! What the deuce! Am I to rush into the street, collar the first man of wealthy appearence that I meet, shake him, and say, 'Go to law upon the spot, you dog, and retain me, or I'll be the death of you'? Yet that would be energy."

~Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

This is one of my favorite paragraphes from a novel, beacause it displays the real character of the speaker. The speaker is also probably my favorite fictional character, so that makes it special, too.:-)

Answer 2

Short answer: one word at a time. Slightly longer answer: one AGONIZING word a time A bit longer than that: several words, not necessarily all at the same time. What not to do: DON'T start with dialog (except as your second paragraph) as it's one of the best known been-done-been-overdone- been-overdone-to-death tactics--enough to get written up in Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages. The longest answer I've got: It sounds to me like you're having trouble starting your novel. The hook for a novel is a tough customer. I know, for myself, I often write and rewrite the first chapter--with that all important lede--more than any other chapter, sometimes many times more. So my suggestion is this: if you're having trouble getting started, start with the second paragraph. Don't force yourself to try for a lede. Take the pressure off the starting of a novel by not requiring a brilliant lede up front. Just because you have to write the first sentence sometime, doesn't mean you have to write it first. You can and will think of something brilliant eventually and it need not be agonizing.

Answer 3

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.” – The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough

Answer 4

"But do you like being slaves?" the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. "Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking," he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. "Yes, puking!" he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty–all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. "Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?" Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. "Don't you?" he repeated, but got no answer to his question. "Very well then," he went on grimly. "I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not." And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.

from "Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley.

This gives me the craziest mental picture, but it hits the absolute core of the novel.

Answer 5

Why are you worrying about You-Know-Who?
You should be worrying about U-No-Poo --
The constipation sensation
That's gripping the nation!

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince (book number 6)
Poster in front of Weasley twins joke shop: Weasley's Wizard Wheezes

makes me crack up every time i read it.

Answer 6

Gimli, Lord of the Rings, book three "Return of the King" to Gandalf:

I will put a dint in your hat even a wizard will find hard to deal with."

Answer 7

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!

-On the Road, Kerouac

Answer 8

"Well, as everyone thinks I’m a mad mass murderer and the Ministry’s put a ten-thousand-Galleon price on my head, I can hardly stroll up the street and start handing out leaflets, can I?" - Sirius Black from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

Answer 9

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Answer 10

They hung in the air exactly the same way that bricks don't.

-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy