BEST LINE FROM a BOOK?

Question

What is your favorite line from a book? Something someone said you just loved or even hated? Its hard for me to choose.

What's yours?

Answer 1

"Once you reach a certain threshold, everyone's problems become the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor."- Dr. Impossible, "Soon I Will Be Invincible".

The novel is about superheros and villains and has a lot of great lines like that, but a weak ending.

Answer 2

The bottom line of anything is usually money. Same here. On any given flight on any given day you can expect between 5 and 10 percent (and that is a LOW estimate) of "booked" passengers to cancel or be no-shows. If the airlines booked "exact" seats, they would lose money. Every so often, everybody does show up in which case the airline will offer incentives to fly later in the day with a free ticket for use later in the year, etc. My Mom just got a free round-trip to anywhere in the continental U.S. about two months ago by changing to a later flight. And she has a year to use it. They will offer cash sometimes too. Also, they will always ask for volunteers to fly on a later flight first. However, if they don't get any, they can bump you to the later flight anyway and not give you anything. Volunteer and barter. Hope I helped!

Answer 3

I don't much care for Ulysses--but it's hard to top James Joyce's: "On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins."

Also a nice line from a book I'm reading right now--The Demon by Hubert Selby Jr: "They have some sort of dumb idea that theyre supposed to prove theyre men by suffering in silence, she started laughing, and driving us crazy with the noise of it."

And a few from Holden: "Then I sat down on his cement bed again." "Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor." And the part early on about the "hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence" at Pencey Prep. And the opening line from Salinger's story I'm Crazy (featuring an early appearance by Caulfield): "It was about 8 o'clock at night, and dark, and raining, and freezing, and the wind was noisy the way it is in spooky movies on the night the old slob with the will gets murdered."

Answer 4

I agree, there are a lot of good lines. I'd have to say that ONE OF my favorites comes from Clive Cussler's Treasure of Khan, when Dirk Pitt says, "Sometimes, I'm just lucky." This coming from a man who has saved the world many times over, and had just discovered the treasure of Kublai Khan in an underwater cave in Hawaii.

Answer 5

"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 an uncommon-place thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles."
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

I've always loved that line...and, ok, I can't pick just one, so this one too:

"Why, can you imagine what would happen if we named all the twos Henry or George or Robert or John or lots of other things? You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless."
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Answer 6

I would have to say the beginning of Lolita. It is just so juicy...

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
"She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

There is also a sentence I love from Forever Odd - although I don't have a copy handy. Maybe someone does. When the bad guy dies out in the desert and there is some line about the mortician moon placing coins on his eyes... Great line. Anyone know it? Pax - C

Answer 7

Being the huge Charles Dickens fan that I am I'd have to say the opening line in A Tale of Two Cities, "It was the best of times, It was the worst of times."

Answer 8

In Harry Potter 7 when Mrs. Weasley calls Bellatrix a B!tch for attempting to kill Ginny Weasley...it was pretty funny and i was SO proud of mrs. weasley!

Answer 9

Its a bit lengthy but its but its the best I've read in awhile

Limp papers whipped and beat upwards, rose into the air and fell head over heels, curving over backwards and sideways, over and over, loose sheets of newspaper with pictures of people and stories of people printed somewhere on them, turning loops in the air. And it was blow little paper, blow! Twist and turn and stay up as long as you can, and when you come down, come down on a pent-house porch, come down easy so's not to hurt your self. Come down and lay there in the rain and the wind and the soot and smoke and the grit that gets in your eyes in the big city - and lay there in the sun and get faded and rotten. But keep on trying to tell your message, and keep on trying to be a picture of a man, because without that story and without that message printed on you there, you wouldn't be much. Remember, it's just maybe, some day, sometime, somebody will pick you up and look at your picture and read your message, and carry you in his pocket, and lay you on his shelf, and burn you in his stove. But he'll have your message in his head and he'll talk it and it'll get around. I'm blowing, and just as wild and whirling as you are, and lots of times I've been picked up, throwed down, and picked up; but my eyes has been my camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls.

Bound For Glory - Woody Guthrie

I find it amazing the way he puts pictures in my head.....I can see that little piece of newspaper flying high, twisting and turning, landing, fading to brown, and then burned up in a fire. And its more then just the imagery there its the way he connected a piece of newpaper to himself and to everyone. When I read that I start to feel like he is talking to me to everyone with a message with spreading.

Answer 10

So this one isn't actually from a book but i like it anyway. "it's an acquired taste, if you don't like it acquire some taste." i laughed so hard when i saw that on the colbert report