Thread: What are the best lines you've ever read?

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision." - Howard Roark from The Fountainhead

That's just such a beautiful line.

"We'll outwit that bastard (God) as we've outwitted many before." -Amerigo Bonasera, The Godfather

In the context it was in (Consigliere dying and begging Vito to save him from death and defeat God's will), it was one of the most powerful lines I have ever come across.

"We'll outwit that bastard (God) as we've outwitted many before." -Amerigo Bonasera, The Godfather

In the context it was in (Consigliere dying and begging Vito to save him from death and defeat God's will), it was one of the most powerful lines I have ever come across. No matter how powerful Vito is, he cannot stop death and is nothing in the face of God.

Not quite of the same classical calibur as Lovecraft or Hemmingway, but a line that always stuck with me, and in some ways informed so much of the writing I've done since reading it:

Originally Posted by Alex Garland, in [u

The Beach[/u]]I leaned over and kissed Francoise. She pulled away, or laughed, or shook her head, or closed her eyes and kissed me back. Etienne woke, clasping his mouth in disbelief. Etienne slept. I slept while Francoise kissed Etienne.

Light-years above our garbage bag beds and the steady rush of the surf, all these things happened.

Something about the possibilities of every moment stretching off into the infinite stars above just really gets to me.

I shall now list a bevy of my favorite lines in no particular order.

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

"The horror! The horror!"

"It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark- too dark altogether..."

Here is perhaps my favorite of all-time... more prose than a line, but whatever.

"Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is- that mysterious arrangement os merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself- that comes too late- a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have not hing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare that could not see the flame of the candle but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness. HE had summed up- he had judged. 'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vigrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth- the strange commingling of deire and hate."

I don't remember exact wordage from 1984 and am too lazy to look, but the entire exchange between Winston and O'Brien in Room 101 was my favorite part of the book. Also...

"It was a good hanging," Syme said wistfully. "I think it ruins it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking."

From the Telltale Heart.

"You fancy me mad! But madman know nothing..."

I'm too lazy to say some of my other favorites.

I remember how pleasantly shocked I was upon reading James Joyce write of the Dead Sea as "the grey sunken cunt of the world" in "Telemachus" of Ulysses. I thought to myself "He's being erudite but somewhat perverted...my kind of writer!"

I think my mask of sanity is about to slip. - American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis.