Favourite Lines in Books

[Phil D. Rolls]

A wee bit of light relief from all the heavy soul on here -

I love the line in Marabou Stork Nightmares when Roy Strang is talking about the way weedgies act the hard man until someone stands up to them and then they shout "mammy, daddy, polis".

What's your favourite lines from books.

[Future17]

Almost anything by Chris Brookmyre. Example below:

From One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night:
"William Connor was standing outside a disused cattleshed on a bright Highland summer's morning, ankle-deep in cow****, liquidised mercenary raining splashily down about his head from the crisp blue sky above."

[Twa Cairpets]

Almost anything by Chris Brookmyre. Example below:

From One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night:
"William Connor was standing outside a disused cattleshed on a bright Highland summer's morning, ankle-deep in cow****, liquidised mercenary raining splashily down about his head from the crisp blue sky above."

:top marks :agree: Brookmyre is excellent.

i also like "Vogon ships are yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds. They hang in the air in much the same way that bricks don't" from The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy

[matty_f]

Almost anything by Chris Brookmyre. Example below:

From One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night:
"William Connor was standing outside a disused cattleshed on a bright Highland summer's morning, ankle-deep in cow****, liquidised mercenary raining splashily down about his head from the crisp blue sky above."

:thumbsup:

Brookmyre is by far my favourite author, but for the life of me I can't think of a line to single out as my favourite!:grr:

[HibeeB]

A wee bit of light relief from all the heavy soul on here -

I love the line in Marabou Stork Nightmares when Roy Strang is talking about the way weedgies act the hard man until someone stands up to them and then they shout "mammy, daddy, polis".

What's your favourite lines from books.

Also by IW. In Trainspotting Renton was bemoaning our past and present relationship with England and said "It's a *****e state of affairs".

Sums up a lot what's happened to me lately.

On the other hand there's beer :greengrin

[LiverpoolHibs]

Good thread. Almost impossible to give an absolute favourite (and it'll have to be passages rather than lines) so either...

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further...And then one fine morning ---

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

or...

'Do you know what I'm going to tell you', he said with his wry mouth, 'a pint of plain is your only man'.

Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsequently addicted to brown stout in a bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.

or...

Every life is many days, day after days. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call 'dio boia', hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.

or...

Great times call for great men. There are unknown men who are honest, with none of the historical glamour of a Napoleon. If you analysed their character you would find that it eclipsed even the glory of Aleksander the Great. Today you can meet him in the streets of Prague, a shabbily dressed man who is not even himself aware of his significance in the history of the great new era. He modestly goes on his way, without bothering anyone. Nor is he bothered by journalists asking for an interview. If you asked him his name he would answer you simply and unassumingly. "I am Svejk..."

or...

Voici mon secret. Il est tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essential est invisible pour les yeux.

[Peevemor]

One of my favourite opening lines is from Iain Banks' "the Crow Road".

"It was the day my gran exploded."

[Betty Boop]

From "One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

"Shukov looked up at the sky and gasped--the sun had climbed almost to the dinner hour. Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he'd often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp--they were over before you could say knife. But the years, they never rolled by; they never moved by a second."

[Hiber-nation]

From "One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"

"Shukov looked up at the sky and gasped--the sun had climbed almost to the dinner hour. Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he'd often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp--they were over before you could say knife. But the years, they never rolled by; they never moved by a second."

Then he had some fishhead soup....again.

Great book.

[matty_f]

One of my favourite opening lines is from Iain Banks' "the Crow Road".

"It was the day my gran exploded."

"She put the 'fanny' in 'epiphany'" is another great line from that book.

[HibeeB]

Favourite Lines in Books

I like the ones that go across.

But if I'm colouring in I like the squared lines.

[Greentinted]

'A way a lone a last a loved a long the...' (Final sentence in Finnegans Wake) conjoined with 'riverun, past Eve and Adam's, from a swerve of shore to bend of bay' (opening line od Finnegans Wake)

The subversion and delineation of time into a paradoxical perpetuity does it for me.

And 'Ineluctable modality of the visible' and 'FROM THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS' from Ulysses are worthy of mentions too.

Joyce - Top geezer and probably a Hibby.:greengrin

[matty_f]

My old English teacher at Porty (Mr Wilson) had a quote on his wall that was about losing seven nil to your rivals being hugely embarrassing. I wish I could remember the exact quote, because it was quality!

[rainman]

"Mr. Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And, now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever." — Roald Dahl (The Twits)

[Phil D. Rolls]

If there is a priest anywhere who feels offended by my treatment of Don Camillo, he is welcome to break the biggest candle available over my head. And if there is a Communist who feels offended by Peppone, he is welcome to break a hammer and sickle on my back. But if there is anyone who is offended by the conversations of Christ, I can't help it; for the one who speaks in this story is not Christ but my Christ - that is, the voice of my conscience.

Giovanni Guareschi, The Little World of Don Camillo

[EskbankHibby]

"lazy lob and crazy cob are weaving webs to wind me
i'm far more sweet than other meat but still they cannot find me"

Bilbo Baggins being hunted by spiders in The Hobbit but drawing them away from his pals by singing whilst invisible. The Hobbit is a great book enjoyed by adults and children alike, i read it as a youngster and revisited it in adulthood, an excellent read.

There is another line which goes something like "never laugh at live dragons" which has stood me in good stead to this day.

Brookmyre is also very good, apparently it was him who first wrote the much copied 'playground football rules' which are brilliant.

[matty_f]

"lazy lob and crazy cob are weaving webs to wind me
i'm far more sweet than other meat but still they cannot find me"

Bilbo Baggins being hunted by spiders in The Hobbit but drawing them away from his pals by singing whilst invisible. The Hobbit is a great book enjoyed by adults and children alike, i read it as a youngster and revisited it in adulthood, an excellent read.

There is another line which goes something like "never laugh at live dragons" which has stood me in good stead to this day.

Brookmyre is also very good, apparently it was him who first wrote the much copied 'playground football rules' which are brilliant.

It's on his website, here:

http://www.brookmyre.co.uk/extras/short-stories/playground-football/

[Phil D. Rolls]

My favourite Christopher Brookmyre line is "the English destroy cultures by pretending they don't exist".

[goosano]

Cormac McCarthy-Blood Meridian


The judge cracked with the back of an axe the shinbone on an antelope and the hot marrow dripped smoking on the stones. They watched him. The subject was war.

The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.

The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.

The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there’s many a bloody tale of war inside it.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.

[GhostofBolivar]

They say that each night, when the duties of state permit, she climbs, on foot, and limps, alone, to the highest peak of the palace, where she stands for hour after hour, seeming not to notice the cold peak winds. She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.
- Stardust, Neil Gaiman


'I don't see what there is to be cagey about,' she snapped. 'And I don't like your manners.'

'I'm not crazy about yours,' I said. 'I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me.'
- The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler


He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he did not earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise.
- Catch-22, Joseph Heller


The roar did a long slow fade. He braced himself for this big ****ing scream.
- American Tabloid, James Ellroy

[--------]

"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. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep."

Chandler: "The Big Sleep"; last paragraph.

"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."

Chandler: "The Simple Art of Murder".

"Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly.

He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. ... Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you."

"But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. ... Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. ... Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales." ...

Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."

Dashiell Hammett: "The Maltese Falcon".


I know these are passages rather than lines, but I love them every time I read them.

[RigRoars]

Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids)




"Myron reached for the phone and dialed Win's number. After the eighth ring he began to hang up when a weak, distant voice coughed. "Hello?"
Win?"
Yeah."
You okay?"
Hello?"
Win?"
Yeah."
What took you so long to answer the phone?"
Hello?"
Win?"
Who is this?"
Myron."
Myron Bolitar?"
How many other Myrons do you know?"
Myron Bolitar?"
No, Myron Rockefeller."
Something's wrong," Win said.
What?"
Terribly wrong."
What are you talking about?"
Some asshole is calling me at seven in the morning pretending to be my best friend."
Sorry, I forgot the time."

-- (Harlan Coben Deal Breaker)

[Ross4356]

Not sure about a book but my favourite quote ever is Vic Darke in this video, brilliant!!

4:40 in but watch the 2 mins before so you know what he is on about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2HMdHAEd-M