Your favorite Lines

I can't quote it, but in Atlas Shrugged, when Dagny is riding the John Galt Line for the first time, the description is amazing. I love that scene and even go back to it every once in a while as I try to finish the rest of the book.

Lines as in it has to be one line, or lines as in quotes in general?

[QUOTE=Ballerina]Lines as in it has to be one line, or lines as in quotes in general?[/QUOTE]

Just pieces of a book that stick in your head and will not go away.

Probably one of the greatest lines for me is "You are not your f**cking khakis!" from Fight Club

or

"This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time"

Or maybe scenes too. I love the part in Grapes of Wrath where Tom Joad tells his mom, "Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beating a guy, I'll be there." etc.

That scene stayed with me for weeks after that.

Or the ending of The Great Gatsby where Nick explains everything (or puts it all into perspective).

I think every great book has these traits or else it wouldn't be great...it would be memorable.

Well, what if it didn't actually stick in my head? I've got [I]quotes[/I] from books that I wrote down, but not many things that were short enough to remember.

“And on most days, he received more than 30 letters, all of them alike, stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife."

Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) –Nathanael West

j(ay)

Fight Club, p.63: When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone's hostile little FACE.

Blood and Water, The Skewer, Patrick McGrath: There are psychoanalysts everywhere- perched on my bookshelves, curled up in the drawers of my desk, crawling over the furniture- one is even squatting on my globe!

The Grotesque, Patrick McGrath: I am not, as you will have observed, a man greatly enamoured of his fellow human beings. I do not enter lightly into the foibles and whimsicalities of others. I do not suffer fools gladly, I seem only in conversation to needle or be needled.

The Bostonians, Henry James: ...he presently discovered that, beneath her hood, she was in tears.It is to be fearedthat with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined to shed.

The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe: Ha!-would a madman have been so wise as this?

Diary, p.111: Anytime some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink. That's the Misty Wilmot drinking game.

These are the only ones I can think of straight off.

[QUOTE=Vendetta]Diary, p.111: Anytime some well-meaning person forces you to demonstrate you have no talent and rubs your nose in the fact you're a failure at the only dream you ever had, take another drink. That's the Misty Wilmot drinking game. [/QUOTE]
I love that Diary quote. When I came to it in the book, I read it a few times over and over. Something about... I don't know. I just like it.

I could relate to it at the time.

[QUOTE=ireLocus]I can't quote it, but in Atlas Shrugged, when Dagny is riding the John Galt Line for the first time, the description is amazing. I love that scene and even go back to it every once in a while as I try to finish the rest of the book.[/QUOTE]
you read AND quote ayn rand? who are you, and where have you been all my life?

probably my favorite from invisible monsters - "The only reason we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend"

also from Platform - “It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it’s that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable.”

[QUOTE=moe.ron]you read AND quote ayn rand? who are you, and where have you been all my life? :D[/QUOTE]

oh, I've been around. in the area, you know, I'm an area man.

what else do you like by Rand? (and how do you really say Ayn? I'm sure I say it wrong)

[I]What is the purpose of life?[/I]

Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered. But here is what he would have wrote, if he had found something to write with.

[I]To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.[/I]

Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

[QUOTE=ireLocus]oh, I've been around. in the area, you know, I'm an area man.

what else do you like by Rand? (and how do you really say Ayn? I'm sure I say it wrong)[/QUOTE]
well, anthem, of course and philosophy: who needs it? but i really like the romantic manifesto.

i pronounce it "eye-n" but one syllable.

and dare i ask what, exactly, is an area man?

"Ralph reached inside himself for the worst word he knew. 'They let the bloody fire out.'"
-from Lord of the Flies

You know, I've eaten so many canned peaches over the past few months, I actually shat a cobbler last night.

Brian K. Vaughn - Y: The Last Man

SPOILER!!!-ish.

Penny Dreadful, Will Christopher Baer: I have saved no one but myself and now I watch for the other universe to unravel in my skull, for the sky to become my own skin and fill with stars.

It's a poignant last line to rival The Bostonians by Henry James.

A lot of quotes from Benjamin Cavell's [U]Rumble, Young Man, Rumble[/U] stand out, and I'll put the story they come from too.

All The Nights Of The World -
"What's to know?'
"What if I don't love her?'
"Don't marry her."
"I mean, what if it turns out I don't?"
"It never [I]turns out[/I]. Either you do or you don't. When you're under the covers in the dark, either you're the only two people on earth or you aren't."
"That's not much."
"That's all there is."

The Death Of Cool -
'If it starts to break down,I will roll over the back of my bench and crouch behind its cement foundation. I will have to move very quickly and roll at an angle so as to ruin the sniper's aim. In the same motion, I will cover my ears
and touch off the C-4 under Victor and Micheal's bench. The cement will shield me from the concussion. The smoke from the explosion will blind the sniper. I will grab the pistol from under my bench to use against the bodyguards who will converge on me. I will pull the rifle out of the leaves and sling it across my chest in case, at some point, I have to take out the sniper.
I will have to remember to keep moving. If I hole up, they might send in dogs to find me.'

Also, anything in Franzen's [U]The Corrections[/U]. Not because it has some great resonance or emotion but because every metaphor, every word down to the syllable is perfectly placed to have the most impact and create a wonderful feeling of actually experiencing the words, not reading them.

There's a really cool quote from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, something about Lily having being bored by Percy Gryce and awful lot recently and hoping that he'd do her the honor of boring her for the rest of his life. I can't remember it properly though and I can't find the quote in my copy.

Henry Miller, Sexus: "To love or be loved is not a crime, to convince someone you are the only one they could ever love is."

Charles Bukowski
"That is what friendship means. Sharing the prejudice of experience."

"There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass."

Hunter S. Thompson
"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

Thomas Pynchon
"She would give them order. She would create constellations."

Chuck Palahniuk
"The sky is blue and righteous in every direction. The sun is total and burning and just right there in front. We're on top of the clouds, and this is a beautiful day forever."

that chuck quote has got to be one of the nicest things i've ever read