My favorite sentence in all of Literature

[BigMcLargehuge]

do you know where it's from?

"The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over that plain luminous and smooth, unrolled a black ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer."

What's yours?

[rumguy]

1. Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad

[BigMcLargehuge]

2. indeed it is!

do you have a favorite sentence?

[rumguy]

3. No favorite

But I have lots I like.

[FleshCartoon]

4. Here's mine.

"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east..."

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. Brave New World

[nickgutierrez]

5. Here's mine:

"So it goes."

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

8. Cat's Cradle? or was that HiHo?

[nickgutierrez]

12. Slaughterhouse-five

"Hi-ho", I believe is Slapstick, but I could be wrong on that.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

16. So it goes. I knew it was one of those.

[Leprechan29]

29. I second

So it goes...

another close (SH5)runner up (paraphrased):
He will shoot off your pecker, and wait a few moments, so he can contemplate life without your pecker. Then he will shoot you in the gut and walk away.

odd one, but seemed funny to me - just the plainess of it all i guess. Quite straightforward and serious

[chenGOD]

17. I believe that's SlaughterHouse 5

non?

[dolo amber]

6. From his autobiography (I'm not sure if it counts as lit, but anyway...)

I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.


William Somerset Maugham :loveya:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. Mine is the classic...

"Call me Ishmael."

[BigMcLargehuge]

11. that's my favorite book!!!

:)

[SheilaT]

10. The opening sentence of

Shirley Jackson's novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle which goes something like: "The last time I looked at the library books on the shelf they were five months overdue." Don't have a copy handy, and a google search doesn't turn it up for me, although I may be just enough off not to find it.

Anyway, it has for me the most compelling opening sentence of any novel I have ever read.

[markses]

13. Alright

"A screaming comes across the sky."

[0rganism]

14. Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Nice choice! I liked the MST3k use, too...

[Lestat]

15. It's on my sig line.

:)

[jus_the_facts]

25. "So untill we meet again, I am thinking of you always......

....I love you; I wish you were here....in my arms." :evilgrin:

[Lestat]

27. Woah!

Where'd that come from?

[jus_the_facts]

28. Queen Of The Damned....

.....Lestat's words...not m'own!! :silly:

[jus_the_facts]

18. here's one o'mine....

....'I hope with all my heart that his gallant little soul may find it's Door Into Summer, where catnip fields abound and tabbies are complacent, and robot opponents are programmed to fight fiercely--but always lose--and people have friendly laps and legs to strop against, but never a foot that kicks.' Robert Heinlein~The Door Into Summer :)

[BigMcLargehuge]

19. Heinlein is eminently quotable

I love that book and virtually all of his others

[jus_the_facts]

21. Indeed......

....I loved that one especially...'Stranger In A Strange Land' is another favorite! :hi:

[Terran]

53. Oh, that's one of my all-time favorite

SF novels. Not a huge fan of Heinlein overall, but The Door Into Summer is wonderful.

[jus_the_facts]

57. It's definitely one of Heinlein's BEST works.....

....IMHO...an utterly awesome...well-crafted Sci-Fi love story! :hi:

[Donkeyboy75]

20. "It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone

who's dead."

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

22. Heller.... Catch 22

of course

[Donkeyboy75]

24. Yes, an easy one.

But it's still my favorite...probably because it's easy to remember.

:)

[oblivious]

23. I don't have a favorite but here's two I really like.

The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky.

That's from the penultimate paragraph.

And here's the final sentence:

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.

THE END.

T _ _ R _ _ B _ _ _ _ _ o _ C _ _ _ _ _ _

[Terran]

54. The Red Badge of Courage

A great book!

[0rganism]

26. "Ask for me tomorrow and you'll find me a grave man."

I've just gotta give it up for a character who can die on a pun.

I also like this one:
"This I have know ever since I streched out my fingers to the abomination within the great guilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass."

[0rganism]

33. Oooh, almost forgot this one

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

[Terran]

55. The first is Romeo and Juliet

Part of Mercutio's dying words. I don't know the second...sounds creepy though!

[lolly]

77. Kafka's

Metamorphosis

[KT2000]

30. To Kill a Mockingbird

Can't get the copy right now - but then sentence where Scout looks down the street and sees it in all the seasons.

And two sentences from Robert Penn Warren, Waiting

"........Until you
Remember, surprisingly, that common men have done good deeds. Until it

Grows on you that, at least, God
Has allowed us the grandeur of certain utterances."

[tigereye]

49. Ah Haven't thought about Penn Warren in a while

good to know he is still appreciated

[TrogL]

31. Still scares me after all these years

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

[4_Legs_Good]

61. It's a very scary poem...

particularly that it's easy to interpret and see in today's society, no matter what today's society is.

Fantastic work! I need to read more Yeats.

david

P.S. the line

"The falcon cannot hear the falconer"

is intensely eerie.

[amjsjc]

32. Too many good ones...

Open the complete works of Shakespeare, point your finger at something. Whatever it is, it'll probably do nicely.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

34. Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.

He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Happy Bloomsday!

[Magrittes Pipe]

38. Holy crap! It IS Bloomsday!

Happy Bloomsday, Feanorcurufinwe!

[markses]

44. The 100 year anniversary of Bloomsday, too

June 16, 1904.
June 16, 2004.

[lolly]

76. "Yes, yes, oh yes"

It is!

[Maat-hotep]

35. "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."

How little I knew, at the age of twelve, just what I was getting into...

[ulysses]

36. 'And I seem to have such strength in me now,

that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, "I exist". In thousands of agonies - I exist. I'm tormented on the rack - but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar - I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them!'

:)

[Magrittes Pipe]

37. Mine is surprisingly cliched.

Yes, everyone mentions the closing sentence of The Great Gatsby, but that doesn't make the language any less beautiful or evocative:

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

[FlashHarry]

39. Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

[sus]

40. William Styron, "Sophie's Choice"

closing lines of the book:

"This was not judgment day - only morning. Morning: excellent and fair."

[terrya]

41. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

The opening lines to "A Tale of Two Cities", because Dickens perfectly captures what the times were like in the story.

[bkcc]

42. from Moby Dick...

Not one of my favorite books, but I love the opening paragraph...this line in particular:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."

[No2W2004]

43. Here's mine.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

[sam sarrha]

45. ...' I envy the waters ability to touch her.....'

[bif]

58. What is that from? It sounds so familiar.

[SheilaT]

46. From The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

It's the final line of a passage where Joshua Chamberlain has just heard the simple melody line now known as Taps, but then known as Butterfield's Lullaby. Shaara has just commented that it would eventually be known as the the final thing played for a soldier at his funeral, but at this point only meant peace and sleep at the end of a day's march:

Joshua Chamberlain, listening, thought of the sound of Butterfield's Lullaby coming out of the dark, through a tent flap, with the campfires burning warm and red in the night, and Chamberlain thought: you can grow to love it.

[noonwitch]

47. "Oh, brave new world that has such people in it"

"The Tempest".

[lolly]

79. Tis new to thee

replied Prospero

[patcox2]

48. Pablo Neruda

Translated, poorly:

"I want to do to you what the springtime does to the cherry tree."

[bif]

50. "See that flit over at the bar? I was saving him for you."

Guess that one.

[XNASA]

51. "I dust a bit...in addition, .........

......I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."

[bif]

60. Sounds like something I need to read. What's it from?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

52. From my favorite Vonnegut book - Galapagos

"Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on."

[Lautremont]

56. "Ah, in how many rooms,

upon how many studio couches, among how many books, had they found their own love, their marriage, their life together, a life which, in spite of its many disasters, its total calamity indeed - and in spite too of any slight element of falsehood in its inception on her side, her marriage partly into the past, into her Anglo-Scottish ancestry, into the visioned empty ghost-whistling castles in Sutherland, into an emanation of gaunt lowland uncles chumbling shortbread at six o'clock in the morning - had not been without triumph."

A mouthful indeed, from Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano.

[4_Legs_Good]

59. "And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own,..."

And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the power in Barad-dúr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown.

immediately followed by the rest of the paragraph...

The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door of that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom was hung. From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overewhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgúls, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.
**********

It just sizzles for me...

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." is up there too.

david

[Bridget Burke]

62. The last sentence--but I'll include a bit more

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

www.mendele.com/WWD/home.html

[Westegg]

74. Yes! Joyce's "The Dead." Happy 100th Bloomsday! (n/t)

[Terran]

63. Here's mine, for many many many years now

"U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills. U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetary. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people."

Have to read the full passage to get the full power of what he's saying. But this is my favorite part of it. I hope somebody here recognizes it!

[bif]

65. Dos Pasos?

Just a guess.

[Terran]

69. Right! (Dos Passos, two 's') n/t

[Screaming Lord Byron]

64. It was the day my grandmother exploded

[Terran]

70. Hahaha! I give up.

Sounds like I should read it, whatever it is.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

71. The Crow Road by Iain Banks.

[Terran]

72. OMG! Banks

is SO one of my favorite writers! I've only read the Culture novels, but clearly I need to branch out! Thanks!

[Screaming Lord Byron]

73. His non-Sci-Fi stuff is equally good.

[DrWeird]

66. "The man in black fled across the desert;...

and the gunslinger followed."

Side note: "Song of Susannah" is out.

[tom_paine]

67. "There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats..."

"...for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass me by as the idle wind, which I fear not."

--Brutus, Shakespeare's "Julius Caeser"

[tom_paine]

68. Honorable mention should go to Kurt Vonnegut for HUNDREDS

of those excellent quotes!

"...they stood in the forest in a shower of fire and lead. This was the environment that some men made for some other men who they wanted to die."

"At least the world didn't end in the Year 2000. Which proves that God Almighty is not a numerologist."

"Yale University should be called 'Plantation Owners' Tech'..."

And so many others I cannot remember them all...

[Hoping4Change]

75. "the shattered petals of the Wisteria" Wm Faulkner

You gotta love that man.

[mede8er]

78. To be.......

or not to be..........d@mn I wish I'd written that....perfect.....