Ten Best Sentences in Fiction or Non-Fiction

Get off my lawn!

There has been a lot of interesting discussion online today about a recently released list of what are being called 'the ten best sentences in fiction and nonfiction' (unfortunately, the website has been crashing all day, but here is the link to the original list). Not surprisingly, Joyce was on the list, and was also a favorite of many commenters.

While the Toni Morrison quote was my favorite from the top 10 list, I do like this line from Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera:

“He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”

That said, the opening line of 100 Years of Solitude (which I freely admit, I have never been able to plow my way through) is a classic as well:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Boardsies, do you have a favorite that isn't on the list? If so, please share!

EDIT: Please post the quote and the author!

Alf. A. Male

Literature only? Or movies too? I we're going with movies too, hard to beat these for me;

"Shall we play a game?"

and

"We're gonna need a bigger boat".

Funkfield

EDIT: I do not think I understood the question, or if there was one.

Get off my lawn!

Alf. A. Male wrote: »

Literature only? Or movies too? I we're going with movies too, hard to beat these for me;

"Do you want to play a game?"

and

"We're gonna need a bigger boat".

Well, the original list was for written sources (fiction and non-fiction), so for consistency's sake, let's stick to that.

Call Me Jimmy

My favourite would actually be one on the original list you posted 'Error establishing a database connection'. Always resonates with me.

Amirani

"Sleep, my Bella. Dream happy dreams. You are the only one who has ever touched my heart. It will always be yours. Sleep, my only love."

MagicIRL

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Mr. CooL ICE

"I stopped believing in god when I realised it was just dog spelt backwards."

The Backwards Man

The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price

Pumpkinseeds

From Jaws:

Quint: Anti-shark cage. You go inside the cage? Cage goes in the water? You go in the water? Shark's in the water? Our shark? [singing] Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again.

o1s1n

"BANG! Trent shot the man dead! He fell on the floor like some shopping that hadn't been doubly bagged but there was heavy shopping in the bag, so the bag ripped. Trent was just like that, but no-one knew why."

jimgoose

The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.

SEPT 23 1989

I lingered round them, in the queue in Aldi; watched the alcoholics fluttering among the cheap wine, and vodka; listened to the soft wind breathing through the pallet of cheap toilet roll; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the shoppers in that German discount store

D1stant

"I have done the state some service, and they know't — No more of that." - CJ Haughey

"That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned" - Will Munny

"I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die..." - Blade Runner

"They've got the internet on computers now!" Homer Simpson

darkpagandeath

"It rubs the lotion on it's skin. Or else it gets the hose again."

“It puts the lotion in the basket.”

fleet_admiral

Some come here to sit and think, Some come here to shit and stink, But I come here to scratch my balls, And read the bullshit on the walls.

Santa Cruz

Where are we sleeping tonight, Mother: Johnny Nice Painter. The Fast SHow

PizzamanIRL

"You don't win friends with salad" - Bart and Homer

WatchWolf

A screaming comes across the sky.

Muise...

Somewhere a dog barks.

chopperbyrne

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fears path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing......Only I will remain."

I am pie

Both from the Invisible Man, R. Ellison:

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

“For, like almost everyone else in our country, I started out with my share of optimism. I believed in hard work and progress and action, but now, after first being 'for' society and then 'against' it, I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities. What a phrase - still it's a good phrase and a good view of life, and a man shouldn't accept any other; that much I've learned underground. Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility.”

The Backwards Man

Muise... wrote: »

Somewhere a dog barks.

Wrote every novelist. Ever.

danniemcq

The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him.

Catch 22, and while i'm at it, where catch 22 came from -

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

pharmaton

“Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
There had to be a little bit of Jack Kerouac among them. On the Road

osarusan

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.

Opening line of The Pickwick Papers.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

opening line of 1984.

He'd be there all night, and he'd be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

Last line of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody

Last line of Catcher in the Rye

But it's the truth, even if it didn't happen.

last line of the first chapter of One Flew Over the cuckoo's Nest.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weeps to have that which it fears to lose

Last line of a Shakesperean sonnet, I forget the number.

Those and a bloody million more. Jesus, literature is great.

SuperGrover

The night was...

bonzodog2

‘Sometimes I wish I had a cat. All I’ve ever had was a head, and that the seagulls took.’
Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory

Custardpi

From "Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud" (Lift to the Scaffold) a classic French crime novel made into a film in the 50s. "L'espoir, c'est du crédit. Le désespoir, c'est du comptant". Roughly "You get hope on credit. Despair is paid in cash". Haven't come across a translation of the novel so there's possibly a more elegant way of putting it.

Muise...

danniemcq wrote: »

Catch 22, and while i'm at it, where catch 22 came from -

I was just looking for my copy to find the punchline about Nately's whore. But I've gone through too many copies and the punchline is useless without the set-up. I think it's just "It was Nately's whore." Genius! :pac:

Maximus Alexander

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

My favourite would actually be one on the original list you posted 'Error establishing a database connection'. Always resonates with me.

I think it's the use of the word 'establishing' that injects so much power into this sentence. It would have been so easy to simply settle for "Could not connect to database", or "Error connecting to database", but the author took the time to really ponder the message he wanted to send and the result is a sentence that, I think we can all agree, uplifts us even as it leaves us crestfallen to find that our content will not be delivered today.

Ruu

Poor AM. http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1055429-i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.

Riskymove

"It was a dark and stormy night"

osarusan

It is nearly 2am here, and I was almost asleep, until this hit me:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

A stanza from Thomas Gray's 'Elegy written in a country churchyard.'

Edit:

Though we cannot make our sun
stand still, yet we can make him run.

last line from Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress

2nd edit:

Shine forth, thou Star of Poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage,
Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume's light.

Last line if a written by ben Johnson in memory of shakespeare, can't remember the name.

I'll never get to sleep. Great thread.

Muise...

osarusan wrote: »

It is nearly 2am here, and I was almost asleep, until this hit me:




A stanza from Thomas Gray's 'Elegy written in a country churchyard.'

Leaving Cert English is a helluva drug.

Leogirl

"he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me.”

From The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Might not be great literature but the book & this line really struck something with me.

e_e

"That money was just resting in my account."

Rothko

"No time for thinking, he thought."

Simple yet profound.

jane82

From changing of the gaurds by bob dylan. Im sure its total gibberish but amazing imagery all through the lyrics.

They shaved her head
She was torn between Jupiter and Apollo
A messenger arrived with a black nightingale
I seen her on the stairs and I couldn't help but follow
Follow her down past the fountain where they lifted her veil.

"How about a kick in the face?" facekicker

Stavros Murphy

"I like blondes, and I'm not bothered how they get that way" - Rusty, in RumbleFish. My favorite book, and Motorcycle boy, my favorite character. It's a long time since I read it.

The One Who Knocks

"Have no fear, little fish,"
Said the Cat in the Hat.
"These Things are good Things."
And he gave them a pat.
"They are tame. Oh, so tame!
They have come here to play.
They will give you some fun
On this wet, wet, wet day."

The Diabolical Monocle

Can you lend a n**** a pencil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WiYt7gAySw

Auldloon

"It's low patch ass time" Herself, dreaming

“There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which I have not dared to dwell"

Edward Whymper British climber.

The Diabolical Monocle

Und zumorrow ...ve come back ... and ve cut off your johnson.


-Lanky nihilist (big lebowski)

Lawros Tache

"For sale: baby shoes. never worn..."





Hemingway.

TheShockmaster

"By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness" -Pablo Neruda

Obliq

Anything at all by Samuel Beckett - I love his brand of humour.

“Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.”

“let us say before i go any further, that i forgive nobody. i wish them all an atrocious life in the fires of icy hell and in the execrable generations to come.”

"It sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger"

Waaay too many to choose from.

Also Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan - At Swim-Two-Birds. All of it actually, but one of the more famous parts:

“Do you know what I am 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 subsequently became addicted to brown stout in 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.”

eeeee

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

Lolita, Nabakov.


Best first line ever.

Burky126

"To the last,I grapple with thee;from hell's heart,I stab at thee;for hate's sake,I spit my last breath at thee."

Part of Ahab's final declaration against the white whale in Moby Dick.

berettaman

Great thread...


He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke..Cormac McCarthy the Road.

Also:

There is no God and we are his prophets