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Mumsnet classics

Fave one liner from a book?

360 replies

judgejudyandexecutioner · 02/05/2013 15:45

"It's lipless mouth quivered and slathered"
War of the Worlds - H G Wells
Grin

OP posts:
YoniMeKateMumsnet · 02/05/2013 15:48

"...for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm · 02/05/2013 16:26

I was in bed with my catamite when the Archbishop called.....

Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess.

ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm · 02/05/2013 16:28

"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."

Correction, the mind discards chunks of text as you get older.... Blush

LadyBeagleEyes · 02/05/2013 16:33

'Hey Boo'
Scout meeting Boo Radley for the first time in my favourite book ever, To Kill a Mockingbird.

confusteling · 02/05/2013 16:36

"People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back."

Shug, The Color Purple. Love her and wish that she was a genuine person!

YouDontWinFriendsWithSalad · 02/05/2013 16:50

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

secretscwirrels · 02/05/2013 16:52

It's a title.
Started Early Took My Dog.
Sticks in my mind for no reason.

flootshoot · 02/05/2013 17:15

'You are the dead' 1984, George Orwell. Literally the only thing I've ever read that made me jump.

FruOla · 02/05/2013 17:22

"She heard a knocking, and then a dog barking. Her dream left her, skittering behind a closed door. It had been a good dream, warm and close, and she minded. She fought the waking. It was dark in the small bedroom, with no light yet behind the shades. She reached for the lamp, fumbled her way up the brass, and she was thinking, What? What? "

Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife.

(Sorry, it's slightly more than one line)

OneHolyCow · 02/05/2013 17:28

?He is afforded no insights, no illuminations, no great wisdoms, but he can immediately see why the ladies dig him. He is not a toned, square-jawed lover boy or cummerbunded ladies? man but there?s a pull, even in his booze-blasted face, a magnetic drag that has something to do with the pockets of compassion that form at the corners of his eyes when he smiles, a mischievous arch to his eyebrows and the little hymen-popping dimples in his cheeks when he laughs. Look! There they are now!?
? The Death of Bunny Munro, Nick Cave


gulp..

magimedi · 02/05/2013 17:29

"Only connect".

The quote at the start of Howards End by E. M. Forster.

If only more people did...............

frostyfingers · 02/05/2013 17:29

I can't remember the exact context but from Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald :-

young woman patient (Rosemary I think) to her analyst(Dick, main character): "Take me" (sexually)

him: "take you - take you where?"

or something along those lines - it was an O'level text so a very very long time ago!

HadALittleFaithBaby · 02/05/2013 17:54

'Atticus, come quick, the world's ending!'

Scout to Atticus when she discovers its snowing.
To Kill a Mockingbird

Also:
'Miranda, 16, and never before more than kissed, was getting pregnant on the beach'.
Opening line to Just for the summer by Judy Astley

rubyslippers · 02/05/2013 17:55

Reader, I married him

Jane Eyre

Morgause · 02/05/2013 17:58

He upped her smock and in he throng.

Chaucer - The Merchant's Tale

Yjossarian · 02/05/2013 18:35

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

DuchessofMalfi · 02/05/2013 18:45

"My Dear, I don't give a damn". Rhett Butler, Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

So many people I'd like to say that to :o

Flootshoot - I listened to 1984 on audio book recently. Even though I knew that line was coming, it still made me leap out of my skin. Terrifying.

Hullygully · 02/05/2013 18:48

Happiness is but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain

RubySparks · 02/05/2013 18:49

'Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut?' Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick

Badvoc · 02/05/2013 18:55

"Marley was dead, to begin with"
A Christmas carol - Charles dickens.

BalloonSlayer · 02/05/2013 18:59

". . . one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welterweight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge. "

Bertie Wooster on Honoria Glossop. PG Wodehouse.

DuchessofMalfi · 02/05/2013 19:01

I have another one - "Thus it lightens into Action: I am come to kill thee". Chilling stuff - John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi :o

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WipsGlitter · 02/05/2013 19:01

He knew that when he kissed her that his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her, at his lips touch she blossomed like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
The Great Gatsby

What can I say? That I loved you? Love is only a form and mine is already disintegrating. Better let me say, how lovely you are."
The Brothers Karamazoff

IvorHughJarse · 02/05/2013 19:02

'Facts? Take a drop more grog, Mr Franklin, and you'll soon get over believing in facts!' The wonderful Gabriel Betteridge, The Moonstone.

WeAreNinjaNotGeisha · 02/05/2013 19:03

"Poetry in motion - it's the only way to travel!" Mr. Toad, The Wind in the Willows

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