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Original poster

What is your favourite line of literature?

139 replies

SkaterGrrrrl · 26/03/2014 15:30

I love the opening line of Rebecca, it gives me the shivers.

Also love this line, which the Literary Book Company have put on mugs, tea towels and so forth:

"'She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain." - Louisa May Alcott.

OP posts:
DrankSangriaInThePark · 29/03/2014 13:25

The last paragraph of Gatsby....one fine day....so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

That's not the right order, but it's the order it always comes to me in!

MrsDavidBowie · 29/03/2014 13:22

I love the Gatsby quote

Celticlassie · 29/03/2014 07:20

"Men and girls came and went like moths, among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars."

And, in fact, most of Gatsby. It's the most wonderful book to read aloud.

Original poster
SkaterGrrrrl · 26/03/2014 20:55

What a fantastic epitaph, MrsDavidBowie.

I haven't read The Fault in the Stars, but I want to now!

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RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 26/03/2014 20:19

'Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.' Samuel Becket, 'Waiting for Godot.'

cottonwoolmum · 26/03/2014 19:48

Some great ones here - love the Rebecca lines, and gorgeous Captain Wentworth phwoar

Mine's two lines: 'I held him. I held that half of him' from 'Nobody Said Anything' - Raymond Carver's short story about a boy with warring parents. It breaks my heart every time.

Also love: 'In my younger and more vulnerable years...' but mainly because I know that the whole of the Great Gatsby follows and it is the best book ever

AppleSnow · 26/03/2014 19:45

Definitely with you Remus on 'you pierce my soul' from Persuasion - has to be one of the best love letters in literature.

IDoAllMyOwnStunts · 26/03/2014 19:39

Not sure it's my favourite but definitely one of the saddest is in Charlottes Web ' no one was with her when she died'. Sob

joanofarchitrave · 26/03/2014 19:38

'I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.'

Fruityb · 26/03/2014 19:37

"As he read I fell in love like you fall asleep; slowly then all at once" from The Fault in Our Stars.

MrsDavidBowie · 26/03/2014 19:36

What larks Pip, what larks
Joe Gargery in Great Expectations.

It is on my dad's gravestone.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 26/03/2014 19:36

Can't possibly choose just one, but I'll give you these whilst I think on it:

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Captain Wentworth in, 'Persuasion.'

“First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead, in King's Dark Tower series.

“And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.” Ditto.

You have bewitched me, body and soul - an obvious one but too good to ignore!

MiddleAgeMiddleEngland · 26/03/2014 19:34

Skater I love the last line of Rebecca even more than the first line - And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea." Perfect.

Maybe not my favourite, but certainly one of the most memorable: Jude's son in Jude the Obscure leaves a note after killing his siblings and himself - "Done becus we are too meny" (I may have got the spelling wrong) So sad.

Original poster
SkaterGrrrrl · 26/03/2014 15:31

Oh and to include children's books, in Just So Stories I love "The great grey-green greasy Limpopo river, all set about with fever trees".

Evocative and just perfect!

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