Fave one liner from a book?

[judgejudyandexecutioner]

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

[YoniMeKateMumsnet]

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

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

[ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm]

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

Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess.

[ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmmmmmmmmm]

"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....

[LadyBeagleEyes]

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

[confusteling]

"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]

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

[secretscwirrels]

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

[flootshoot]

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

[FruOla]

"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]

?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]

"Only connect".

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

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

[frostyfingers]

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]

'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]

Reader, I married him

Jane Eyre

[Morgause]

He upped her smock and in he throng.

Chaucer - The Merchant's Tale

[Yjossarian]

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

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

[DuchessofMalfi]

"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]

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

[RubySparks]

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

[Badvoc]

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

[BalloonSlayer]

". . . 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]

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

[WipsGlitter]

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]

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

[WeAreNinjaNotGeisha]

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