Fave one liner from a book?

[judgejudyandexecutioner]

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

I like that Terry P one, archfiend.

A recent favourite, "Did they ever decide whether it was ethical for those turned into pillars of salt to be ground up for use as winter road grit?"
(The Woman Who Died a Lot - Jasper Fforde)

Cerubina - you are one of the few that seem to share my love of Precious Bane. A wonderful book!

Archfiend - I think the Pratchett quote is from Lords & Ladies.

(Sad git alert - I have all his discword novels in a huge span across my bookshelf)

doctrine I've just looked it up, it's from Lords and Ladies. I have used it to explain the Big Bang to my dd!

X-post!

I'm afraid that Mary Webb quote makes me understand exactly why Stella Gibbons felt the need to put the boot in. Sorry.

Oh yes, PG Wodehouse: "Death, where is thy jolly old sting?"
(sorry can't remember which book)

Don't think anyone has quoted this, sorry it's so long; "I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." Beautiful, but loathed the book.Wuthering Heights.
also: " Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother on his approaching marriage were all that was affectionate and insincere." P & P

?A few hundred years ago there were no differences between magic and medicine.?
Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

And another, from a favourite book:
?A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.?
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

'I had a real sheep, originally.'

Philip K Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

He liked to listen to the silence, he said, if silence could be listened to, for, he went on, in that silence you could hear wild-flower pollen sifting down the bee-fried air, by God, the bee-fried air! Listen! the waterfall of birdsong beyond those trees!
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine. Love that bee-fried air, so evocative! :)

Have been enjoying Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There" recently (ackshelly maybe that's where I got my NN inspiration ?)

This bit stuck in my mind (sorry it's a little long) ....

"I had with me two incredibly useless guidebooks to Italy, so useless in fact that I'm not even going to dignify them by revealing their titles here, except to say that one of them should have been called "Let's Go Get Another Guidebook" and the other was Fodor's (I was lying a moment ago)
and neither of them so much as hinted that Capri town was miles away up a vertical mountainside. They both made it sound as if all you had to do was spring off the ferry and there you were. But from the quayside Capri town looked to be somewhere way up in the clouds.
The funicolare up the mountainside wasn't running ..... "

Hope you enjoyed, I think that gives a good flavour of his style, and brings to life both the pleasure and pain of travelling beautifully.

Really like yours too peerie - I'll have to keep a note of that one - relates beautifully to a little project of mine ATM

Have been reading through this lovely thread since I posted - so many beautiful quotes.

Please don't say I've killed it with a slightly too long quote ? and now 3 posts in a row, that will probably be the final nail in the coffin knowing my form

Do you know Juggling, that in the Italian version of BB NHNT they have chopped the whole chunk out on Italy! I bought it for (Italian) dp thinking it would make him chortle (a very BB term I feel) and it wasn't bloody there!

Ooh, how annoying that they'd left it out Grapes Do you think they thought Italians would be offended by it ? He wrote a whole book about Britain didn't he ? "Notes from a Small Island" and I think most people find it even more funny to read observational humour that's close to home

"Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken."

I have that printed on a t-shirt

"Va-t'en, et souviens-toi seulement que je t'aime"

Cinna, by Pierre Corneille - French A Level literature study and desperately romantic for a soppy 17 year old!

Juggling- I have them all, they are my comfort food books, and I still snort out loud at all of them. I think it was probably done so as not to offend, yes, but BB's gentle poking is nothing compared, for example, to the Xenophobes series. (also v funny)

Back to oneliners...am now rummaging through my bookshelves pulling books off and finding highlighted bits;

"I've left more places than most people ever go to". Tania Kindersley. Goodbye Johnny Thunders.

?But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,' I said. 'He was the great love of her life, you know.'
Oh, dulling,' said my mother, sadly. 'One always thinks that. Every, every time.?
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

That'll do, pig. That'll do.
Dick King-Smith The Sheep-Pig

'Life never gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.' EM Forster, A Passage to India

'Let that your sorrow as it goes from your eye, go from your heart.' The Changeling, Middleton and Rowley

Most of mine are last lines, and I think all are quite powerful.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

I was cured all right.
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

She walked rapidly in the thin June sunlight towards the worst horror of all.
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene

^"I only remember one part of the service," he said, "and that is, 'And the body shall be cast into the sea.' So cast it in."
The Sea Wolf - Jack London

After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle.
The Selfish Giant, Oscar Wilde

Many, many books and authors I love here - the Vane-Wimsey books, Pratchett, The Dark Is Rising set, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings etc etc.

I offer this one:
"Like a bullet from a gun, like an arrow from a bow - like a donkey that has just sat on a pin...." - from The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley.