Fave one liner from a book?

[judgejudyandexecutioner]

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

?Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.?

― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

Thank you Rebecca

"Droll thing life is; that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic to a futile purpose." Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

Stephen King

"They are not long, the days of wine and roses:"

Ernest Dowson

From his poem "They are not long" which continues "the weeping and the laughter".

Poignant, as the poet died at 32.

I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (I think)

I might have to give terry pratchett another go, you know.
Some of these are great, and lovely to see pg Wodehouse get quoted so often.
Man was a genius.
I will add the great Dorothy Parker to the mix:
"What fresh hell is this?"

"But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known."

Julius Ceasar, Shakespeare

For when I'm fretting about things I have no influence over, or where I'm doing my damnest already and just can't do any more.

I love that well known quote in Gone with the Wind 'Tomorrow is another Day' though I am far from being an optimist!

An amusing one from Pride & Prejudice from Mr Bennett

'For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?''

Mrs Koala upthread beat me to it.

"This is not an exit" Bret Easton Ellis-American Psycho.

It's a weird coincidence thing because I found myself repeating this one line in my head this week and I only read it once back in 1991.

hackmum what incredible sense you speak!

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
Wuthering Heights

""Why me?" was his constant refrain, and the question was a good one."

The doctor in Catch 22

"My dear, you have delighted us long enough"

Jane Austen, maybe P&P? Not sure.

Say it to the dc all the time.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Prospero, The Tempest

My favourites are mostly poems. "Better by far that you should forget and smile/ Than you should remember and be sad." From 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti.

Tumbletumble :) It's one of my all time favourites - the other being A Town Like Alice .

I love that poem, Groupie.

As for poems ...

"Come live with me and be my love. And we will all the pleasures prove"

Christopher Marlowe. We had it as a reading at our wedding

Also, rather more contemporary:

Philip Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Not a one liner but a two-liner from David Nobbs' The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. I can never get over how he can make you want to cry with one sentence, in what is a very funny novel.

He is writing about old ladies alone on a hospital ward.

"They had retired to Sussex, to bungalows by the sea. Now their husbands had died, they knew nobody, their bungalows were two miles from the sea, their sons were in New Zealand, they couldn't manage the hill up from the shops, they were ill."

Um Merguez, isn't that John Donne?

I luvz John Donne, me.

Yes yes yes to all the Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey ones. Can I add 'Placetne, Magistra? Placet.' - love that line.

Also 'Do not weep, little dog. At the resurrection, thou too shall have a golden tail' - which I got from Pandora by Jilly Cooper but is from somewhere else.

John Donne did a piss take. The original was Marlow.

On the theme of Donne I've always liked his one line letter to his wife after he lost his job - "John Donne, Anne Donne, undone"

from a book :

"they were afraid of nothing, together they could face Satan and all his Demons" wuthering heights

Well I never!

There are two versions Balloonslayer

John Donne's www.artofeurope.com/donne/don3.htm

And Marlowe's: www.bartleby.com/106/5.html