What is your favourite line of literature?

[SkaterGrrrrl]

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.

[Ellisisland]

Love that line from The Night Circus

Also several lines from Hitchikers I love including "I could never get the hang of Thursdays"

And these from Signature of all Things

"Take me someplace where we can be silent together"

"There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy."

"I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living."

[Chopsypie]

Just found this lovely thread.
I've just read the 'his dark materials' trilogy, so these are very fresh in my mind

She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.


And

Then she was pressing her little
proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.

[SkaterGrrrrl]

Returning to thread to sheepishly admit I started it to get inspiration from you well-read lovelies for my next tattoo.

But its just too hard to pick one. Might go for "Once upon a time" coming out of a feather.

[SkaterGrrrrl]

Quill. Not feather.

[mupperoon]

All of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by T S Eliot. Heartbreaking yet slightly ridiculous, amazingly beautiful and unusual imagery. One of the few poems I re-read on a regular basis.

And Villette for a bit of soppiness: "Warm, jealous, and haughty, I knew not till now that my nature had such a mood: he gathered me near his heart. I was full of faults; he took them and me all home. For the moment of utmost mutiny, he reserved the one deep spell of peace. These words caressed my ear:— 'Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on earth.'"

[mupperoon]

Ah Chopsypie those Philip Pullman quotes (especially the Lee Scoresby/Hester death scene) have me tearing up - I'll be sobbing my way round Tesco!

[whotheduckisalice]

'"I see". He did not at all see.'

That line from Sons and Lovers tickled me the other eve as I was at that point finding the whole book quite confusing.

[Halfpint76]

Remember this, as an awkward teenager, being the first piece of prose I found utterly poignant :

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Healthcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”
Wuthering heights

[Agggghast]

He remembered waking once on such a night to the clatter of crabs in the pan where he'd left steakbones from the night before. Faint deep coals of driftwood fire pulsing in the onshore wind. Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea's black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

Cormac McCarthy 'The Road'

[Elsiequadrille]

Anything (ok, not wuite anything) from Wuthering Heights. Also, the last line from Villette or the Professor.

[Elsiequadrille]

*Quite.

Will look up the quote shortly. Am not in good form today

[Frenchfemme]

Why do you walk through the field in gloves, O fat white woman who nobody loves - Seen from a Train, not sure who by,but always gives me the shivers.

[TheOneWithTheNicestSmile]

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends is from the bible

I do like the opening line of the Go Between:

'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

[TheOneWithTheNicestSmile]

This is the end of a Tale of Two Cities & it is a great line

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

[Lucelulu]

On summer evenings I shall take the bridle-ways
Wheat pecking at my wrists...

Rimbaud, A Feeling
Takes me straight back to childhood

[BaconAndAvocado]

This is such a wonderful, life-affirming thread

So, to inject a little silly surrealism:

The truth is a lemon meringue. Mr. Gum.

[CheeseBored]

`you've killed a bear i hear' said Kitty, vainly trying to catch a recalcitrant, slippery mushroom with her fork and setting the lace quivering on her white arm.

SO erotic!

from Anna karanina

[CheeseBored]

Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

from Brideshead Revisited

LOVE this thread

[Wishyouwould]

Not a line but the opening quotes in The Thorn Birds

“There is a legend about a bird which sings only once in it's life, more beautifully than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves it's nest, it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, it impales it's breast on the longest, sharpest thorn. But as it is dying, it rises above it's own agony to outsing the Lark and the Nightingale. The Thornbird pays it's life for that one song, and the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles, as it's best is brought only at the cost of great pain; Driven to the thorn with no knowledge of the dying to come. But when we press the thorn to our breast, we know, we understand.... and still, we do it." ~ Colleen McCullough”

I just love it. It brings a tear to my eye still.

[mrsjavierbardem]

Two lines from To Kill A Mockingbird

“Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.”

“It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.”

? Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

[mrsjavierbardem]

Gratitude
Louise Glück (1975)

Do not think I am not grateful for your small
kindness to me.
I like small kindnesses.
In fact I actually prefer them to the more
substantial kindness, that is always eying you
like a large animal on a rug,
until your whole life reduces
to nothing but waking up morning after morning
cramped, and the bright sun shining on its tusks.

[ThinkAboutItTomorrow]

From a novel, it's a bit long but...

They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
And what difference does that make?
(Catch22)

And from a poem either:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee

Or

She's all states, and all princes, I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,

Both John Donne

[LauraChant]

I love this thread! My contribution:

Benedick: "A miracle! Here's our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee, but, by this light, I take thee for pity."

Beatrice: "I would not deny you, but by this good day, I yield upon great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption."

[LauraChant]

I also like, from the Desiderata,: "With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. (or careful?) Strive to be happy."

and

"Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young." (The Duchess of Malfi).

[Lucelulu]

Not a quote but the title of a short story
'A Clean Well Lighted Place'
Hemingway - brilliant and the title holds the whole story now for me