What is your favorite line in fiction?

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Not favorite scripture, because there are so many, but favorite in fiction.

My favorite has always been:
“But Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.”
 
Viki63 said:
Not favorite scripture, because there are so many, but favorite in fiction.

My favorite has always been:
“But Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.”
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“I love you with the blindest passion of my body, which comes from the clearest perception of my mind.”
 
Not really a quote, but there’s a dialogue that occurs in Terry Pratchet’s Hogfather that always resonated with me:

“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They’re not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”

MY POINT EXACTLY.
 
“This must be Thursday,’ said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
 
Perhaps I shouldn’t confess my addiction to watching vulgar TV, in particular, the series Desperate Housewives.

The best line in the whole series was when Bree confronts her husband (Rex, the s&m oriented doctor) about his infidelity. Having discovered his s&m paraphernalia, she gets into an argument with him and slaps him in the face saying “I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.”
 
“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.”
 
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” - Jane Austen
 
I love this thread and will have to think more about this, but the first thing that came to my mind was…

‘‘I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am’’

🙂
 
Ahhh, so many to pick from… how about

“Good luck! We’re all counting on you.”
 
Call me Ishmael… The start of the greatest adventure story in all of fiction!

From TV: Doctor Who- Monsters? Nahhhh, I’m not afraid of monsters…they’re afraid of me.
 
Actually a few lines, but my favorite:

“Hail, O most valiant and illustrious drinkers! Your health, my precious pox-ridden comrades! To you alone, I dedicate my writings.”
 
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, opening line in 1830 novel Paul Clifford.😉
 
To die from hanging at the bottom of a river! The idea seemed to him ludicrous.

“To be hanged and drowned…is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot.”

----Ambrose Bierce
 
“Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”
 
Hard to choose one favorite. But one among many:
‘How long does it take to fall a thousand feet?’ he asked himself, and as the troop set out he tried to make the calculation; but his arithmetical powers were and always had been weak. ‘Long enough to make an act of contrition, at all events,’ he said, abandoning the answer of seven hours and odd seconds as absurd.
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The Wine-Dark Sea
Patrick O’Brian​
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tee
 
Just ONE favorite? Not possible, but here is one:

““Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
 
Book (though also in the movie):
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” - Gandalf

Movie (though also in the book):
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” - Indigo
 
Another favorite of mine are the opening lines of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of enlightenment, it was the age of foolishness.” A bit like our own era.
 
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