Best sentence you've ever heard?

loquere · Mar 24, 2015

Ben Stiller [Dodgeball]

"Nobody makes me bleed my own blood - nobody!"

Handley_Page · Mar 24, 2015

CyranoJ said:
Few people deliver a soliloquy quite like Alec Baldwin.

His speech as the prosecutor in "Judgement at Nuremberg" was a master-class.

DM2015 · Mar 24, 2015

loquere said:
What is the best sentence, line you've read in a book, or watched on a TV show/film? ETC!

Luke, I am your father.

loquere · Mar 24, 2015

DM2015 said:
Luke, I am your father.

So true. Question answered.

robertreams · Mar 25, 2015

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."

CyranoJ · Mar 25, 2015

"'It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times'?! You stupid monkey!"

litmlove · Mar 25, 2015

I have a thing for masterful opening sentences, here are a few:

HP Lovecraft in The Colour out of Space said:
West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.

It is kinda weird that one of my favourite sentences comes from HP Lovecraft but this opening is brilliant for his story.

JD Salinger said:
If you really want to hear about it, the first first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Yes it is one sentence

Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice said:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife

shorty & punchy and wonderfully presumptuous.

Lenard Michaels in Honeymoon said:
One summer, at a honeymoon resort in the Catskill mountains, I saw a young woman named Sheila Kahn fall in love with her waiter.

There is an entire story in only one sentence.

CyranoJ · Mar 25, 2015

In the same vein:

Toni Morrison said:
They shoot the white girl first.

From Paradise. Probably the most arresting first sentence of a recent novel I can remember.

Ray Bradbury said:
It was a pleasure to burn.

From Fahrenheit 451. He was a master of openers, in his short fiction too.

Gilbert Sorrentino said:
What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. Resonates with me both because of the subtle eroticism and because of its near identity with a situation I actually faced in real life.

Salman Rushdie said:
"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."

From The Satanic Verses, which I actually think is overrated but that opener is stunning.

Hunter S. Thompson said:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Of course.

Katiecat · Mar 25, 2015

"Honey, you go ahead and sleep in; I'll take care of the dishes, and the laundry, and the baby, and make coffee for you, too."

litmlove · Mar 25, 2015

CyranoJ said:
The Satanic Verses said:

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."

Click to expand...

From The Satanic Verses, which I actually think is overrated but that opener is stunning.

Agreed. I'm not sure if it is the fantastical imagery or the bold pronouncement, but in combination I think it's a bit much.

And I'm going to cheat a little to include the rest of Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and loathing in Las Vegas said:
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?

Philip Roth in Goodbye said:
The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses

Now this is a good first impression

Samuel Beckett in Murphy said:
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Jeez Beckett, this apathy is a little overwhelming .

Albert Camus in The Stranger said:
Mother died today.

Camus competing against Beckett for king of emotional emptiness

Vladimir Nabakov in Lolita said:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palette to tap, at three, the teeth. Lo. Lee Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Cheating again, I know, but this is how you give a teaser to the rest of your story.

loquere · Mar 25, 2015

robertreams said:
"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.

loquere · Mar 25, 2015

Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa

"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you're hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!"

PayDay · Mar 31, 2015

"If we sell out now... ...what price do we put on our dignity next time?"
-Pale Rider

warmAmber · Mar 31, 2015

loquere said:
What is the best sentence, line you've read in a book, or watched on a TV show/film? ETC!

From the TV show WKRP in Cinncinati after a botched Thanksgiving day promotion:

"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"

PayDay · Apr 3, 2015

"What century is this guy in? Why don't you pass him?"
lucky numbers

jomar · Apr 3, 2015

You won't fuck me and I always have to drive. -Drugstore Cowboy

Pain don't hurt - Roadhouse

I smell *sniff sniff* skanks. -FF1

oggbashan · Apr 3, 2015

From a UK reporter in Africa to Head Office:

"It is impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation here, but I will do my best."

PayDay · Apr 5, 2015

"You're not going crazy, you're going sane in a crazy world."
- the Tick

PayDay · Apr 5, 2015

"Not just 'Never date a writer' but never interact with a writer."
-ogg

DiskoTroop · Apr 5, 2015

"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours."
KV

PayDay · Apr 5, 2015

"Listen, fish-boy, I told your mother a lot of things."
-Deflator Mouse

PayDay · Apr 5, 2015

"Those accursed super-monkies have tossed themselves into my salad once again!"
-el Seed

PayDay · Apr 5, 2015

"None of my friends's husbands make their wives fire their husbands out of cannons."
- Wife of the Human Bullet

PayDay · Apr 5, 2015

"Thanks, you know, but I should probably, you know... Exist."
- Authur, sidekick

Handley_Page · Apr 5, 2015

"To begin at the beginning"
[Under Milk Wood]

Best sentence you've ever heard?

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