My favourite ones on the list varied from the wonderful possibility of "Let the wild rumpus start!" from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, to the romantic "Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering." from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.
But of course, there are so many fabulous and beautiful lines in literature. I celebrate some of them in my Quotable Friday series. And I wear another of them round my neck. I have a necklace of an open birdcage and it was inspired by the line from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, "I am no bird, and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
There are certain writers - Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, Gabriel Garcia Marquez - who seem to be able to create beautiful lines in everything they write. I am both jealous of them and so thankful that they existed and they spent some of their existence writing! Who do you think they most beautiful wordsmiths are? What are your favourite lines in literature (poetry is included, of course)?
I can't even begin to pick a favorite. I enjoyed all the quotes in the link you provided. I was especially grabbed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.” But really, there were so many lovely lines. Lately I've been reading a lot of books to review for The Children's Book Review, and almost every one of them had delicious, quotable lines.
ReplyDeleteOh I agree. I think Winnie the Pooh has some of the most lovely lines in all literature!
DeleteYou know I'm a Scott Fitzgerald fan, and this is from a short story called "The Sensible Thing" about someone who tracks down an old flame and tries to recreate the past:
ReplyDeleteBut for an instant as he kissed her he knew that though he search through eternity he could never recapture those lost April hours. He might press her close now till the muscles knotted on his arms - she was something desirable and rare that he had fought for and made his own - but never again an intangible whisper in the dusk, or on the breeze of night. . . .
Well, let it pass, he thought; April is over, April is over. There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.
That is lovely. Somebody on Facebook nominated the last line of The Great Gatsby too.
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