Quick, grab a book from your bookshelf and find a memorable sentence. Or if you have one that you carry around in your mind, even better. Here's one that struck me the first time I read it and continued to occupy my mind:
In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.
Flannery O'Connor
in A Good Man Is Hard To Find
If you've missed my multicolored, super-hyper announcement of a new feature on my blog, here is a recap:
Grab-A-Line Monday is the place to share sentences that stopped you in your tracks, or made you spew coffee or have stayed with you for years for other reasons. The moments when I read those sentences I count among the best in life. Since there are more books than any one of us can finish in a life time, I hope that this will become a place where we can share our treasures.
So I'd love it love it love it if you would grab a line and put it in the comments. And if it turns out you like the idea, please blog about it and share the word. Let's celebrate excellent writing and memorable moments!
14 comments:
Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge. Proverbs 23:12
Thanks, T. Anne.
Apply your heart, apply you ears: not words we typically use but so true, to perfectly appropriate.
"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 3
Yes, this is one of those moments that make me ache. Thanks Glam.
Is it too late to join in? Here's mine ...
"There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name."
First line of Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Love that book!
Nope, not too late at all. I"ve never read Salman Rushdie so this is eye opening for me. Thanks!
"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him, "Wild thing,"........"
Maurice Sendak
Made me want to write for children.
shelley
Made you want to write for children. that's the kind of power a great sentence can do.
BTW: how do you view this new movie thing?
I'm not in the habit of keeping track of great lines, but now that you're doing this post every Monday (which I think is a wonderful idea, BTW) I'm going to make it a habit to jot them down. One of my favorite recent reads is The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp and just flipping through it I found:
But with this February sun, see, the light's absolutely pure and makes the colors of the sky and the tree limbs and the bricks on these suburban houses so clean that just looking at them is like inhaling purified air.
Hi Melissa: I am looking forward to what you jot down next week! I don't know this book, but now I am intrigued.
There was another silence, while Marjorie considered whether or not convincing her mother was worth the trouble. People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
Having decided this, Marjorie said good night. - Bernice Bobs Her Hair, F. Scott Fitzgerald
What a rich quote. Thanks so much. Like Marjorie, the only I can say to that is: good night.
Favourite line of all time: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1976442&l=92e7e867e5&id=752788324
...linked only because I'm a lazy bugger who hates typing.
All right, since it is such a great one, I'll not give you a hard time for making click on your link.
Post a Comment