Evocative Literary Lines I

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words-blog2A few of literature’s memorable and thought provoking sentences

Starting with the most immortal line:

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 house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart;
I am, I am, I am.”

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

“It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live,
remember that.”

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (1999)


What lines in literature do you know to be unforgettable?
Please share a line or two that has impacted you?

29 thoughts on “Evocative Literary Lines I”

  5. Pingback: Evocative Literary Lines I – Br Andrew's Muses

  6. The best opening line I have ever come across is in Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice:” “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

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  7. “The Autobiography of a Woman” by Waldorfia

    October 15, 2011

    It has been said that there are two ways for a woman to clone herself. The first is through sexual activity. The second method is to see her reflection in a mirror. Over the years neither of these two methods has been very kind to me…….

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  8. Not an opening line, instead very near the close, but one that is thought provoking anew each time I read it: “Has the sheep eaten the flower?” — The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

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  12. I hadn’t thought about “The Bell Jar” in a long time. That book was so awesomely written. I remember totally relating with it all until about halfway through, before the realization came that what I was relating to was madness.

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  13. Not opening lines, but two that touch me every day:

    “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Gandalf to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

    “It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” Dumbledore to Harry in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.

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  15. The first line ties us back to Snoopy’s never ending novel. Here’s another for you, roughly translated from Spanish to English:
    “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that long gone afternoon when his father had taken him to discover ice.”
    Gabriel García Marquez, One hundred years of solitude.

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