What's your favorite line from a book or movie? I know there are a lot to choose from, but whenever I'm asked that I always go immediately to the great Bette Davis in All About Eve, turning to the partygoers and saying, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." (You really have to watch the clip and listen to the voice for the full effect).
What's your favorite line?
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I can't think of a favorite line, but there is a line from a movie that I saw again a couple of nights ago and I am STILL laughing at it. The "I have a mole?" line by Prince John (Richard Lewis) in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I tried to explain the scene to my husband (who hasn't seen it) and how Prince John's mole is in a different place in every scene and was just about in tears...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCMgoDu3WkU
Cheers,
Colleen :)
Are we allowed to use lines from the Princess Bride, or do we have to actually be creative with our choices? :-D
ReplyDeleteOne of our family's current favorites is from the new Doctor Who series. "I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool." (Or a Stetson, or any other kind of hat).
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ReplyDeleteMy low-functioning 23 year-old autistic son Jack loves the movie Overboard (Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell). This means it plays several times every day in our home. Needless to say the rest of us pretty much have all the lines from it memorized. It may not be a true classic, but my favorite line from the movie is by the character Coast Guard Spotter Lucas (played by Scott Marshall) near the end of the movie's climax: "It's a helluva day at sea, sir!"
ReplyDelete"So what's all this Gazpacho Soup business?" ... Red Dwarf, ep6, 1988.
ReplyDeletethat...and
"They call me Trinity." ... They Call Me Trinity, 1971
for some reason that just stuck with me
I just have to say that the first chapter of Karl's Last Flight is the funniest and best first chapter I've ever read.
DeleteThanks for those images.
Thanks Jim. I'm flattered. It is my pleasure to serve. ;-)
DeleteThat chapter was originally just a two page short story I wrote in '05 for a competition called "Two Words" that required the use of whatever two words the blog host came up with. In this case "fuzzy edges" was the word pair. After submitting it a few people asked me what happened next. I had no idea but the question got me thinking. Next thing I knew I had my first novel.
Yuh just nevah know from where it's gonna come next.
Delete“Surely you can’t be serious.”
ReplyDelete“I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”
"What's the plan?"
ReplyDelete"Don't get killed."
"You expect me to talk?"
ReplyDelete"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
Nuts...you took mine!
DeleteRaymond Chandler: From thirty feet away, she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty.
ReplyDeleteOh man, we could fill this blog with favorite Chandlerisms. "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."
Delete"They mostly come at night, mostly." (Aliens.)
ReplyDeleteOne I quote frequently, from Cool Hand Luke: What we have here is a failure to communicate.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! I don't have time to post all the many favorite lines I have, primarily from TV/movies. So I'll hit one of my favorites, from a movie, which in turn comes from a book.
ReplyDeleteRicardo Montalban as Khan in Star Trek II is my all time favorite villain. And I LOVE to walk around mimicking him mimicking (I believe lines from Moby Dick): "To the last I will grapple with thee. For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." OH! OH! OH! Man, that was awesome!
BK Jackson
"That's not the Northern Lights. That's Manderly!" Maxim de Winter in Rebecca.
ReplyDelete"Now I know what a TV dinner feels like." John McClane
ReplyDeleteAll time favorite, "You're gona need a bigger boat."
One of my favorites, too. Love that line!
DeleteYou obviously have good taste, Elizabeth. :)
Delete"He pulled the goggles over his eyes to view the world through crap-colored lenses, which is pretty much how he viewed the world already."
ReplyDelete(rough paraphrase from Roger Zelazny's "Damnation Alley")
"I wanna wear my sandals...I wanna go out to lunch. I wanna be NORMAL again!" *
ReplyDeleteIt's been one of those weeks.
* Private Benjamin
Favorite line said frequently in our house:
ReplyDeleteBefore dawn, he's your son - The Lion King
Gotta love kids!
Here are mine:
ReplyDeleteI've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. -- Blade Runner
The law is an ass. -- Charles Dickens
In the end we get it all. -- from the movie "Casino"
It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage. -- Indiana Jones
... the justice system is more about the system than the justice. -- Don Winslow, The Kings of Cool
I lie every second of the day. My whole life is a sham! -- George Costanza
And just to be anal, the line in Dickens is, "The law is a ass, a idiot." (Mr. Bumble)
DeleteOkay, Jim. I’ll plead guilty as charged. You’ll get no rebuttal outta me, sir. However, I did notice that this UK source (that’d be in Olde Engalund, where all this business supposedly began, mentioned…well, check it out.
Deletehttp://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-law-is-an-ass.html
Just to keep a good thing going, let me trot this one by you.
“Ah kingdom for a horse, you say? If I’d only known, I’d a skipped show business!”—Mister Ed
The opening line in Louis L'amour's Mojave Crossing, which I started this morning.
ReplyDelete"When I saw that black-eyed woman a-looking at me I wished I had a Bible."
I was hooked from then on.
Life is tough, but its tougher when you’re stupid – John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima
ReplyDeletePretty much anything from 'Christmas Vacation' or 'Army of Darkness.'
ReplyDelete"$@!#er's full!"
"Gimme some sugar, baby."
Danny Glover in Silverado:
ReplyDelete"I don't want to shoot you and you don't want to be dead!"
From an online video/cult following:
ReplyDelete"No offense, but she looks like she was tied to the ugly truck with the ugly rope, and dragged down ugly street for fifty ugly miles."
Gary Oldman from Leon, The Professional:
ReplyDelete"I told you.... Manny? Bring me everyone."
"What do you mean, evr--"
"EV-RY-ONE!!!!!"
So many good ones are already taken! But is favorite isn't:
ReplyDeleteBadges, badges, we don't need no stinkin' badges.
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
"Never give up, never surrender" from Galaxy Quest, a favorite movie of mine. These words apply very well to a writing career.
ReplyDeleteOk, mine is from an old western, "The Professionals", starring Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Burt Lancaster and Woody Strode.
ReplyDelete"Most men are bastards through an accident of birth, but you, sir, are a self made man."
Maybe not my favorites, but great lines in context:
ReplyDelete"Am I the only one who cared for Pyle?"
and
"I wish there was someone to whom I could say sorry to."
"I never look back, darling. It distracts from now." -Edna 'E' Mode from The Incredibles
ReplyDelete“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
ReplyDelete― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
As you wish...Princess Bride
ReplyDeleteI've never seen "All About Eve" but that fasten your seatbelts quote reminds me of an episode from the mid 80's TV series Riptide, in which a child from Vietnam was visiting the detectives and he'd grown up in an orphanage watching American movies. That "Fasten your seatbelts" quote was one of many he used in the episode. 8-)
ReplyDeleteA rough paraphrase of Oddball, from Kelly's Hero's -
ReplyDelete"Think positively."
I think it's a great message.
Emmi
Hmmm, censoring Bob Hope's Ghostbreakers?
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Oddball and Moriarty!
ReplyDeleteO - "Why don''t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous, and hopeful, for a change?"
M - "Crap."
You nailed it. And I love the third sentence.
DeleteNow it's movie time - I need a refresher!
Emmi