What do you think is the best sentence from a book ... ever?

[Patrick]

I was reading last night, and I came across the kind of sentence that I thought was (1) brilliant, and (2) impossible in the sense that it seemed no one could have managed to string words together to write that thought, but then someone had.

I started wondering what I'd consider to be the best sentence I've ever read in a book. You know - something that struck me then and still sticks with me. And then I started to wonder if, when a question like that was put to a crowd, would there be any sort of consensus, even at a small level.

So. What is it?

What's the best sentence you've ever read in a book?

No rules except for the topical one - it has to be a single sentence (and make sure you give title and author).

[Tricia]

Wow! That's going to take some thinking. When I'm reading a book, I'll stop and make an internal note that 'there was a great sentence,' but then I never write it down. Now you've got me thinking that I should highlight it or write it down in some special journal. It's a great thought!

[stormhawk]

This is actually a first sentence. It really sets the tone for the rest of the book.

Dirk Moeller didn’t know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out.

The Android's Dream - John Scalzi

I've seen a LOT of profound sentences, but this is one that really sticks with me.

And yes, it's technically two sentences, although the second one is actually a sentence fragment that would more properly be separated from the first clause by a comma, so I insist it counts.

[Patrick]

stormhawk wrote: "This is actually a first sentence. It really sets the tone for the rest of the book.

Dirk Moeller didn’t know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident...."

Nope. Doesn't count (It's the only rule!). I think you'll have to go with the first sentence alone.

[Paul]

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Karnina; Tolstoy

[Paul]

"Call me Ishmael."

Moby Dick; Herman Melville

[Patrick]

Both great!

[Patrick]

The opening of Dickens' Bleak House is one of the finest in Victorian literature, and I'd love to plunk chunks of it in here. But that would break my own rule.

So just one sentence from there:

"Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun."

[Helen]

That is pretty awesome!

[Mhairi]

Patrick wrote: "The opening of Dickens' Bleak House is one of the finest in Victorian literature, and I'd love to plunk chunks of it in here. But that would break my own rule.

So just one sentence from there:
..."

The original Bleak House (as in, a house called Bleak House) where Dickens wrote at least part of that novel, is in Broadstairs, just a couple of miles along the coast from me :) Currently owned by the Hiltons, it's now on sale again. £2m, or something like that :S

[Amanda]

I can't claim this is the best sentence I've ever read, but it's the most recent one that's stuck with me and made me giggle. (The sentences leading up to it make it better, but I think it stands well enough alone.)

"She was my kind of chubby." Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

[Nate]

"Its amazing waht you can get used to if your daily allowance of bizarre is high enough."......Harry Dresden
— Jim Butcher (Small Favor)

[Nathalia]

"Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle." - The Martian Chronicles

[Patrick]

Though I've read him little, here are some from Joyce. These first two are first lines, from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses respectively. Both are fine, and they're also both shaped by the complexities of his later writing:

Portrait: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...."

Ulysses: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."

I just came across one that I prefer to both of those. It's from the short story "Araby" in Dubliners, which so far seems to be a book where every sentence is shaped with a scalpel and knitted neatly to the one that follows:

"The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns."

[Elle]

My favourites probably come out of The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy or Harry Potter but I love too many of them to write down!

[Shel]

I read a lot of YA and the first line from the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness is one of my favorites:

"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say."

[K.]

I am forever quoting this one:

Hamlet: Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

I usually put this together with a couple of old sayings that my dad used to say:

"Opinions are like armpits, everyone has at least two."

"No one can hurt your feelings unless you wear your heart on your sleeve."

[Angela]

Since I am from Atlanta I have to go with an Atlanta Author, Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind

"For 'tis the only thing in the world that lasts...and to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother...'Tis the only thing worth working for, fighting for, dying for."

[Char]

"She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate".

-Edith Wharton, House of Mirth

[Summer]

"Why, sometimes I've believes as many as six impossible things before breakfast." --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

I'll admit I've never read Through the Looking-Glass, but I love that sentence.

[Char]

I like that one too, Esse! : )

[Hitandmiss]

"How often did he muse over it and pronounce the name of a dear friend — a friend lost to him forever; and on his death-bed, when the near approach of eternity seemed to have illumined his mind with supernatural light, this thought, which had until then been but a doubt, became a conviction, and his last words were, `Maximilian, it was Edmond Dantes!'”"

My favourate classic Book The Count of Monte Cristo when Edmond hears that his one good deed had been fully realised.

[Char]

*sigh* LOVED Edmond Dantes. The Count is one of my favorite classics.

[David]

The man in black fled across the desert and the the gunslinger followed.

[Summer]

Excellent choice, David! I've always thought that's one of the best opening lines I've ever read.

[Bill]

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. ~Herman Melville from 4th sentence of Moby Dick

[David]

"I always make Reilly laugh. He thinks I'm the funniest sad sack he knows, and what's worse he tells me so."
-God Save the Mark: A Novel of Crime and Confusion, by Donald E. Westlake
This certainly isn't the best sentence I've ever read in a book (I've just finished reading Ulysses which is chockablock with candidates for best), but it really tickled me as an expert portrayal of someone who's made a droll kind of peace with the realization that he'll never amount to anything.

[Char]

David wrote: ""I always make Reilly laugh. He thinks I'm the funniest sad sack he knows, and what's worse he tells me so."
-God Save the Mark: A Novel of Crime and Confusion, by Donald E. Westlake
This certainly..."

David, I read that book last year and I was laughing the whole time. : )

[Bill]

Paul wrote: ""Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Karnina; Tolstoy"

A marvelous sentence in both its poetry as well as its pastoral verity!