Favorite lines you've written

Twick

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the first thought I had seeing the two of them was you couldn't find two more different looking and acting people in one room. Malcolm with his pale color and fancy manner and loud ways, and Lacy with his face and hands the shade and color of the rainy side of a tree and his...

"color the rainy side of a tree" - what a neat phrase!
 

ancon

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thanks! every now and then we all get lucky.
 

kkbe

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Roughdragon: “...what’s a chosen one without a prophecy?"

DanielSTJ "...nature is alive; we just need to dig for it."

flowerburgers: I stared at her, trying to imagine myself in her position, how it would feel to lose the world...

The Otter: Eye contact is too intimate--it's as though we have our hands in each other's guts, feeling around where it's tender and bloody--but I force myself to hold his gaze.

Yep, love this thread. :)
 

Twick

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Aelfinn reflects on the girl he fell in love with:

***

Of course, she could be in Deepstream by then, helping the people devastated by the war. Probably spending her evenings dancing with the son of Lathel Blaekhammr. She’ll smile as they dance and giggle at his jests. He’ll speak to her with that soft voice meant only for her and in those moments the world will be theirs.
 

braveboy

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From a wip, scene is from a mike boat being shot up after getting trapped in a narrow canal near the Mekong river in 1969:

It was after midnight when a new burst of fire shattered the silence and Bobby Jack heard a scream and then something, no, someone, had fallen down in the well deck with him. It was the gunner who had been working the M-60.
“Shit. That ain't good,” he thought. He knew that he didn't know the first thing about firing the 60, so he would be of no help there. He waited for the other gunner to give him some guidance. He was feeling awfully lonely now.
The sailor who had fallen down in the space with him hadn't made a sound and Bobby Jack assumed he was dead. There was nothing he could do for him either alive or dead, so he kept watching for movement and calling as quietly as he could up to the other gunner's mate, hoping for an answer each time. For the next hour or so he figured he was alone among the living. He was feeling so scared he thought he might piss or shit on himself anytime now. If he could. He realized he had discovered the “pucker power,” that other sailors joked about. It actually existed he now discovered. “Wow.” He wondered if he would ever be able to shit again. That was of course if he happened to live through this little adventure.
He kept calling up to the gunny every now and then, praying for an answer. He didn't want to be here alone. He didn't want to die tonight. Not here and not alone. He wondered if Nettie Ruth was alone tonight.
 

flowerburgers

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I'm cutting this from my book and I'm sad to lose it so I'll share. In re: the Kennedy assassination:

"On that day, in Dallas, were there birds to be seen? I can’t imagine a single pigeon. When I remember at all, I think of the things my brother taught me: how to tell a gunshot from a firework, how to feel danger in your bones before your mind can register it, how to be cold as the fog that swallows the city. John Kennedy’s hands jerk automatically towards his head."
 

flowerburgers

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braveboy I like that. Vietnam factors into my WIP too. Have you done a lot of research? My character is a veteran, but I haven't developed that aspect of his past very deeply yet.
 

DanielSTJ

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During my writing tonight I came up with something that I really liked. Here it is, raw and unedited:

Then, closing her eyes, she kissed him. It was more than a peck—even the word kiss did not describe what it meant to her. It was as if her soul was flowing from her lips, like a fountain uncovered in the wilderness with a single flower that had lived through the toils of time. When his lips met hers it was if, for a moment, nothing else matted in the world. Her heart met his and she nearly gasped for breath, but instead she embraced him with her skin—passionately, tenderly and entirely.
 

D.A Watson

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Couple from my current WIP that raised a smile...

A saloon owner's reaction to some native americans coming into his establishment and asking for a room, adding that they have money to pay for it...

“I don’t give a hard f**k in a gentle breeze what you got, son. We don’t serve no bare assed savages in Milt’s.”

A sheriff musing on his keen but inexperienced young deputy...

He might have been wetter behind the ears than a grizzly in salmon season, but Bradley was no dummy.
 
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PickleHeartsBooks

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I'm cutting this from my book and I'm sad to lose it so I'll share. In re: the Kennedy assassination:

"On that day, in Dallas, were there birds to be seen? I can’t imagine a single pigeon. When I remember at all, I think of the things my brother taught me: how to tell a gunshot from a firework, how to feel danger in your bones before your mind can register it, how to be cold as the fog that swallows the city. John Kennedy’s hands jerk automatically towards his head."

I like
 

PickleHeartsBooks

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When she stopped Aarik’s heart, it was like she could feel it stopping, but not as if she could feel it under her palm, or feel it as if it were in her chest. She could just feel it like it was something suddenly missing from the room. When she killed the man who murdered Kye, she felt his heart stop all around her, in the darkness of the night. She felt it in the lamp lights inside the train station, and she felt it in her chest like she was having trouble breathing. She felt his heart stop as if it was connected to the world spinning, as if it were connected to her being a human being, and it made her feel so insignificantly small.
 

relletyrots

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Hours flew by in optimistic anticipation, unmarred by the apathy of fact. As time went and his mind soared, a sense of certainty developed; a causality without cause. The plan must work, yet it was sure to fail, a desperate act of a lonely child, thirsty for love and fed up with injustice. He saw this, yet he turned his back to the ugly truth, staring into a sullen future. The plan had to work, not due to ingenuity or skill or blessing, but because it was the only plan. Losing would mean there were no ladders, only shovels to dig a deeper hole. Phyl had hope, not because he believed, but because he didn't.

From my current WIP. It really got to me, so I thought I'd share.
 

Woollybear

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My favorite recent line was a editing mistake, not anything I wrote intentionally, but it cracked me up. I saw it in the next read through --

It was something like "Her forehead eyes crinkled" ... now the image of 'forehead eyes' is cracking me up again.
 

indianroads

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Violence never really has a purpose, it only feeds on itself and burns everything in its path; it is a malevolent mindless thing that consumes beauty, knowledge, and love as logs on a fire, leaving only the ashes of death in its wake.
 
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Ellis Clover

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(My character is a a freelance copywriter with a precarious income)

At the slightest whiff of an economic downturn she'd instantly lose half her clients, most of whom already thought they could do her job themselves. ('Anyone can write! I could write when I was three! I dunno why they're making us outsource,' a real estate agent whose ads had previously touted 'dinning' rooms and 'quite' streets had once grumbled at her.)
 

Icarus_Burned

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As the universe was still yawning and the would be suns hung lifeless and dark like dead flies in a spiderweb, Father spoke to my Sister and I

Just rewrote and i quite like it.
 

bmr1591

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A lot of nights, as I stare at our fire and dream about home, my mind gets wrapped up in a single thought. When you kill someone, when you watch the life fade from their eyes, do you lose a part of yourself? Do you lose something valuable you can never get back? When the Smiths killed their last boy, did a piece of their humanity die with them? And if so, are we all just dead inside?


A lot in there that I love about this little bit, especially considering the circumstances of what has happened (and hasn't happened yet).
 

Justobuddies

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My wife teaches and I gave her this quote while we were discussing education. I have yet to have a chance to have it work in a story, but I try nearly ever time.

"The learning is in the struggle so let them."
 

indianroads

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My wife teaches and I gave her this quote while we were discussing education. I have yet to have a chance to have it work in a story, but I try nearly ever time.

"The learning is in the struggle so let them."

Ok - not really related to writing... BUT:

I was teaching a karate class this morning and I recalled something a teacher had once said to me - funny thing is I don't really recall what we were studying, but I remember what he said in his first lecture, which was:

I am going to lie to you throughout this class, because that's what teaching is. Absolute truth can't be taught or spoken, only discovered. The art of teaching is of telling a series of lies, each a bit closer to the truth.
 

colorfultypewriter

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I clasped my hands together, rubbing them in each other, trying to spread a warmth through them. They felt numb, and they stung whenever I moved them around; the sensation reminded me of a fork or a sharpened pencil, poking lightly against my skin. I brought my hands shakily up to my mouth, and I breathed into them, letting the temperature of my shuddering breath heat them up. Now painted in the colors of setting hypothermia, my fingers trembled as they happily accepted this comforting warmth.

This has to be the favorite line(s)/paragraph I've written as of this year. I don't know why, but I can just feel the cold lingering in my fingertips.
 
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braveboy

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Disfigured M/C in 1960 Knoxville Tn.:

"'One of the guys at work had introduced him to a friendly working girl down on Magnolia Avenue, close to the bus terminal and he would go see her once a month. She charged him ten dollars for two hours in her room and didn't care about his face. He thought that was nice of her. Sometimes he would give her an extra dollar. She would even kiss him on the cheek now when he left and call him Sugar. He was a regular after all. She didn't mind how his face looked. She did care that he had ten dollars."