Favorite lines you've written

From my first novel, it has to be this part near the end:

"Are you sure?" he asked in Kemetic. The stranger held her hand tighter to his chest. Through his shirt, she felt something odd-something ancient. His heart pounded a musical of familiarity. "Do not let your eyes fool your heart, my love. Look at the soul which resides within.” Small wrinkles creased under her eyes. She stared intently at the man whose eyes seemed to plead with her. “I remember the first day you sat on my lap and said to me, melodious beauty wants handsome king to come out and play."

In the second story, this is my favorite so far:
A small metal beast with glaring eyes screeched to a halt and the human trapped inside yelled at him. He hurried out of its way before it devoured him too.

My opening line of a published story I wrote a few years ago:

The devil knocked me out with six bourbon shots.

Jade A said:

That night goes smoothly. No one stares at him. No one speaks to him, but no one seems to be avoiding him, either. He wonders if the night before was his imagination. There was no reason for anyone to notice him, anyway. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He toes the line, but he doesn’t cross it.
Although their laws bind him like chains, he doesn’t fight them. He has no key to their lock, so why struggle? Better to accept fate.
Fate…
He will not fall. He refuses.

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I like it. Esp. this: He toes the line, but he doesn't cross it. I wonder if the line about having no key for their lock is literal or metaphorical. I'm going to imagine it's the latter.

kkbe said:

I like it. Esp. this: He toes the line, but he doesn't cross it. I wonder if the line about having no key for their lock is literal or metaphorical. I'm going to imagine it's the latter.

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thank you! it's metaphorical. he has a good life, but if he doesn't follow a series of laws to the letter, he may be sent to the underworld. so he's trapped

Jade A said:

That night goes smoothly. No one stares at him. No one speaks to him, but no one seems to be avoiding him, either. He wonders if the night before was his imagination. There was no reason for anyone to notice him, anyway. He hasn’t done anything wrong. He toes the line, but he doesn’t cross it.
Although their laws bind him like chains, he doesn’t fight them. He has no key to their lock, so why struggle? Better to accept fate.
Fate…
He will not fall. He refuses.

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Nice! Now, I want to know what happened the night before.

This will obviously not make it to the novel, which is why I had to share. I've been typing at speed to get some quick and rough scenes in my first draft. But some of my scenes rely on witty dialogue, and I just can't write that at speed. So I put some placeholder dialogue in instead, and...

'No,' said Archie. 'Just wait a minute here while we have some banter - let’s throw about some meaningless insults.'

'Here's an insult,' said Talis, 'Your horse is so lame, when the other horses want a potato, they say - look at that horse there. That's a potato.'

'Potatoes are an anachronism in this mock-medieval European landscape,' said Caflicen.

You win...

Their eyes are as dead as the waveless sea.
I tell myself mine glitter, like the stars.
They used to. On top of the Point. Beside Katie. My hand in hers.

It was 3 o'clock in the morning and Jimmy Joe Johnson, more commonly known as 3J was dying to scratch his left arm. He found it difficult to do though. That was probably because it was buried somewhere in a landfill near the old 3rd Army Surgical Hospital in Dong Tam Vietnam, and 3J was in Tennessee.

OMG these are all so good.

KnavesandKnots -
emstar94 -
braveboy -

Mary Mitchell said:

OMG these are all so good.

KnavesandKnots -
emstar94 -
braveboy -

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Thank you Mary. that was my first stab at posting something from my work, and frankly I was scared.
Doug

Mama always said how much she loved me. She told me she'd die for me. I believe she did love me enough to die for me, just not enough to live for me.

I did something very similar, @KnavesAndKnots! This is something I plonked in the middle of my manuscript as a placeholder. It could never actually be used for anything. But I did write these lines, so this counts.

“You can’t put the leaves in the bin, silly,” Alyssa told Trevor. “It’s locked until Tuesday.”

Trevor put a hand on her shoulder. But then he realized he couldn’t reach her shoulder because she was on a horse. An especially tall horse.

“What am I doing up here?” Alyssa asked, realizing she was on a horse.

“You’re on a horse.”

“Yes.”

Trevor glanced down. “I seem to be on a horse too.”

They were both on horses.

“Yes,” said Alyssa. “We are both on horses.”

Indeed, every single person at the Slanderley estate was on a horse, even the visitors.

“Where did all these bloody horses come from?” someone asked. But no one knew who or where he was.

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danaberrywrites said:

Mama always said how much she loved me. She told me she'd die for me. I believe she did love me enough to die for me, just not enough to live for me.

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I really like this one. it feels like it could even be the opening lines to a story

“This is wrong,” Belagon said, “This whole place is a demented perversion of what life should be.”

“Long-standing cultures that have been infected by religion generally are,” Novinus said in a low voice. “Let us go, I have seen enough.”

A piece of a lyric from an old country music cheating song went through my head, 'don’t let me cross over'… I crossed.

My favorite line is the one I wrote for a contest for "On the Premises". It got me a $10 prize even though I never finished the story that could come after it.

[FONT=&quot]I had never been on the wrong side of law enforcement before, but that changed when I was caught urinating on a grave – in a drunken rush I might add. I got arrested and dragged off to court, sued for vandalism by the zombie who “lived” there.[/FONT]

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“Oh and we’re not having sex if that’s what you’re worried about, Gael’s about as arousing as a bald horse drinking its own piss”

Was sixteen when I wrote it. Still think it's gold and so sad I can't get it in my re-write.

"Fish stuck in the cracks of the stones after every shipment so that the air blew rot instead of sea spray."

This came about as an exercise to avoid adjectives. I began by thinking of the phrase "there was a disgusting smell" and how I could incite disgust in the reader. rather than just telling them. Planning a blog post about it.

Goodness knows what I'll ever do with it, so I'll probably give it to my husband for one of his epic fantasy worlds he'll create.

The way she saw it, Natlin’s secret beau was all sweet nothings, with an emphasis on the nothing—but he made her sister happy.

From the third book in a four book family saga that is nearly wrapped up.

"By then Tonino had already carried Dorothy Marie back to their car after preventing her from leaping into her father's grave. Her screams were probably still echoing somewhere out on the nearby lake."

I'm in the phase of jotting little things down to later help fill out my novel. This is a little one I like:

"Just to be looked at is its own special thing."

EverlyE said:

"Fish stuck in the cracks of the stones after every shipment so that the air blew rot instead of sea spray."

This came about as an exercise to avoid adjectives. I began by thinking of the phrase "there was a disgusting smell" and how I could incite disgust in the reader. rather than just telling them. Planning a blog post about it.

Goodness knows what I'll ever do with it, so I'll probably give it to my husband for one of his epic fantasy worlds he'll create.

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That is gorgeous; it has such a nice rhythm to it.