# Greatest Sentence of All Time?



## barsoomcore (Mar 3, 2005)

From _The Gods of Mars_, by Edgar Rice Burroughs:



> There were two men and four females in the party and their ornaments denoted them as members of different hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, since the various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally at deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of Than Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordes associated in other than mortal combat.



Huh? Huh?

Tell me that's not frickin' LITERATURE, right there, baby.

LITERATURE.


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## jonesy (Mar 3, 2005)

I'm having unbelievable amounts of trouble trying to read that without having my brain explode from keeping up with what is actually being said. There should be a law against sentences that long.


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## Berandor (Mar 3, 2005)

Quoth the Raven, "Literature."

Indeed.


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## Clint (Mar 3, 2005)

"Pinky, I have devised a glorious sentence! Once it is crafted, it will be seen as _literature_! However, be still and do not hit that period."
"Yes, sir."
(type type comma type comma type comma)
"Pinky, stop shaking. Don't do it--I'm on a roll."
(type comma type type comma type comma type type _period_)
"Yeeeaaag! What did I tell you!"
"*_crying_* I am weak."


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## diaglo (Mar 3, 2005)

"They drew first blood, not me," John Rambo.


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## Tetsubo (Mar 3, 2005)

"Death came quietly to the Row."

A cookie if you can tell me what book it came from.

It's not a "WOW" type of sentence but it's my favorite lead into a novel.


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## Barendd Nobeard (Mar 3, 2005)

*It was a dark and stormy night.*


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## hong (Mar 3, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> From _The Gods of Mars_, by Edgar Rice Burroughs:
> 
> 
> Huh? Huh?
> ...



 No way is that the greatest sentence of all time. I mean, it has to compete with these, for starters.


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## Cthulhudrew (Mar 3, 2005)

Tetsubo said:
			
		

> "Death came quietly to the Row."




Sounds very Poe-ish. Is this from "Murders in the Rue Morgue?"

[EDIT] Never mind. Just googled it, and I was wrong.


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## JoeBlank (Mar 3, 2005)

One of my favorites has always been:



> During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.
> 
> -Poe




This to me is perhaps the most perfect opening line in literature. Others are great (A Tale of Two Cities, or Moby Dick, for example), but this single sentence sets the tone for the story and builds some anticipation for the reader, while remaining pleasant and easily understood. I likes it.


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## nakia (Mar 3, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Tell me that's not frickin' LITERATURE, right there, baby.
> 
> LITERATURE.




YES!  It is as if Faulkner went to Mars.  And thought about dinosaurs.

As for opening sentences, I am fond of "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed."  "In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit" is nice, too.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Mar 3, 2005)

nakia said:
			
		

> "In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit" is nice, too.




That's "In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit." If your going to qoute Tolkien, you better quote him correctly.


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## LizardWizard (Mar 3, 2005)

Read Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. Insane phrases like this can be found on every page of this monstruous novel.
However, English translators could have simplified the syntax, which isn't necessarily a bad thing...


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## Ishamael (Mar 3, 2005)

...Taim appeared as close to a smile as Rand had ever seen him. "Kneel and swear to the Lord Dragon," he said softly, "or you will be knelt."


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## Ishamael (Mar 3, 2005)

John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

...Don't give me that look. It is literature.


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## Psychic Warrior (Mar 3, 2005)

"I never thought anything that kinky could happen to _me_ but there I was delivering a pizza when the 'lady' of the house answered the door; she was [deleted by censor]."


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## Mallus (Mar 3, 2005)

OK, so there aren't any dinosaurs...

Or full-figured princesses from towns named after elements...

But I have to go with a classic...

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

Makes me want to be lapsed Catholics, it really does...


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## Gomez (Mar 3, 2005)

"For thousands more years, the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming onto the first planet they came across -- which happened to be the Earth -- where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog."


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## Pielorinho (Mar 3, 2005)

My all time favorite:



			
				1984 said:
			
		

> It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen




Daniel


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## barsoomcore (Mar 3, 2005)

It's not a sentence, but this passage always gives me chills:


> Suddenly the slim form went limp. The man eased her to the earth, and touched her brow lightly.
> 
> "Dead!" he muttered.
> 
> ...



I'm so glad I read pulp fantasy. That rocks.

And I'm being facetious neither here nor in my original post. I love this stuff. A lot.

Especially when it's illustrated by Frank Frazetta...


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## Krieg (Mar 3, 2005)

_"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."_ 





			
				Psychic Warrior said:
			
		

> "I never thought anything that kinky could happen to _me_ but there I was delivering a pizza when the 'lady' of the house answered the door; she was [deleted by censor]."




All you had to say was "Dear Penthouse..."


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Mar 3, 2005)

"Thunder rolled....it rolled a six."


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## MonsterMash (Mar 3, 2005)

I like this one


> The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.


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## Pielorinho (Mar 3, 2005)

MonsterMash said:
			
		

> I like this one




I love that one, too, and think about it all the time!

My favorite part of it is how drastically it has changed.  When it was written, it referred to grainy, hissing static:  the sky it described was stormy, charged with energy, gray.

But now, a television tuned to a dead channel will usually appear brilliant blue.  Now the sky it refers to is sterile, artificial, full of quiet but ominous energy.

It totally changes the feel of the first scene (and by extension, alters the entire novel's atmosphere in a subtle fashion), but the change works pretty well.  I think it's awesome, and I bet that Gibson is pretty pleased with it too, inasmuch as it says something about technology that he loves to say.

Daniel


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## ragboy (Mar 3, 2005)

Blood Meridian said:
			
		

> Whatever exists, he said, whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent




Best quote from my favorite book.


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## howandwhy99 (Mar 3, 2005)

> "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
> There is another which states that this has already happened."



Yeah, Poe is great and all, but I think Adams has him by a nose. Literally.


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## Fast Learner (Mar 3, 2005)

I'll go with another Adams fave: "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."


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## barsoomcore (Mar 3, 2005)

It is surely no coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the phrase, "As pretty as an airport."



Douglas Adams, we miss you.

A lot.


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## replicant2 (Mar 3, 2005)

Tetsubo said:
			
		

> "Death came quietly to the Row."
> 
> A cookie if you can tell me what book it came from.
> 
> It's not a "WOW" type of sentence but it's my favorite lead into a novel.




I'm at work so I don't have a reference, but I'm guessing Stephen King's *The Green Mile*.


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## Tom Cashel (Mar 3, 2005)

Two of my faves:



> A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.






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


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## Wombat (Mar 3, 2005)

Personally, I fairly worship long sentences that are fully under control.  

Short, declaritive sentences are all very fine in their place, what with their subject-verb-object all regimentally aligned, and yet there is something truly wondrous about a sentence that meanders in the manner of common conversation, full of circumlocutions and ellipses of thought.  

Yep, long sentences rule.


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## Olorin (Mar 3, 2005)

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



I love that line.


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## shilsen (Mar 3, 2005)

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:
			
		

> "Thunder rolled....it rolled a six."



 There's good and there's great, but that ... now that is sublime! Millennium hand and shrimp!


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## Ferret (Mar 3, 2005)

"Therefore farewell. I see thou knows't me not."

Ok not the greatest but I like it If I poured over some terry pratchett, read some more steven king and in general more I'd be able to pick a better one.


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## Welverin (Mar 3, 2005)

I'm partial to the first sentence of _To Reign in Hell_ by Brust, which I can't quote because I'm not home at teh moment and even if I was it wouldn't matter because a friend has my copy of the book at the moment.


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## jgbrowning (Mar 3, 2005)

Every angel is terrible.

-Rilke

joe b.


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## Someone (Mar 3, 2005)

Speaking of sentences...



> En un lugar de la mancha,de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.


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## physicscarp (Mar 3, 2005)

Just a few of my favorites



> Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.





> Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub; It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.



And for me, nothing beats


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


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## Mark Chance (Mar 3, 2005)

Barendd Nobeard said:
			
		

> *It was a dark and stormy night.*




You left out the second part: "I had taken a creative writing course."


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## arnon (Mar 3, 2005)

I'll agree that any quote of Adams is good, I love them all. This is one of my favorite:



			
				Marvin said:
			
		

> The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten millions years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."


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## replicant2 (Mar 4, 2005)

Here's three from *Return of the King*:

"For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."


"And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey-rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was pulled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."


"Well, I'm back," he said.


All three passages concern Sam, the everyman and real hero of the story.


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## Tarrasque Wrangler (Mar 4, 2005)

From John Steinbeck's _Cannery Row_:



> Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.


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## Testament (Mar 4, 2005)

Joseph Heller's Catch 22 said:
			
		

> Actually, there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa.  It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination.  Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large, fine rambling shingled building.  It was truly a splendid structure, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.




One of my favourite passages from a truly hysterical book.


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## Shieldhaven (Mar 4, 2005)

I cheat and include a whole paragraph.  I'll go with this:

"Armorica is next.  The Land across the Sea.  Beautiful Ynys Trebes, King Ban, Lancelot, Galahad, and Merlin.  Dear Lord, what men they were, what days we had, what fights we gave and dreams we broke. In Armorica."

Doubleplus points to people who recognize this.  It's one of my favorite books of All Time.

And some Old English:

Wyrd oft nereð​unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen dēah!

And finally, even more cheating, but easy to recognize.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.  It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning--

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Haven


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## Captain Tagon (Mar 4, 2005)

From the poem of the same name that is the reason that one of the more common favorite sentences exists



> Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came




Song title by The Chariot



> Someday, In The Event That Mankind Actually Figures Out What It Is That This World Revolves Around, Thousands Of People Are Going To Be Shocked And Perplexed To Find Out That It Was Not Them. Sometimes This Includes Me.


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## hong (Mar 4, 2005)

Shieldhaven said:
			
		

> I cheat and include a whole paragraph.  I'll go with this:
> 
> "Armorica is next.  The Land across the Sea.  Beautiful Ynys Trebes, King Ban, Lancelot, Galahad, and Merlin.  Dear Lord, what men they were, what days we had, what fights we gave and dreams we broke. In Armorica."
> 
> Doubleplus points to people who recognize this.  It's one of my favorite books of All Time.




Well, OBVIOUSLY it's from the Leonard Bernstein musical West Side Story, in particular the prelude to the hit single, "Armorica".

I like to be in Armorica, Okay by me in Armorica.
Everything free in Armorica, For a small fee in Armorica.


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## Berandor (Mar 4, 2005)

hong said:
			
		

> Well, OBVIOUSLY it's from the Leonard Bernstein musical West Side Story, in particular the prelude to the hit single, "Armorica".
> 
> I like to be in Armorica, Okay by me in Armorica.
> Everything free in Armorica, For a small fee in Armorica.



 I love that song


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## Cassiel (Mar 4, 2005)

Tom Cashel said:
			
		

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



Come on now, if you're going for great sentences with _him_, go for the gold. Err, blue.


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## nakia (Mar 4, 2005)

Shieldhaven said:
			
		

> So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
> 
> Haven




Love this book.


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## Desdichado (Mar 4, 2005)

Shieldhaven said:
			
		

> I"Armorica is next.  The Land across the Sea.  Beautiful Ynys Trebes, King Ban, Lancelot, Galahad, and Merlin.  Dear Lord, what men they were, what days we had, what fights we gave and dreams we broke. In Armorica."



That's _The Winter King_ by Bernard Cornwall, I believe.

Yep, I like that book too.


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## Tom Cashel (Mar 4, 2005)

Cassiel said:
			
		

> Come on now, if you're going for great sentences with _him_, go for the gold. Err, blue.




Oh, it's not _that_ blue. It's not even the longest sentence in literature anymore. There are 13,955 words in the longest sentence in literature. It is in _The Rotters' Club_ by Jonathan Coe.

Here's one of my all-time favorite passages from Ulysses (which is concerned, partly, with my all-time favorite beer):



> However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place.


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## Shieldhaven (Mar 4, 2005)

*soundly thrashes Berandor*   

And Joshua Dyal is of course correct.

I like this game!

Haven


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## Desdichado (Mar 4, 2005)

*YEEHAUGH!!!*  Doubleplus points to me!  So, do I get a free TV or something?  How about a coupon for a free Mountain Dew?


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Mar 4, 2005)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> How about a coupon for a free Mountain Dew?




You get a coupon for something close to TWO Mountain Dews. How? Why, its green, has Lincoln on it, and the number 5.


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## Desdichado (Mar 4, 2005)

Sure, send that coupon on over!


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## Ankh-Morpork Guard (Mar 4, 2005)

No, no, no. You should already have it.


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## jester47 (Mar 4, 2005)

This is one of my favorite passages...

"I am very old, O man of the waste countries; long and long ago I came to this planet with others of my world, from the green planet Yag, which circles for ever in the outer fringe of this universe.  We swept through space on mighty wings that drove us through the cosmos quicker than light, because we had warred with the kings of Yag and were defeated and outcast.  But we could never return, for on earth our wings withered from our shoulders."  

 ~Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"


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## Cassiel (Mar 5, 2005)

Tom Cashel said:
			
		

> It's not even the longest sentence in literature anymore. There are 13,955 words in the longest sentence in literature. It is in _The Rotters' Club_ by Jonathan Coe.



I don't think it was ever the longest sentence, just the one that ran on without punctuation the longest. Plenty of classical manuscripts could give it a run for its money in that regard. My favorite is probably the "I...AM. A." from Nausikaa. Oxen of the Sun is a good episode too though!


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## Berandor (Mar 5, 2005)

I am fascinated by "the Foucault pendulum" (or whatever it's English title is) by Eco. I want to read it. Once, I got to page hundred-and-something, but I didn't make it. It's no biggie. I'll try again. And perhaps next time is the right time for me. 

The problems I had with this book - and the fascination - can be described easily. You know they always say you should grab your reader with the first sentence, the first paragraph of your book? Eco starts of with a mathematical explanation involving the number Pi, square roots, and a whole slew more that is bound to leave all but the most capable reader at least somewhat confused.

Unfortunately, I could not find the first paragraph online, or I'd have quoted to you the third and fourth sentence. I could quote it in German, but I would be at a loss to translate the mathematical terms, and you'd be at a loss to understand German. So instead, I will traverse further, and give you the seventh paragraph, a great, great paragraph about the Pendulum:


			
				Umberto Eco said:
			
		

> Idiot. Above her head was the only stable place in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business, not hers. A moment later the couple went off -- he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter -- their first and last encounter -- with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude?


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## Fast Learner (Mar 5, 2005)

It's called _Foucalt's Pendulum_ here, and it's really fantastic. Just a great, great book.


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## Templetroll (Mar 6, 2005)

The apocryphal 'beginning sentence to really _grab _ the reader...':

"Hell!", cried the Duchess, as she waved her wooden leg!


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## The Forsaken One (Mar 7, 2005)

I think I'll go for:



> Your gp or your hp!






> I'm gonna be rich and famous after I invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet.


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## domino (Mar 7, 2005)

Tetsubo said:
			
		

> "Death came quietly to the Row."
> 
> A cookie if you can tell me what book it came from.
> 
> It's not a "WOW" type of sentence but it's my favorite lead into a novel.



It's one of the Matador books.  I don't know which one, but I know that nearly ALL of them start with death coming somehow to somewhere.


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## AelyaShade (Mar 7, 2005)

"O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place."


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## Macbeth (Mar 7, 2005)

My favorite opener: "Maman died today." - The Stranger by Albert Camus (Trans. Matthew Ward).

"People are always asking, did I know about Tyler Durdern" - Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Seems like just any other sentence at first but it keeps on meaning more throughout the book.

"I am the way into woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way to eternal sorrow.

Sacred Justice Moved my Architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
primordial love and ultimate intellect.

Only those elements time cannot wear
were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here." - The Inferno by Dante. Gotta love Dante

"I always knew it would be this way." - The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis. Quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, right up there with Palahniuk, Pratchett, and Adams. Given even more weight by the movie version's excellent adaption.


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## Frostmarrow (Mar 7, 2005)

"He came one evening in April — came like a whirlwind, an earthenware jug hanging from a belly-strap flung round his neck." 

That's the beginning of The People of Hemsö. I kind of like how it introduces the anti-hero Carlsson. Even though it's translated it still is kind of funky.


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## Umbran (Mar 7, 2005)

"Pass me another elf, sergeant.  Mine's split."


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## Felikeries (Mar 7, 2005)

ok well i 'll just tap this baby through



> The gowns of lavish laces,yet tuffened sufferage to present a fine and great girl,layde crossed with velvets and strict leathur boots,hands fealing the worlds answers as if a ‘divination’by their presence alone,so sweet to look upon,as though the feeding roots to the tree of life or Layzon magics




Alliyah Stormrider of Doom


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## Mallus (Mar 8, 2005)

I'm not sure I can top the above for anti-lucidity, but it did indirectly remind me of one of my favorite writers, Denis Johnson...

From _Car Crash While Hitchiking_



> Down the hall came the wife. She was glorious, burning. She didn't know yet that her husband was dead. We knew. That's what gave her such power over us. The doctor took her into a room with a desk at the end of the hall, and from under the closed door a slab of brilliance radiated as if, by some stupendous process, diamonds were being incinerated in there. What a pair of lungs! She shrieked as I imagined an eagle would shriek. It felt wonderful to be alive to hear it! I've gone looking for that feeling everywhere.




and from _Dundun_



> "McGinness isn't feeling too good. I just shot him.






> Would you believe there was kindness in his heart? The left hand didn't know what the right was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.


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## Mark Chance (Mar 9, 2005)

Here are two bona fide award-winners:

"She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon."

"On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained."


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## Pbartender (Mar 9, 2005)

Because I just read the story, and the sentence is fresh in my mind...

"It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourn through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives."


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## Testament (Mar 9, 2005)

Umbran said:
			
		

> "Pass me another elf, sergeant.  Mine's split."




NO!  NO!  NOT GRUNTS!

Hysterical book, I was waiting for this one to come up.

By the way, it was "This one's split."


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## Quasqueton (Mar 10, 2005)

I've never been able to see how "It was a dark and stormy night" is a bad sentence. I am a professional writer and editor, and I fully understand the sentence. It is supposedly the ultimate example of bad writing, but I just don't get the problem. <shrug>

Quasqueton


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## mojo1701 (Mar 10, 2005)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> I've never been able to see how "It was a dark and stormy night" is a bad sentence. I am a professional writer and editor, and I fully understand the sentence. It is supposedly the ultimate example of bad writing, but I just don't get the problem. <shrug>
> 
> Quasqueton




I think it's because it's been used so much, as an introduction in a story.


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## barsoomcore (Mar 10, 2005)

It's not the ultimate example in bad writing. I believe it became famous as the first line that Snoopy typed over and over again when he was being a world-famous author.

For those who are interested, I can quote Snoopy's entire completed "novel" from memory:


			
				Snoopy said:
			
		

> It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!
> 
> Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.
> 
> ...



As Snoopy says, see how neatly it all ties together?  

I may have gotten that last paragraph a little off. It's been a while since I read it. Like twenty-five years.


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## Quasqueton (Mar 10, 2005)

Well, I just went and looked up the *whole* sentence:



> "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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
> --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)



I didn't realize there was more to the sentence. Now I understand how it is bad.

Quasqueton


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## shilsen (Mar 10, 2005)

Quasqueton said:
			
		

> Well, I just went and looked up the *whole* sentence:
> 
> I didn't realize there was more to the sentence. Now I understand how it is bad.
> 
> Quasqueton



 You think that's bad? Try actually reading a chapter or so of Bulwer-Lytton's work. Just don't forget to keep something nearby for the bleeding eyes.


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## Thotas (Mar 11, 2005)

This is a passage I just love; I apologize for it's length, but I think it's worthy.  Anybody recognize it?  I'll be back in a couple of days to check, and if nobody's identified it yet, I'll provide the reference.

“Across the Glittering Plains, which stretch as far as the eye can see from the steep rock on which Valhalla is built, Wotan had mustered the Army of the Storm.  In their squadrons and regiments were assembled the Light and Dark Elves, the spirits of the unquiet dead, the hosts of Hela.  At the head of each regiment rode a Valkyrie, dressed in her terrifying armour, the very sight of which is enough to turn the wits of the most fearless of heroes.  Around his shoulders, Wotan cast the Mantle of Terror, and on his head he fastened the helmet that the dwarves had made him from the fingernails of dead champions in the gloomy caverns of Nifleheim. He nodded his head, and Loge brought him the great spear Gungnir, the symbol and source of all his power.  When he had first come to rule the earth, he had cut its shaft from the branches of Yggdrasil, the great ash tree that stands between the worlds, causing the tree to wither and die and making inevitable the final downfall of the Gods.  Onto this spearshaft, Loge had marked the runes of the Great Covenant between the God and his subjects.

Wotan raised his right hand, and the Valkyrie Waltraute, who closed the eyes of men in battle, led forward his eight-legged horse, the cloud-trampling Sleipnir.  Above his head hovered two black ravens.

Without a word, Wotan vaulted onto the back of his charger.  As the first bolt of lightning ripped the black clouds he brandished the great spear as a sgn to his army to his army, the _Wutunde Heer.
_
It was over a thousand years since the hosts of Valhalla had ridden to war on the wings of the storm, and the world had forgotten how to be afraid.  Like a  vast cloud of locusts or a shower of arrows they flew, blotting out the light from the earth.  At the head of the wild procession galloped Wotan; behind him Donner, Tyr, Froh, Heimdall, Njord, and Loge, who carried the banner of darkness.  Close on their heels came the eight Valkyries; Grimgerde, Waltraute, Seigrune, Helmwige, Ortlinde, Schwertleite, Gerhilde, and Rossweise, baying like wolves to spur on the grim company that followed them, the terrible spirits of fear and discord. Each of the eight companies bore its own hideous banner -- Hunger, War, Disease, Intolerance, Ignorance, Greed, Hatred and Despair; these were the badges of Wotan’s army.  Behind the army like a pack of hounds intoxicated by the chase followed the wind and the rain, lashing indiscriminately at friend and foe.  Behind them, forests were flattened, towns and villages were swept away, even the mountains seemed to tremble and cower at the fury of their passing.  With a rush, they swept over the Norn Fells and past the dead branches of the World Ash.  As they passed it, lightning fell among its withered leaves, setting it alight.  Soon the whole fell was burning, and the flames hissed and swayed at the foot of Valhalla Rock.  As the army of the God of Battles passed between the worlds, the castle itself caught fire and began to burn furiously, lighting up the whole world with a bright red glow.

The army passed high over the frozen desert of the Arctic, convulsing the ice-covered waters with the shock of their motion, and flitted over Scandinavia like an enormous bird of prey, whose very shadow paralyses the helpless victim.  As they wheeled and banked over Germany, the Rhine rose up as if to meet them, bursting its banks and flooding  the flat plains between Essen  and Nijmegen.  Wotan, his whole form framed with the lightning, laughed when he saw it, and his laughter brought towers and cathedrals crashing to the ground.  And as the army followed its dreadful course, black clouds of squeaking, gibbering  spirits leapt up to swell its numbers, as all the dark, tormented forces of the earth were drawn as if capillary action into the fold of the Lord of Tempests.  The very noise of their wings was deafening, and when they swept low the earth split open, as if shrinking back in horror.  But however vast and awesome this great force might seem, most terrible of all was Wotan, like a burning arrow at its head.  As he flew headlong over the North Sea, the heat of his anger turned the waters to steam, and soon the forests of Scotland were burning as brightly as Valhalla itself.  As the army neared its goal, it seemed to concentrate into a cloud of tangible darkness, forcing its way through the air as it bore down like a meteor on one little village in the West of England.”


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## Elemental (Mar 13, 2005)

"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."

Bill Bryson, _The Lost Continent_ 


"And so I step up into the darkness, or else the light."

Margaret Atwood, _The Handmaid's Tale_ 


"On the way back home to a simple breakfast, one of them dropped off at the Guild of Assassins to pay his respects to his old friend Lord Downey, during which current affairs were only lightly touched upon. And Reacher Gilt, wherever he had gone, was now certainly the worst insurance risk in the world. The people who guard the rainbow don't like those who get in the way of the sun."

Terry Pratchett, _Going Postal_


"Trembling as if he were on the verge of deflagration, he spoke the name he had been hoarding to himself ever since he had begun to understand the implications of what he meant to do.
The name of a Sandgorgon.
"Nom.""

Stephen Donaldson, _White Gold Wielder_ 


"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances, he could be the baddest mother***** in the world."

Neal Stephenson, _Snow Crash_


"A sweeping blade of flashing steel riveted from the massive barbarians hide enameled shield as his rippling right arm thrust forth, sending a steel shod blade to the hilt into the soldiers
vital organs.  The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid.

The enthused barbarian swilveled about, his shock of fiery red hair tossing robustly in the humid air currents as he faced the attack of the defeated soldier's fellow in arms."

Jim Theis, _The Eye of Argon_


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## Silver Moon (Mar 13, 2005)

diaglo said:
			
		

> "They drew first blood, not me," John Rambo.



Fantastic book, one of the best cat-and-mouse chase thrillers ever written - awful movie.


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## Fenris (Mar 13, 2005)

Alright let's see if someone recognizes this:

"Though likely to attack only in cold blood, and killing only for money, they remained masters of the low blow and the gang-up. They were crack shots and very handy with all sorts of equalizers, and any small, slow, and stupid beast that turned it's back on a group of boggies was looking for a stomping"

Man, it's hard to type it without twittering


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## Thotas (Mar 14, 2005)

Fenris, I may be wrong, 'cause I haven't read it in ages, but the reference to "a group of boggies" makes me guess "Bored of the Rings".

As for the long quote I posted a couple of days ago, it's Tom Holt.  Holt is a British author who writes humorous fantasy, so I wanted to see if he got recognition on this thread full of quotes by the clever Adams and the glorious Pratchett.  He's got a different style from either of theirs, but I recommend that fans of theirs check him out.  That quote was from the best Holt I've read so far, "Expecting Someone Taller".


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## Conaill (Mar 17, 2005)

hong said:
			
		

> No way is that the greatest sentence of all time. I mean, it has to compete with these, for starters.



Gotta love this one:

    The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
    --Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 Winner)



[edit] Or last year's winner, for that matter:

    She resolved to end the love affair with Ramon tonight . . . summarily, like Martha Stewart ripping the sand vein out of a shrimp's tail . . . though the term "love affair" now struck her as a ridiculous euphemism . . . not unlike "sand vein," which is after all an intestine, not a vein . . . and that tarry substance inside certainly isn't sand . . . and that brought her back to Ramon.
    Dave Zobel, Manhattan Beach, CA (2004 Winner)


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## freebfrost (Mar 23, 2005)

"[Pollution] had taken over when Pestilence, muttering about penicilin, had retired in 1936."

-- _Good Omens_ by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett; about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.


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## Rel (Mar 24, 2005)

"He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead."


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