This was originally going to be a top ten list, but I should have known that that would about KILL me. So, in the end, I simply present to you a list of some of my favorite lines of literature:
Jude stopped in front of her and, with both hands cupping her face, tried to make a smile. Narnie flinched.
‘Leave her alone,’ Tate said.
‘I need a revelation,’ Jude said. ‘And you’re the only one that can give me one, Narns.”
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
“The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.”
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
“And Dimble, who had been sitting with his face drawn, and rather white, between the white faces of the two women, and his eyes on the table, raised his head, and great syllables of words that sounded like castles came out of his mouth.”
That Hiddeous Strength by C.S. Lewis
“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
“He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.”
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
“Do you remember all of your audiences?” Marco asks.
“Not all of them,” Celia says. “But I remember the people who look at me the way you do.”
“What way might that be?”
“As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me.”
“I am not afraid of you,” Marco says.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
“Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?”
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
“It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
“It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind.”
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
“It was a jumble, it was a mishmash, and somehow she pulled it together, somehow she threaded every different thing through the voice of a solitary mockingbird singing in the desert.”
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
“There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
“I saw a beached red dory. I could take the dory, row out to the guy, and say: Sir. You have found a place where the sky dips close.”
For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
What are your favorites?
JACKIE LEA SOMMERS 
“She sat like like patience on a monument. Smiling at grief.” Twelfth Night by Shakepeare
Love that!!!! I don’t read enough Shakespeare– usually only in tiny pieces or else watching a play– because it kind of hurts my head to sort through the old language!
Love ’em! Especially the Leif Enger sample. 🙂
“What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.”
-Godric, Frederick Buechner
“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
“Shatter me God into my thousand sounds . . .”
Christian Wiman
Oh wow, I LOVE those, Anna! I think I need to read Godric. I love everything Buechner writes, and yet, I still don’t read enough of him …
“Then it was you who wounded Aravis?”
“It was I.”
“But what for?”
“Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no-one any story but his own.”
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
“You cannot expect the man who made this shield to live easily under the rule of man who worked the sheath of [your] dagger . . . We know that your justice is more sure than ours, and when we rise against you, we see our hosts break against the discipline of your troops, as the sea breaks against a rock. And we do not understand, because all these things are the ordered pattern, and only the free curves of the shield-boss are real to us. We do not understand. And when the time comes that we begin to understand your world, too often we lose the understanding of our own.”
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff