Bitchery reader Amy wrote and asked me a question that I’ve had a ball pondering as I look back over my readering history:
When I was fourteen, I bought my first Harlequin at a yard sale and read it so many times that now, at 40, I can repeat paragraphs of it. (Sara Craven, Solitaire. Last line of dialog: “There is a time in the life of every jeune fille in which the locking of doors is required. Your time is now.”)
I was curious if you two—or if your readers had the same experience—we never forget our first, right? Which book popped our cherries, and how much do we remember?
We’ve definitely discussed this topic before, and I’ve written about the first romance I read, Midsummer Magic by Catherine Coulter. But the dialogue Amy quoted?
That’s kinda hot, right there. Damn.
So I got to thinking – what dialogue do I remember years after reading it? My memory, it is a funky, funky place. I can recite the last paragraph of Great Expectations, probably due to too many viewings of the Beauty and the Beast pilot, but romance dialogue doesn’t often stick in my brain.
Notable exception: one brother in the Quinn quartet by Nora Roberts, and I want to say it was Philip but not in the novel wherein he was the hero, rants about wanting privacy and says he’s going to go live in a bunker and change his name to “Pierre.” For some reason, I laughed so hard at that I fell off my beach chair, and even now, when I get irritated at too large of a crowd, Hubby will ask me if I’m heading for the bunker.
I don’t know that I’d make a good Pierre.
So what line of dialogue from a romance has rocked your socks to the point that, long after those socks were lost in the dryer, you still remember it?
And anyone got a lead on a really cushy bunker with wifi? Lemme know
Hmm, no, but you’ve reminded me I can play DVDs on my computer. I shall lock the door and pretend I’m working. Hey…it’s sort of like research, right?
Oh, Rina, YES.I’ll probably end up rereading it tonight. *g*
Warrior’s Woman!! Just knowing the title makes me loathe the book more!
Busting the Alpha hero mold, pacing, showing vs. telling, dynamic subplots? It’s *totally* research.
Are we really going to start sighing over the friggin’ brilliance of Joss Whedon? Gawd, his brain just does it for me. Can not wait for his new series.
If we’re doing movies and tv:
John love-to-love-you-baby Cusack, Say Anything.
“Friends with potential.”
“That girl made me trust myself.” Never wept over a guy being broken hearted before.
The end where he tells Diane’s father—in jail—what he’s going to do with his future, “I want to be with your daughter. I’m good at it,” or something like.
And Farscape. Crichton to Aeryn as they wait for the nuclear bomb they just armed in a Scarran ship to go off…with them still in the ship.
Crichton (totally dead pan): “Love you.”
Aeryn: “Love you too.”
OH scifi romantic brilliance!
In Farscape, the scene where Crichton is describing to Aeryn that he’s re-named all the stars; that the one star that he always looks for, that is his reference point, is called Aeryn.
*sigh*
My first romance was “Lydia Garth,” a fairly mild historical fiction book set in the Revolutionary War period. I would check it out from the junior high library so much that the librarian finally just gave it to me. Apparently I was the only person who had ever checked it out.
Deb Kinnard: Katherine was my first and only! I was fifteen and just getting my very first boyfriend. And despite myself I loved the book.
Definitely not my first romance but one bit of dialogue that cracks me up every time I read it is from “Lady Be Good” by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. The English heroine Emma is desperately trying to lose her reputation so she can escape an engagement to a member of the English gentry. She’s in a drugstore in Texas buying every questionable thing she can get her hands on. Here is what the hero says when he sees her purchases:
“Now, this is where I draw the line! It’s bad enough everybody in town’s going to be thinkin’ I’m sleeping with a depressed, lice-ridden, hemorrhoidal foreigner who likes to be tied up and might be pregnant, although – since she’s just about cornered the market on condoms – I don’ t know how that could have happened. But I will not – you listen to me, Emma! – I absolutely will not have anybody thinkin’ a woman of mine needs a vaginal moisturizer, do you hear me?”
I laugh every time I read it…
Jane Austen’s Persuasion: “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.†That was my dreamy sigh, book clutching moment. It’s so simple and poetic at the same time, I read it over and over.
Sigh… me too…
bwahahahahaha just based on this quote, I’m going to find this book and read it!! My kind of humor!
Another sigh here for Wentworth in Persuasion.
And what about Jamie Fraser from Outlander? What a golden tongue. I loaned my copies to my daughter, or I’d probably drag them out and quote from Voyager (my favorite, because they are older). Without the books to get the quotes right, I’ll have to settle for a couple of short ones:
Cat Marsters: That Beatrice/Benedick scene gets me every time. I just teared up at her last line :>
Lisa, I’m so glad you reminded me! At one point I owned the novel version of The Empire Strikes Back, and the page containing that exchange between Han and Leia got a bit worn out because of how often I read it.
…And… not so much a Squee!moment as a LOL!moment… I remember a line in the first “sexy” romance I ever got my hands on, Dark Before the Rising Sun, where the hero is kissing the heroine and “she could feel his ardor through her skirts.” I didn’t know what the word “ardor” meant and decided it was another word for guy-parts. (I was 12; go figure.)
Actually, I think I was more entertained by the loving descriptions of period clothing than the protagonists’ relationship. 😀
Also from the Quinn quartet: “So, are you going to paint her, or poke at her?” one of the Quinn brothers to Seth, in the 4th book. One has to have read the previous 3 to really appreciate this.
From Cry No More, about two-thirds into the book, Diaz to Milla: “I’d give my left nut to be inside you right now.”
Oh, that Scarlet Pimpernel passage. Le sigh.
I’ve been on the Kushiel train since 2003. Never got off, don’t plan to. Though I won’t get the next book till the end of the month since I don’t get home till then! ::pout::
Oh, and Cat Marsters, there are so many different bits of Buffy dialogue that have made me turn into a puddle of goo that it’s not even funny. Although that does make me think of one of my favourite exchanges from Veronica Mars, the one that had me shrieking like a mad thing at the television and rewinding the DVR at least six times just to watch that little segment over and over again. The boyfriend was extremely confused.
Ooh, those Sharon Green books were horrible! I tried two or three as a kid and never finished one because they made me so angry. Our public library (in San Francisco) had them with sci-fi rather than romance.
One of my favorite JC lines is in Bet Me, and Min is on the phone with her awful mother:
Mother: “Probably the kind who thinks he’s an eight and you’re a four. Men are shallow and treacherous. Wear something slimming.”
Min: “He’s a ten, mother. And I’m not slim.”
And I wanted to second Snarkhunter’s love of the final proposal scene in “Gaudy Night” (most romantic non-romance ever!) and add a note about the Latin: in Latin there are different forms for asking a question depending on whether you expect the answer to be positive or negative. In all Peter’s earlier proposals he started with “num,” which expects a negative, whereas the “-ne” ending expects the positive… “placetne” literally means “it pleases?” as opposed to the earlier proposals amounting to “I suppose you won’t marry me?”
Someone mentioned Han Solo and Princess Leia – the scene where he’s just about to be frozen, and Leia struggles forward and shouts, “I love you!” and Solo says, “I know.” Gets. Me. Every. Time.
That reminded me of the scene in Willow, when the love potion has worn off Madmartigan after he’s spouted some flowery tributes to Sorsha. She’s confronting him, and the dialogue goes thusly:
hour88 – I’d like to spend another 88 hours looking up all my favourite romantic moments 🙂
Weird-“Midsummer Magic” was the first romance I ever read, too. That’s why I’ll always have a soft spot for Catherine Coulter (her historicals, anyway).
Middlemarch, always Middlemarch:
“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes. And moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’sâ€
swoon
Benedict to Beatrice in “Much Ado”—not your typical romance novel but heck, it ruined me for Real Life.
I have no self-control…
From Neal Stephenson’s brilliant “The Confusion” – and leaving out character-names so that it’s not too much of a spoiler:
All Through the Night, Connie Brockway
I swear, this scene is so smokin’ hawt, I almost had to take a shower after reading it…20 times… ahem.
Makes me want to hunt down the book and read the whole thing over again.
HELL yes. I love that so much because it’s a) romantic and b) funny. In equal measures. I try to write like that…it’s something to aspire to!
I have a great many problems with “Much Ado,” but Beatrice and Benedick’s lines just make me really happy. I can’t control this. “Prince! Thou art sad! Get thee a wife!”
Not to mention:
Hee.
And on that note—good my lord but this Kushiel’s Dart poem is dirty. (Yum.)
Yes, I did go searching. I’m leaving out some. It’s on page 334 if you want it in entirety, but I can do without the bird parts.
And poor Alcuin, whose story I was FAR more interested in for a very long time… “My lord, you have not even asked to see my marque finished….Will you see?…. Everything I have done, I have done for you. Will you not do this one thing for me?”
Much Ado… the line that rips me apart…
Ouch, ouch!! Stab, twist! OMG, she’s ME!!!
Oh, jeezo-peezo, the beach read post just reminded me of the single funniest scene in any book EVAH!
Katie MacAlister’s The Corset Diaries:
After a day of wearing a tight corset, combined with too rich foods, our heroine’s intestinal tract LOUDLY and FORCEFULLY proclaimed it’s upset in front of an entire household of staff she was meeting for the first time. Well, after I finished SCREAMING with laughter, I started to read again only to encounter this phrase that our mortified heroine delivered in a deadpan delivery to her gobsmacked audience:
That not only set me off screaming with laughter again, but brought my family running to see what the hell was wrong with me. It was made even funnier because the hero also busted out laughing.
(okay, it’s 12 year old boy bathroom humor but’s it’s still teh funnah),
Crusie’s muffin vs donut scene makes me LMAO every time in Faking It.
West Wing, Danny to CJ in the last episode:
last line, ever time, pow that is both hot and sweet
(uh, second to last line)
Dylan Thomas from Fern Hill:
Freedom and Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull—not strictly a romance. Not not a romance either, if you see what I mean. James asks Susan to marry him, and then she says no. And then:
“May I ask you once a year, every 7th of December. In case the answer changes?”
“Yes. I don’t think it will.”
“Oh. I only ask because I hate the thought of not having breakfast with you for the rest of my life.”
“My dear,” I said. “Jamie. That’s a different question.”
SUCH a great book. Just wonderful. Now I’m tempted to re-read.
OMG, Rene, that is my favorite book all time. “Stoud footware and serviceable stays.”
And later –
“I have been mislead.”
“Hm?”
(In response to the lack of stays, serviceable or otherwise.)
Well see now, this is cheating. Look, if you guys are going to do movies, AND Joss Whedon, and a loose general definition of romance, then I demand to be allowed to put forth Captain Mal and Serenity:
*sobs*
If other people are quoting Joss Whedon, then I’m going to quote Serenity. It’s after Mal has picked up Inara from the Training House because The Operative crashed it, and she’s returned to the ship.
And now my favorite couple in the entirety of anything Joss Wedon has ever written: Kaylee Frye and Simon Tam.
Ahem. Shame the show was canceled.
I’m coming to this comment stream late, but must add one to the Georgette Heyer examples.
Georgette Heyer, the end of Venetia:
Venetia arrives at Damerel’s house (he doesn’t expect her and has been mourning losing her)
Damerel realises the impropriety of her staying, and says she can’t stay (in the rather stubborn manner of those who have drink taken). Venetia amiably responds to this:
Shortly after, Venetia’s uncle arrives, testy from his own long journey:
Wonderful, subtle, yes PLEASE writing! One of my favourite Georgette Heyers.
Delurking on account of the Joss Whedon love.
One of the most romantic scenes for me, ever, is when Tara comes back to Willow, and she goes on about how getting back together is hard, and they can’t just expect to go back to things right away, and should take time to get to know each other again, and ends with
” …can we just skip it? Can you just be kissing me
now?”
Bringing it down a level (sorry, because I love the Heyer and the Elliot and the Whedon), but if we’re talking TV, then everything Pacey ever said to Joey (because I was young and extremely impressionable at the age of 15 when Dawson’s Creek was on the telly, and did I say sorry?):
Pacey: “I remember everything.” (Meriam: swoon, sigh)
——
Joey: So… is this… some sort of… recent new development in your life?
Pacey: Wanting to kiss you? No. It’s sort of always there… like… white noise, or… the secret service or the threat of nuclear war, for that matter. Just somethin’ you get used to.
——-
Pacey: Actually, um, hold on. I’m not done yet. Because I also want for you to be happy. It’s really important for me that you be happy. So I want you to be with someone, whether it be Dawson or New York guy or some man that you haven’t even met yet. But I want you to be with someone who can be a part of the life that you want for yourself. I want you to be with someone who makes you feel like I feel when I’m with you. So, I guess the point to this long run-on sentence that’s been the last 10 years of our lives is just that the simple act of being in love with you is enough for me. So you’re off the hook.
——-
I wibbled. Oh yes, I wibbled. 😀
I saw one of these two weeks ago! They’ve got a willow cabin on the property by Anne Hathaway’s (Shakespeare’s wife) cottage, with prerecorded sonnets playing. The concept is kind of heartbreaking. (I wouldn’t be surprised if an inflammation of the lungs was the point.)
Well if Meriam’s bringing the Pacey Witter quotes one my favorites is:
And:
Sigh.
Don’t remember dialogue, but I definitely remember plot details from my first: To Love a Rogue by Valerie Sherwood. The adventures of Raile and Lorraine on the high seas (and in New England, Bacon’s Virginia, the Yucatan Peninsula, and—I believe—Barbados) have stuck with me for years. That book has a place of honor on my bookshelf!
Oh, and to SB Sarah and SB Candy: the cover is Old Skool Awesome. That bright pink dress and the wicked aqua eyeshadow…! Check it out: To Love a Rogue / Valerie Sherwood Several of Valerie Sherwood’s books from the late 80s are cover snark-worthy. 😛