Bitchin' Blog Posts
Memorable Dialogue
by SB Sarah | by SB Sarah | June 03, 2008 | Tuesday at 6:47 pm | 166 CommentsBitchery 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
Filed: General Bitching, Random Musings
Tagged: nora roberts
Suze said on 06.03.08 at 07:40 PM • [link]
It wasn’t my first book, but the piece of dialogue that has stuck with me was in sign language. I don’t remember the title, author, or characters, but I remember that scene. Lengthy set-up:
It was a series romance, late 80’s or early 90’s, the heroine was a fashion designer who ran her small business out of her home, with a large cast of secondary characters, including an older black couple. The man (Ray?) ran a carpentry crew and the heroine’s life, because he was a take-charge kind of guy and took on all the local misfits. His wife helped with the fashion business and totally intimidated the heroine. The wife was very mysterious, never spoke, and always dressed in that queenly African style of turban and robe (I don’t know what it’s called).
There’s a scene in which Ray explains to the heroine that his wife isn’t looking down on the peasants, but physically cannot speak. She’d been badly burned in a fire (started by abusive former husband?) and was mostly covered in burn scars, which was why she covered up most of her body. Her face was miraculously spared.
So, Ray is explaining this to the heroine, and that he had loved his now-wife from afar, and hadn’t been able to save her from her abusive spouse, but had leapt at the chance to rescue her from the fire (that killed her husband?), and he knew that she didn’t love him, but he was content to accept anything she offered him.
Ray’s wife overhead this, and there’s a scene later (that the heroine sees) in which the wife makes the gesture of opening a door over her heart, and giving her heart to Ray, to show him she loves him.
It chokes me up even now, all these years later.
Nadia said on 06.03.08 at 07:51 PM • [link]
Oh, I have a helluva memory for quotes but when I’m on the spot I can’t remember any of them, of course.
Ashes in the Wind was my first big romance novel. One line that comes to me immediately is when Cole is trying to tease her out of being sad, and it backfires. A rant about her wartime travails, ending with “Don’t you see? There never was any Al! I’ve always been Alaina!” or something similar. One of those Men are From Mars moments, for sure.
One of my favorite lines in the history of the written word comes from NR’s Carnal Innocence. The FBI dude has Tucker in for questioning and asks if he wants to make a statement. Tucker replies “Like ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’?” I’ve been waiting for over 15 years for an occasion in real life to use that quote.
orangehands said on 06.03.08 at 07:51 PM • [link]
I’m a waste of space as a student. Can I remember what the name is of the minister of justice during the Russian Revolution? Of course not. Do I remember WHOLE PASSAGES from books I’ve loved/liked/read? Yes I do. Mostly very funny passages (I laughed at the NR part a lot too; I’m pretty sure it’s the first book, when they’re going to get Seth’s haircut at the mall, but he does that off and on throughout the first three books) or very romantic/sad passages.
But now something is finally happening in class, so I’ll quote for you later.
Erin said on 06.03.08 at 07:52 PM • [link]
Not my first romance, but I memorized a poem from a Victoria Holt novel that turns out was actually a Robert Browning poem.
It’s so pretty *sniff sniff*
Sarah Frantz said on 06.03.08 at 07:53 PM • [link]
I love one line in JR Ward. Don’t remember which book, but someone (V?) and Butch are talking about something. The person talking to Butch gets pissed at him because Butch is needling him about his lovelife, and says to Butch, whose all dressed up to go visit Marissa, “Nice. Fucking. Suit.” And they have a fight. Cracks me up EVERY time! Such a guy thing to say!
Chicklet said on 06.03.08 at 07:59 PM • [link]
Mine’s not classified as a romance, but the first time I ever wrote in a book (at age fifteen! I was a good girl) was to underline this from Emma by Jane Austen:
No lie: I read that line and clutched the book to my bosoms for several minutes. And then I underlined it. In pencil.
nadia said on 06.03.08 at 08:01 PM • [link]
Ooh, thought of another one: Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie
“She just fucked me six ways to Sunday.”
“She beat you at pool, too.”
Love that book.
SB Sarah said on 06.03.08 at 08:01 PM • [link]
YES. And the one where they’ve just seen The Big Bad Guy WhatsHisName and Rhage calls him ‘Bus exhaust or some shit.’
Paaaaahahahahahahahaha!
BevQB said on 06.03.08 at 08:06 PM • [link]
Not really a Romance, but it is the first time I remember a book fully engaging my emotions— Little Women. I was pre-teen, probably between 8 and 10 the first time I read it.
Oh LAWDY, I SOBBED at Beth’s death scene! Complete blubbering wails! And even with my terrible memory, I can still remember these haunting, yet beautiful words:
”...and on the same breast where she had drawn her first breath, she quietly drew her last.”
Just thinking of that line turns me into a watering pot again.
TracyS said on 06.03.08 at 08:10 PM • [link]
I always seem to remember the funny stuff.
Tom Paoletti, one of Suzanne Brockmann’s SEALS is recovering from a head injury and he runs too far and is feeling sick to his stomach. He tries to make it look like it’s because he’s getting too old to run that fast, not because he’s hurt. His great-uncle (in his 80’s and sick) looks at his friend and says, “Should I hit him with my cane or my oxygen tank” or something like that. I laughed so hard I woke up my sleeping husband!
MaryKate said on 06.03.08 at 08:14 PM • [link]
Why can I tie everything back to The Windflower? I don’t know.
My all time favorite scene and line from that book is when Merry (the heroine) steals a leaky row boat to try to escape from the Black Joke (a pirate ship). She nearly drowns before being rescued. When confronted about the fact that he’d left the boat there on purpose for Merry to drown in, Rand Morgan, the captain replies, “One must suffer a little adversity to become truly interesting.”
I lurve Rand Morgan.
Eunice said on 06.03.08 at 08:15 PM • [link]
Gosh. I have a horrible time remembering exact quotes. I think it comes from the fact that when I read I picture it more as a scene instead of reading them as words (does that make any sense?). So if you said “where was that part where…” I could flip through a book and find it in a heartbeat.
My first ever romance I don’t remember except I didn’t like it and it put off of them for years. Then I was convinced to give them another try… one or two years ago (there’s that wonky memory again). Mr. Impossible, by Loretta Chase. And while I remember the whole book and I still love it, I just can’t remember word for word dialogue. I feel terrible, but I’m that way with all books (Except for the Scarlet Pimpernel books, I can always remember passages from those. Like when she describes Sir Percy as “...six foot odd of gorgeousness”).
In fact, the only line I can think of right now is from Chesapeake Blue by Nora Roberts when Cam says, “He had to admit it, he’d raised a bunch of wiseasses. It did a man proud.” 1) That’s still probably not right anyway, 2) Because Sarah mentioned the Quinns, 3) I just finished it not that long ago, and 4) It was just one of those things that hit me as really really funny and I just laughed out loud. In the middle of a medical waiting room. Need space in a waiting room? Just start laughing.
Suze said on 06.03.08 at 08:20 PM • [link]
Oooh, Rand Morgan!
“It’s not a word, it’s an ejaculation…I seem to have ejaculated prematurely.”
Windflower is FULL of memorable dialogue, so much of it from my favourite ever pirate.
Also, Cook: “There’s more to love than two pelvises in a tussle.”
Eunice said on 06.03.08 at 08:22 PM • [link]
Oh! Chicklet, you’ve reminded me about 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.
Ehren said on 06.03.08 at 08:34 PM • [link]
Passion’s Ransom by Betina Krahn was recommended to me by a friend of a friend. She wasw really into romance novels and I hadn’t given them a single thought other than “ew, whatever, stupid stories”. She said “if you like pirates, you should read this!” Well, I found it at the local used book store with the feeling that if I was going to buy a romance I was going to pay the cheapest I could get for it unless it was guaranteed to be awesome.
Well, I remember the basic premise of it… rather vividly. It was fine at the time, but I never read through it, mostly because after the main pairing was established and all they were doing was going at it either in fights or in bed then there was little left to read about that interested me in any way. However, like a gateway drug, I got into more of Betina Krahn’s work. I have found the niche I love more than anything else. Medieval. I love knights and I love adventure and I love a good love story with plenty of humor and her Husband Test, Wife Test and Marriage Test are absolutely what I love. Especially Wife Test, in which every plan goes awry and childish behavior ensues between the main girl and guy. (“You liked what you saw, didn’t you.” “No, I didn’t!” “Yes, you did.” “No, I didn’t!!” “Yes, you did.”) I dunno about Passion’s Ransom popping my cherry for romance books being all that memorable, but the ones I read afterward were definitely more memorable.
snarkhunter said on 06.03.08 at 08:40 PM • [link]
The line of dialogue that always sticks with me is from one of la Nora’s books—and I’m sorry to say that it sticks with me because I found the whole thing so ridiculous. (In Nora’s defense, I think it was one of her first books.) It was…hm. One of the Irish whatever books…about the horses? With the virgin heroine? The stablehand hero beats the shit out of some guy who tried to grab her or hit her or something, and he’s all, “He put his hands on you.” It’s all he can say. Somehow, that’s stayed with me.
Weird things stay in my head. Lines of dialogue from random books, lines of poems, etc. I sometimes get lines of dialogue from movies stuck in my head—running on continuous loop, like a song.
Tara said on 06.03.08 at 08:43 PM • [link]
Also not my first romance, but one of the best bits of dialogue I’ve read is the “Opening the West” scene from Jenny Crusie’s What The Lady Wants. Bits of it always pops into my head whenever the subject of fidelity comes up.
“...the fact is, men cheat. We have to. It’s a biological imperative….. It’s the reason men crossed the oceans, built the pipeline, opened the West.”
“Women don’t want to open the West?”
“No. Women want to stay home and keep the East looking nice…. This is just biology. Men need multiple breasts in their lives. Women need to make a commitment to one penis.”
“Then why do men get married?”
“For backup. That way they always have a set of breasts at home.”
Too funny. Sometimes I grab the book and read just that scene.
Sarah Frantz said on 06.03.08 at 08:48 PM • [link]
Chicklet, I used that line as the title of one of my academic essays. It’s in Talk in Jane Austen, the book of the TRULY godawful cover (I want Sarah and Candy to snark THAT one!). That’s the line, the one line of dialogue, that pretty much started my entire academic career. That’s the line around which I built the essay I used to get into grad school. That’s the essay that I turned into my first important conference presentation, and my first published paper. So that line holds great significance for me—thanks for reminding me!
June said on 06.03.08 at 08:48 PM • [link]
For as many times as I read Jane Eyre, the one exchange that always comes to mind:
Rochester: Am I hideous, Jane?
Jane: Very, sir. You always were you know.
I’m sure if I keeping thinking about it there’s some late 70s/early 80s Harlequin dialogue stuck in my head somewhere.
MaryKate said on 06.03.08 at 08:48 PM • [link]
Ah Suze, a kindred soul, I’m SO glad!
And when Devon proposes to Merry and she punches him in the face. And then he’s trying to talk her around to marrying him and she finally hollers at him, “Oh do whatever you want, you always don anyway, you certainly don’t need my agreement.”
Awesome.
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 08:49 PM • [link]
I pretty much adore the poem Jacqueline Carey wrote for Kushiel’s Dart, about a man’s love for his king (yes, like THAT), which went something like: “Let now this breast, upon which you have lain, serve as thy shield.” The poem is longer, and that’s the motif, and mein gott that is hot, and touching, and amazing.
If I did not have morals, I would steal that thing LIKE MAD.
(That and “Repose-toi, mon âme, en ce dernier asile” [Rest, my soul, in this last harbor] by Lamartine, which was a motif from Sing to Me of Dreams by Kathryn Lynn Davis.)
Toni said on 06.03.08 at 08:58 PM • [link]
Connie Brockway’s As You Desire. Harry is describing how he could compliment Dizzy better than his cousin who called her a rose.
“You are my country Desdamona. My Egypt. My hot harrowing desert and my cool verdant Nile. Infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.
You’ll never hear old Blake say something like that. Remember my words the next time he calls you a bloody English rose!”
That whole scene just makes my toes curl, its so wonderful.
Anna Lawrence said on 06.03.08 at 09:02 PM • [link]
While I shall deny to the death that Georgette Heyer is in any way at all trashy, the final declaration: “Leonie! You are not the first woman in my life!” “Oh, Monsignor - I should so much rather be the last than the first” (I paraphrase, because the book is downstairs, but that’s pretty damn close) has ruined me for real life and its decidedly inferior declarations of love for all time.
La Reine Noire said on 06.03.08 at 09:08 PM • [link]
Mac, I love that snippet from Kushiel’s Dart. Le sigh.
I’m trying to remember specific lines from novels and for some reason I keep drawing blanks, even though there are entire scenes I can remember visualised in my head…
I do recall the first time I ever read Wuthering Heights and this bit—
‘Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.’
—sent my poor twelve-year-old heart into a state of minor catatonia. That was the one snippet I remembered from that first reading, and it was only rereading it about four years later that I came to love it completely.
Oh, and Eunice, I too remember certain bits of The Scarlet Pimpernel, though there was one that made me very light-headed—I don’t remember the exact line, but it was the conclusion of the scene in the garden at Richmond after Grenville’s ball, and the description of Percy there still gets me every single time.
Marcella said on 06.03.08 at 09:16 PM • [link]
Hmm, my first romance novel was a SF/space travel plot where the advanced-civilization heroine ends up on a ass-backwards planet where the alpha males are extra extra alpha-y.
The memorable scene, for me, is where the hero, to punish the heroine for one of her forward thinking ideas, takes too much of some libido-reducing herb concoction and then “stimulates” the heroine all night without ever giving her “release”, so much so that her screams of “frustration” are heard throughout the complex.
The whole book is like one long rape-fantasy and I have no idea how it ended up in my pre-teen hands. I don’t remember the title or author and I don’t want to, either.
However, the first romance novel I truly loved was The Duchess by Jude Deveraux. Secret passages, disguised dukes, sassy heroines, oh my!
Jane said on 06.03.08 at 09:16 PM • [link]
Mine are rather odd.
I read Jane Eyre about a million times between the ages ...well, about the ages she is in the book. Rochester shouting “Jane! Jane! Jane!” thrilled my little heart. And, um, I’m a Jane too.
But here’s one that made me laugh, from The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett (yes, the writer of The Secret Garden, and yes she also wrote for adults). The hero, Lord Mount Dunstan, is telling the herione, Betty Vanderpoel, a story of his remote Saxon ancestor, Red Godwyn:
chicklitter said on 06.03.08 at 09:18 PM • [link]
From SEP’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine: “I married a damn cereal killer.”
And even though I’m not usually a big fan of the sappy stuff, I have to say that this line from This Heart of Mine always sticks with me: “It was a kiss made in lonely dreams. A kiss that took its time. A kiss that felt so right she couldn’t remember all the reasons it was wrong.”
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 09:21 PM • [link]
Marcella! I know this book! Sadly it was one of my first romances—I was a SF geek, and it put me off romances for some years. It still hangs arond at the back of my mind like a terrible aftertaste. (That was the one where national dress for women was some skirt made out of hanging flaps like some kind of hula skirt cum car wash wheel, yes? So any false move would leave her half-naked? And on her planet, babies were grown in vitro, but he manfully decided that she would give birth because he said so? And he kept talking about how he could “smell her arousal” so it was no good for her to lie. That stimulation scene was a horror. Any “sex” scene that ends with the heroine crying pitably in a corner is emphatically not my cup of tea.)
snarkhunter said on 06.03.08 at 09:26 PM • [link]
Dorothy Sayers wrote, in my humble opinion, the greatest proposal of all time at the end of Gaudy Night. I dont’ have it in front of me, so I can’t quote the dialogue tags, which are wonderful, but the actual dialogue is:
“Placetne, magistra?”
“Placet.”
The Latin is apparently what’s said to graduates of Oxford Colleges upon confirmation of their degree. It’s being addressed as a true equal. Best. Proposal. Ever.
Also Sayers—the first line of Have His Carcase is fully delightful when you’re unhappy: “The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.” I should very much love to read the romance novel that takes that idea as its tagline.
Gail Dayton said on 06.03.08 at 09:26 PM • [link]
I can’t remember quotes from books. I barely remember plots, though I can usually recall whether I’ve already read a book or not by the time I get two or three chapters into it. And I have so many favorite books and favorite lines (some of them written by me) that it’s very difficult to pick just one.
The book that sucked me into romance reading was a Roberta Gellis book. Either Alinor or The English Heiress—I honestly don’t remember which one I read first, but I loved those books. They’re both in my garage somewhere, having been moved from central Texas to the panhandle and now down to the coast. (I need to dig them out before the humidity totally ruins them.)
I’ve read some absolutely amazing dialogue in Lydia Joyce’s books—the one set in the Balkans had some great lines, but I’d have to pull the book out and hunt to find it.
amy lane said on 06.03.08 at 09:28 PM • [link]
Wow—such excellent quotes!!! For the person who brought up Suzanne Brockman—she has some truly excellent funny moments—and not always between the H/H. I love the moment in the master chief’s book (forgive me—I don’t even remember which one dealt with the master chief!) when Sam is running a drill with the team, trying to figure out how they’re going to free hostages from an airplane. Something goes wrong and Sam’s line (HIDEOUSLY mangled here) goes something like, “Master Chief, would you fucking please tell the fucking colonel that we fucking need a new fucking piece of this fucking fake airplane.”
To which Mater Chief replies, “Fuck yes, sir.”
Also from Suzanne Brockman, I loved Ibrahim and Mary Lou, “Ooh, you have made a mess. Now what are you going to do about it?” It was so proactive and unconditional…
And I just finished Jeaneane Frost’s newest book, and there were some REALLY hot lines of dialog from it, and I have drawn a complete blank. *sigh* It’ll come to me in a week, I know it!
(eeeee…it was so exciting to see my letter posted. Thanks, Sarah:-)
Stephanie said on 06.03.08 at 09:31 PM • [link]
Good old Raymond Chandler. How I adore thee.
Sandia said on 06.03.08 at 09:31 PM • [link]
That’s my favorite too!! I love the banter between Jane and Cal… Love love love that book.
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 09:32 PM • [link]
Hee! La Reine Noire, what I remember most from the Scarlet Pimpernel was the mistaking-raw-pepper-for-snuff scene. Not romantic, per se, but AWESOME.
And yeah—Jacqueline Carey is not always perfect, but when she’s right… DAMN.
Jody W. said on 06.03.08 at 09:36 PM • [link]
I shall be evil and reveal the title that haunts Marcella and Mac’s nightmares: “Warrior’s Woman” by Johanna Lindsey. It’s…interesting. People seem to either love it or loathe it.
My first genre romance novel was “Sheik’s Captive” by Violet Winspear. I believe there was a scene where the hero was forcing KISSES on the heroine and came very close to touching her BREAST! It was awesome. Around about the same time (11?12?) I recall reading “Clan of the Cave Bear” and being skeptical about poor Jondolar’s over-large weenie problem, which didn’t stop me from poring over all the pleasures he gave Ayla.
Katie said on 06.03.08 at 09:40 PM • [link]
I’m with you, Eunice. Persuasion is the swooniest of all.
“I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.”
*le sigh*
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 09:44 PM • [link]
Jody, you fiend! :-D
Aw, Jondalar. I remember being wildly interested in everything but the sex scenes, which were the same damn thing every time, in the same wording, to boot. (He MARVELED at this WOMAN who could ACCEPT his FULL SIZE. Yet again. Because it was MARVELOUS.) But I was a weird kid. (I remember things like the leathermaking, and how Ayla invented foundation garments. *snicker*)
I’m gonna have to go home and look up things. I can remember odd snippets of poetry, and I remember plots that blow me away and make me cry, but dialogue is harder. (Especially when wording counts so much.)
Gail Dayton said on 06.03.08 at 09:46 PM • [link]
Mac and Marcella, I read that book too, and it outraged me so much, I wrote a long letter to the author, Johanna Lindsey. WARRIOR’S WOMAN. (I had to go look it up on Shelfari.) I made up a whole story (unwritten) in opposition to the premises in this book, it got to me so much.
Cat Marsters said on 06.03.08 at 09:48 PM • [link]
Oh God yes. There are so many standout lines in that book. JC is fabulous at dialogue.
I still remember
from Deveraux’s A Knight in Shining Armour, which is the first romance I ever truly loved.
And two lines of dialogue that aren’t from romances but stick in my head and make me giggle uncontrollably when I just think of them:
from…um…one of the Stephanie Plum books (I want to say Eight, but I’m not sure).
and from Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum, when the queen’s daughter’s name has erroneously been read out at the official Naming ceremony as
I’m still giggling over it now…
shaunee said on 06.03.08 at 09:51 PM • [link]
Mac,
Again you are squarely in my brain! Kushiel’s Dart, end of chapter one, last paragraph,
Holy Jesus that’s good writing, especially the line following the colon. Carey capitalizes love and cruelty and describes them both using the pronoun who, instead of that/which—an incredibly simply yet extremely effective way of setting up her fantasy/romance/erotic/bsdm elements.
As for my very first romances: Jennifer Blake. Good Lord. Kristen DePonte gave me one (can’t remember which—they’re excellent for cover snark purposes though) in the seventh grade during Monsieur Beau’s French class after she told me I should start shaving my legs.
shaunee said on 06.03.08 at 09:53 PM • [link]
Cat,
Forgot about that fab Jude Devereaux line! I sighed a lot over that one.
Scotsie said on 06.03.08 at 09:59 PM • [link]
I wish I could remember the good stuff, but all I can come up with is what made me stop reading Beatrice Small. Just couldn’t handle anymore “man spear” and “love sheath” talk. I do know that Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, and Loretta Chase will make me snarf whatever beverage I happen to be enjoying while reading.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Ayla invented tampons too. THAT scene stuck with me.
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 10:00 PM • [link]
Hi Shaunee! Guess what I bought yesterday. *clutches paperback Kushiel’s Justice to bosom and LOVES HER SOME IMRIEL, OMG*
Cat Marsters said on 06.03.08 at 10:08 PM • [link]
I’d forgotten it. Possibly on purpose.
shaunee said on 06.03.08 at 10:08 PM • [link]
Mac,
Amazon sent me an email about me loving Carey’s other books, so why not get this one a few days ago. Do let me know what you think of this one. Still have no tv and am really running out of things to read.
Had no electricity for the last couple of days and wanted to slit my wrists. Thought I’d do what “blue stockings” do and read by candle light. Do you have any idea how hard it is to read by candle light? Plus, it gets hot after a while. It really doesn’t pay to be a blue stocking unless I’m doing the candle thing wrong… (how could applying flame to wick be wrong?)
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 10:09 PM • [link]
Gail Dayton—oh, my. Did you get a response from Lindsey?
Alpha Lyra said on 06.03.08 at 10:09 PM • [link]
I can’t seem to summon them to memory at will, but
Pride and Prejudice
is full of quotes that fly through my head when I’m triggered by hearing certain words and phrases.
Scotsie said on 06.03.08 at 10:12 PM • [link]
Can I jump on the Kushiel’s squee-train???
HelenB said on 06.03.08 at 10:15 PM • [link]
Can’t think of a romance off hand but I can remember whole chunks of Young Frankenstein - starring Gene Wilder. Paraphrasing one character “there you go, after 7 or 8 quick ones, off to boast to the boys” or something like that. Love that movie.
spam boy38 - I wish!
Mare Iridium said on 06.03.08 at 10:27 PM • [link]
I am much better at remembering scenes than dialogue, but a few do stick out in my mind:
Elizabeth Lowell’s Pearl Cove is one of my favorite books, and the line “What’s it like to love someone enough to die in their place?” has always stuck with me.
Also, in Nora Robert’s book Valley of Silence, basically the whole book is so romantic and quote worthy, but in particular the line Cian says to Moira “If my heart beat it would beat for you.” It was one of my book clutching to chest moments.
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 10:33 PM • [link]
Scotsie: Love as thou wilt, baby. Love as thou wilt.
(okay, yeah, I was dying to say that.)
Shaunee—You know I will.
jennyOH said on 06.03.08 at 10:34 PM • [link]
Oh god, glad I’m not the only one who was traumatized by Warrior’s Woman - that’s the first romance I ever read, too (if it can be called romance…it struck me as a little eurgh). Although when I read it (I found it in my mum’s room when I was about 10) all the burgeoning manhoods were just as strange as the science fiction setting.
Darlene Marshall said on 06.03.08 at 10:41 PM • [link]
It’s not romantic, but everyone remembers Cordelia’s line from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Barrayar:
“Shopping…Want to see what I bought?”
Memorable romance dialog for me includes The Grand Sophy, where Charles finally declares his love:
“I don’t! I dislike you excessively!”
You had to be there.[g]
Mary said on 06.03.08 at 10:41 PM • [link]
Warrior’s Woman infuriated me so much that I wrote my very first Amazon.com review in order to vent my frustrations. The “hero” was named Challen and he punished the heroine by refusing to let her wear clothes and impregnated her on purpose without her knowledge (somehow her race “forgot” how to make babies other than in a test tube). The woman also had a skeevy onboard sex android. So much to hate! Oddly, I was raised on a steady diet of Star Trek at home, so what really bothered me the most was that the weapon she carried was called a “phazor.”
Ciara said on 06.03.08 at 10:41 PM • [link]
Not a romance, but definitely one of my favourite quotes of all time, from LM Montgomerys Anne series, it’s either Rainbow Valley or Anne of Ingleside. One of Annes kids has been earwigging on the sewing circle and comes up with this question,
“Are widows really women who’s dreams have come true?” It sounds just like something you don’t want your kid repeating!
Ann said on 06.03.08 at 10:43 PM • [link]
First Romance? A Woodwiss—not sure which one.
Quotes? Ah, too many… But my wedding vows to my husband included this passage from “Romancing Mr. Bridgerton”: “I love you with my past and I love you for my future. I love you for the children we’ll have and for the years we’ll have together. I love you for every one of my smiles, and even more, every one of your smiles.”
Darlene Marshall said on 06.03.08 at 10:48 PM • [link]
Oh, and I just thought of one more favorite piece of dialog, from Mary Balogh’s More Than A Mistress:
“If you were the last man on earth and you were to pester me daily for a million years, I would not marry you. I will not do so.”
“My dear Lady Sara.” His voice was haughty and bored. “I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.”
GrowlyCub said on 06.03.08 at 10:49 PM • [link]
My first romance was a Heyer, probably Arabella. The first book I identified as a romance and read in the original and not translation was the Catherine Coulter’s Song book with the infamous cream in it.
I thought Ayla invented panty liners not tampons. :)
I wanted to write Lindsey a letter about Warrior’s Woman. I never did, but I wish I had. The really awful thing about this book is that you can hate it at the same time as being sickly fascinated by it and that I read the sequel (what was I *thinking*?)
I’m terrible at memorizing dialogue, but I’m pretty sure the mouse corpse scene from Chase’s LoS that I just read last week for the first time will stick with me for a while.
“Can’t a fellow trust you for a moment? How many times do I have to tell you to leave my friends alone?†Miss Trent coolly withdrew her hand.
Trent gave Dain an apologetic look. “Don’t pay it any mind, Dain. She does that to all the chaps. I don’t know why she does it, when she don’t want ’em. Just like them fool cats of Aunt Louisa’s. Go to all the bother of catching
a mouse, and then the confounded things won’t eat ’em. Just leave the corpses lying about for someone else to pick up.â€
Mac said on 06.03.08 at 11:03 PM • [link]
Growly THERE WAS A —pardon, I must not shout—there was a “Warrior Woman” sequel!???!! (Dare I ask what happened in it??? Tell me she fought her way to freedom.)
I remember some beautiful bits of “The Shadow and the Star,” I think it was, where the main guy is trying to explain to his wife, whom he married slightly reluctantly, that he was sorry he had all these terrible urges and sex was bad, and he KNEW it was bad he was damaged, and this is what I am, and you have to come to terms, and oh god, can you even live with me I suck oh god, and the dear little thing comes back with (to paraphrase) “Well actually I’ve been trying to figure out for the past hour how to hint that I’d like to go to bed with you, like, now, please thanks.” Of course it was much more attractively put in the original text, which is why I should probably stick to poetry bits.
And “Carrots” in Anne of Green Gables wound up being one of the prettiest words ever, didn’t it.
Chicklet said on 06.03.08 at 11:09 PM • [link]
So that line holds great significance for me—thanks for reminding me!
Aw shucks, ‘tweren’t nothin’. *g*
And that cover IS horrible. *shudders*
Spamblocker: lot96. I thought it was The Crying of Lot 49? The Thomas Pynchon book? I have no idea who wrote about Lot 96.
GrowlyCub said on 06.03.08 at 11:10 PM • [link]
Mac,
all I remember that it was in the same world and the same things happened to another woman. I think I’ve tried to sublimate it, erase it from my memory and see what you guys have done…you’ve resurrected the memory and I’ll be scarred for life now. And since I never throw away nor trade in my books, I have those two abominations on my shelves upstairs…
My strongest concern about them at the time (and now) was that there would be young impressionable women out there (I must have been in my late teens or early twens) living in abusive households who would believe that this treatment of women was not only okay but necessary if it was written about in a romance novel and that abuse means that a guy loves you.
I wonder if anybody ever got an answer out of Lindsey or the publisher about what the H*(% they were thinking publishing these books.
GrowlyCub said on 06.03.08 at 11:18 PM • [link]
Oh, and yes, I remember the Avon/Leonie scene. Beautiful. I’ve actually used it in reference to my husband and myself (seeing as I’m not wife no. 1 :).
I feel a re-read coming on.
orangehands said on 06.03.08 at 11:22 PM • [link]
TP and Neil, in Good Omens: (as the kraken-sea animal- is coming up and spots a boat): There is a tiny metal thing above it. The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.
Still makes me laugh, every time I think of it.
Mr. Impossible is so far my favorite Loretta Chase, and this happens when Rupert and Daphne first meet, and the jailer is selling Daphne on him:
“Is it not remarkable how he’s kept up his spirits in this vile place?” Obligingly, Rupert began to whistle.
Anne Bishop, Queen of Darkness, right before the first time Daemon and Jaenelle (deeply in love and both virgins) made love:
J: “You look how I feel.”
D: “Sick and terrified?”
Omibob, I have so many of these. Also, the second poem I’ve ever memorized I read in a great book called Armageddon Summer by Emily Dickinson (uh, the poem, not the book):
“Faith” is a fine invention
When Gentlmen can see-
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency
And one of the most heartrending lines (don’t remember it exactly) I’ve ever read was in a book called Such a Pretty Girl by Laura Wiess (though not explicit and the ending is improbable, very harsh and touching): If you didn’t count incest, she was still a virgin.
And now I should go do homework…
million34: yep, I got a million and 34 of them left in my brain
RStewie said on 06.03.08 at 11:32 PM • [link]
Ohh, I’m the CAPTAIN of the Kushiel Love Train! Squee! Squee! ANY mention of vambraces makes me gush like a pre-teen girl at her first Jr. Prom!
My favorite quote, though, is the end of Flowers from the Storm,
And where my two favorites collided, Kinsale’s Shadowheart, where Elena and Allegreto play domination games and leave on the vambraces!!! Squee!
My first romance novel was some horridness involving a Native American Indian and a red-headed White Chick who is abducted numerous times, sexxored by the NA, and ends up in England, where said sexxoring NA interrupts a ball in native attire and re-abducts her to the relative safety of his teepee for additional sexxoring of her pregnant self.
Needless to say, it was the sexxoring that kept me going until I was grown up enough to realize I prefer a well-written romance to random sexxoring.
Carmen said on 06.03.08 at 11:32 PM • [link]
Not from a romance but one of my all time favorites -
Hard Eight - Janet E.
Right after Stephanie falls out of Ranger’s truck drunk in her mother’s yard:
“Fucking rabbit.”
Makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Mellie said on 06.03.08 at 11:44 PM • [link]
First romance I remember reading- Twins by Katherine Stone.
My most memorable dialog really isn’t from a romance novel either- it’s a poem by William Butler Yeats- When You Are Old
Sigh…
Chrissie said on 06.03.08 at 11:55 PM • [link]
I think that’s from Sea Swept (Philip changing his name to Pierre!) - it made me LOL too, and moreover, Sea Swept was the romance that popped my genre cherry! (Also remember Ethan saying “I’d rather get hit in the head with a brick than go to the mall on a Saturday” in the same conversation”... heh)
Deb Kinnard said on 06.03.08 at 11:56 PM • [link]
I cut my romance-reading teeth on Anya Seton’s KATHERINE. Good stuff—so good that I’ve read it probably 30-40 times since then and much of it sticks permanently in my mind.
Greatest love lines IMO:
Katherine: It was a whim, my lord. Will you be gentle with my whims?
John: I may not always be gentle. But by the soul of my mother, I shall love you until I die.
YESS!
amhartnett said on 06.04.08 at 12:00 AM • [link]
Speaking strictly romance, it was Elizabeth Lowell’s Untamed. It had a blond fellow on the cover with the most amazing arse I’d ever seen.The line burned into my brain is “What was once dry is now wet!”
That was about 15 years ago and since, I’ve been looking for an excuse to utter that line in all seriousness in my real life.
Mac said on 06.04.08 at 12:17 AM • [link]
Well if we’re not strictly sticking to romance, “Stay gold, Ponyboy” (The Outsiders) can still reduce me to a quivering lump.
Suze said on 06.04.08 at 12:28 AM • [link]
The really sad thing about the Lindsay Warrior books (yes, books plural!) is that they’re pretty much a MORE ROMANTIC ripoff of a scifi series by Sharon Green, published early 80’s? Late 70’s? Now those were messed up. (Yeah, I devoured them all!)
Green’s heroine was an empathic Xenomediator (mediates between non-earth people) who gets sent to this barbaric planet to essentially be a sex slave to the barbarian lord guy. Her powers are suppressed when she’s home on earth, and fiercely resented/coveted by the barbarians. It gets very convoluted and conspiracy-ish. And VERY alpha male. Stick a modern woman in a world where women are essentially property and what does she do? Spends a lot of time being a victim, in spite of her awesome psychic powers. ‘Cause that barbarian guy is just so, so manly!
Lindsay’s was much more palatable, if you can believe it.
Lucy Maude said on 06.04.08 at 12:37 AM • [link]
Great butt aside I loathed that cover, amhartnett. The model was the fair and clean shave while Dominic was dark and hairy. My first lesson that that the people who pick romance covers don’t actually bother to read the book.
Absolutely, RStewie. Christian long speech in the Meetinghouse at the end of Flowers from the Storm are the romance gold standard, IMO.
The whole Anne of Green Gables series is my romance touchstone. Gilbert will always be my ideal hero, but when Matthew is dying and he tells her,
I lose it. Every. Damn. Time.
aggiedoone said on 06.04.08 at 12:38 AM • [link]
From Jude Deveraux’s Sweet Liar:
“He was the most perfectly formed man she’d ever imagined. He was movie stars, men in underwear commercials, guys at the gym, the construction worker in the red T-shirt who’d whistled at her but she’d pretended she hadn’t heard; he was the men in three-piece suits whose brains were as sexy as their bodies; he was lazy, insolent seventeen-year-old boys whose muscles bulged out of their clothes, rodeo stars, and those smooth-cheeked, eyeglassed men who held their children tenderly. He was all of them.”
And I jump on board the Kushiel train.
Kimberly Anne said on 06.04.08 at 12:40 AM • [link]
Jumping on the La Nora train. It wasn’t my first romance, but I fall on the floor every time I even think of this scene from The Heart’s Victory when Foxy is taking a bath:
Foxy: I’ve decided to hate you.
Lance: Oh? Again?
Ziggy said on 06.04.08 at 12:51 AM • [link]
Sigh. I used to be able to quote whole chunks of P G Wodehouse’s “Summer Moonshine” but the best was always the last line of the book - “The telephone was ringing.” - which doesn’t mean much unless you know the context but it gets me everytime. There’s also a memorable moment where Joe and Jane are in a restaurant - Jane is fed up with Joe’s flirting and leaves. Joe says “Then I shall sit here and howl like a wolf” and then he does until she comes back and sits down again. I love that book.
Another favourite was from Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. Once again I don’t have the book with me but it’s midway through the book and Vimes and Sybil are parting awkwardly. Vimes leaves the house, thinking that he isn’t going to look back at Sybil standing at the door watching him go. Then he hears the door close quietly behind him, “and he suddenly felt very, very angry, as though he had just been robbed”. Awww.
And finally a bit of Hardy. I love Far from the Madding Crowd:
Jody W. said on 06.04.08 at 01:01 AM • [link]
Susan Kearney’s THE CHALLENGE for me had overtones of the Lindsey’s “Ly-San-Ter” series, only the heroine single-handedly revolutionized the hero’s patriarchial society instead of succumbing to it. I believe Kearney’s novel was written some years ago (perhaps closer to the time of the Lindsey book) and updated for its debut, though I can’t find that factoid written anywhere…maybe it was in a letter to readers in the book? I dunno. I made it through two of the Lindsey series—like GrowlyCub, they’re still up in the attic somewhere. But so are a lot of brown recluses.
alice said on 06.04.08 at 01:05 AM • [link]
Bujold’s Cordelia again: “The breathtaking beauty of pain”
TracyS said on 06.04.08 at 01:24 AM • [link]
another good line from a favorite of mine~“Nightwatch” by Suzanne Brockmann. Wes is telling Britt what a truly annoying kid/teen he was and how he exasperated his parents on a regular basis, but oh, his brother (who died young) was perfect etc etc. she says something to the effect of, “It’s the annoying boys that grow up into the most fascinating men” ahhhhhhh!
Rinna said on 06.04.08 at 01:27 AM • [link]
Ah, the Windflower. Not my first romance novel (I can’t even BEGIN to remember what that was, likely some Candelight Romance I snuck from my mom), but my very favorite romance of all time.
I can quote large chunks of dialogue, mostly due to the fact that it is a comfort read that I indulge in several times a year if I get to feeling blue. My favorite line? It has to be when Merry is admiring the sea, and Cat says it’s just a bunch of diluted fish piss. “I mean, if you think of all those fish, and all those centuries….”
Leah said on 06.04.08 at 01:34 AM • [link]
I’m not so original going with Nora Roberts again. And it’s not so much a line as an entire scene. My all time favorite moment in any Nora book is the sauna scene in Daring to Dream where Candy tries to knock the three women down a peg and ends up getting stuffed in a locker. I particularly love Kate’s reaction to being called a lesbian.
Rina said on 06.04.08 at 01:36 AM • [link]
One line from Georgette Heyer’s “These Old Shades” has been seared into my memory…Leonie asks Avon if he remembers (errr, something I’ve forgotten), and he replies, “I remember every word you have ever spoken to me.” Swoonworthy on its own and all the more so in context, as this is (IIRC) the first indication that he thinks of her as more than his ward.
Though it’s not a traditional romance, I’ve read Elizabeth Marie Pope’s “The Perilous Gard” so many times over the past twenty years I can still quote entire conversations and descriptive passages.
Nanny said on 06.04.08 at 01:50 AM • [link]
Wow… it kind of horrifies me how much one person’s favorite line is another person’s purple prose.
And here’s my entry to the pot: Scarlet Pimpernel, the movie.
GrowlyCub said on 06.04.08 at 02:13 AM • [link]
Oh, Jody, I can’t even claim they are in the attic. They are in my office on the shelves just like all my other books… and not a brown recluse in sight to eat them either… he he.
Besides Rosemary Rogers, I think those two books were the only ones that deserve the label ‘bodice rippers’ that I’ve read. And early RR is so far out there, even those Lindseys pale (Crowd Pleasers anyone?).
Okay, another favorite quote so we don’t dwell on the horribleness. This one is actually not in the book but in the chronology and isn’t from a romance either. It’s from the timeline of the Miles Vorkosigan books and describes one the books. ‘Miles hits 30, 30 hits back’. I’ve often felt that way regardless of which birthday it’s been… :)
Eunice said on 06.04.08 at 02:14 AM • [link]
La Reine Noire>
Not from memory (yeah right!) but here’s the last paragraph of that scene…
“Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear—a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.”
Also in I Will Repay! (another Pimpernel book) there’s a part where Sir Percy is giving advice to a young would-be lover who calls the object of his affection a “saint”:
“And ‘twill be when you understand that your idol has feet of clay that you’ll learn the real lesson of love,” said Blakeney earnestly. “Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do, suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after that—the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart.”
Sarah Frantz said on 06.04.08 at 02:17 AM • [link]
Well, if we’re going with The Scarlet Pimpernel, there’s the scene where Percy and Marguerite have the huge fight outside their house and she runs up the stairs: “Had she but turned back then, and looked out once more on the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear—a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and his own despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone; the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.”
Sarah Frantz said on 06.04.08 at 02:19 AM • [link]
Eunice—great minds think alike! Isn’t that scene incredible?!
Caroline said on 06.04.08 at 02:24 AM • [link]
I feel old confessing that I started with Barbara Cartland. I .... don’t .... remember .... any .... worthy dialouge, .... but .... who could forget .... her heroine’s .... sex-induced .... speech .... impediments?
Fortunately, I moved on to Georgette Heyer and discovered some truely enjoyable stories and heroines. A scene from Scarlet Pimpernel that I thought was truly romantic: after an argument in the garden the missus goes inside and he kisses the railing her hand rested on, all the way up the stairs.
Eunice said on 06.04.08 at 02:28 AM • [link]
Sarah Frantz> Kismet!
Also I love -Love!- Pablo Neruda’s poetry. It’s romantic and sexy at the same time
(translated to English)
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved
In secret, between the shadow and the soul”
Okay, I’ll stop commenting now.
guinimom said on 06.04.08 at 02:49 AM • [link]
My college roommate was from the Netherlands and when we were depressed we would cut class and she would simultaneously translate to English from Dutch versions of Harlequin romances; we would copy good lines onto our apartment wall. My personal favorite: “Was there a sexy way to remove pantyhose? she wondered.”
You know, I still wonder, too.
nanny said on 06.04.08 at 02:49 AM • [link]
Because of all the other Pimpernel fans here…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKFnmNgzpI4&locale=en_US&persist_locale=1
A (poorly bootleg filmed) clip from the stage musical. Somebody posted this on another board once. It gets me every time. I loved the musical and once road-tripped 3 hours to see it. If it’s ever in your neighborhood you gotta go.
Kit said on 06.04.08 at 02:50 AM • [link]
Erin, that poem you like is called Pippa Passes, and there’s a lot more of it!
I love the line in one of Terry Pratchett’s Guards series books where Sam is thinking about how Sybil gives him expensive presents and then he has to figure out what to do with them, since he’s set in his ways and he’s not used to having such nice stuff. He says, “She was a woman who was out for all she could give.”
smartmensab-tch said on 06.04.08 at 03:09 AM • [link]
I think the first romance I ever read was Devil’s Desire by Laurie McBain. I’ll have to get a copy and read it again. Oh, wait, does Jane Aiken Hodge count?
Most memorable line from a romance (I think): “With the possibility of great love comes the possibility of great pain.” I have no idea what book it came from - maybe somebody can HaBO? I don’t think it was a very good book - in fact, I was surprised the line was in it. And yeah, I know it’s not all that profound, but it sure as hell is true.
I am appalled that there was a sequel to Warrior’s Woman. Dear Goddess, what was the publisher thinking about?
deputman said on 06.04.08 at 03:15 AM • [link]
There are in fact two sequals to Warrior’s Woman. The first about Challen and Tedra’s daughter who has sworn never to love a barbarian because she hates the lifestyle, only to fall into the hands of a some-what more civilized barbarian, civilization being relative here.
The other is about Challen and Tedra’s son who manages to find his wife right here on Earth in the form of a tall, stunning virginal carpenter. There is so much wrong with these descriptions and while I’m ashamed to have read the first two, at least I skipped the third.
Suze said on 06.04.08 at 03:19 AM • [link]
Oh, Bujold, my goddess. Not a book of hers I’ve read but that I have to hide from onlookers, so they don’t catch me crying. Or snorting a giggle, which is awkward and sometimes messy. If I could write only half as well as her, I’d still be a pretty good writer.
“Miles, are you one-upping my dead?”
“She pours out honor like a fountain.”
“I’m my lady’s dog.”
“I’m not giving her to you [Caz], I’m giving you to her.”
I feel strongly tempted to pull out her books and start quoting them at length, but I’ll refrain.
Renda said on 06.04.08 at 04:02 AM • [link]
Coming out of lurking mode to thank you all. So many memories were brought back by much of this and so many opportunities for memories were offered.
Off to feign sickness for the next three to six days so I can lay in bed and reread all my NR yet again.
Renda
spam word reported28 As a court reporter feigning illness, that’s how many depositions won’t be reported by me!!!
Rebecca said on 06.04.08 at 04:03 AM • [link]
Deputman - Sadly, that third book sounds familiar. I think I started reading it on the recommendation of a librarian friend/co-worker, and eventually threw it against the wall. Ugh.
Kushiel train - I’m on it, too. I bought a ticket last summer and spent three weeks reading nothing but.
First romance novel - it was one of my grandmother’s Taylor Caldwell books, although I’ve forgotten the title. Something about bees or honey, set in Rome.
Brockmann quotes - there are a jillion, but the one that stands out (and I happen to have handy :) ) is one from a conversation between Jules and Gina, where they’ve been talking about how no one wants to acknowledge that she was held hostage and raped by terrorists, and it’s usually the elephant in the room for her. Then she finds out that Jules is a gay FBI agent, and he says to her,
The best SEP quote - “Oh, but there was something splendid about being kissed by a lazy man.” From Lady Be Good - the whole passage just about knocked my socks off.
Pratchett - there is a passage in Men at Arms that made me weepy and happy at the same time. Angua (the werewolf and Carrot’s girlfriend) has been shot and killed in her wolf shape, but Carrot carries on with chasing the Big Bad anyways. Everyone is taken aback by this, but chalk it up to Carrot being Carrot (meaning, a by-to-book sort of person). After the Big Bad has been dispatched, he takes Angua to the morgue, cleans her up, and goes back to his room to write reports and sweep and suchlike. Later on, the door opens and Angua comes in, alive.
It’s so him - even though he appeared to carry on as if nothing had happened, he wasn’t certain and was probably worrying about it the whole time. Awwww…
LizC said on 06.04.08 at 04:11 AM • [link]
It’s not a quote from the first romance novel I ever read (Jewels by Danielle Steele. I can’t remember any quotes from that) but this passage from Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull has stuck with me:
Also, “When will the love muffins be done, Mata Hari?” from The Lovely Bones just always amuses me when I think of it.
All you people remembering passages from The Scarlet Pimpernel are making me look bad. I’ve read that book so many times and I can’t remember a specific passage to save my life. Clearly this calls for a reread.
Terri Jones said on 06.04.08 at 04:14 AM • [link]
One of my first romances was Sweet Liar by Jude Deveraux
My favorite line/scene is in Legend by Jude Deveraux
If you were with the right person, you were in the right place. “I love you,” she whispered so softly she almost couldn’t hear herself. But Tarik heard, becaue he paused for just a second in caressing her hair, and under her cheek she could feel the muscles of his stomach tense then release.
And I love love love the Anne of Green Gables for the romance factor in every book.
I just love that whole setting.
Sandra D said on 06.04.08 at 04:17 AM • [link]
Not from a book but the most quotable movie of all time, The Princess Bride:
And not romantic but still one of my favourite lines ever :
Ok I need to stop now or I’ll just end up quoting the whole movie.
To whoever said up there that they just finished reading Jeaniene Frost’s second book I’ll give a hearty HELL YEAH of agreement, holy hotness batman! (slight spoiler, but I don’t know how to make invisible text)
Moth said on 06.04.08 at 04:38 AM • [link]
Anna Lawrence & Darlene Marshall: I too worship at the altar of the Grand Georgette. These Old Shades is one of my favorite books ever. And the Grand Sophy definitely makes my top five of hers. I maintain that no one does dialogue better than her- No One.
Joanna said on 06.04.08 at 04:46 AM • [link]
The third Warrior’s woman sequel is actually not bad. In the (supposedly required) punishment love scene (she was almost eaten by a bear-monster) the man purposefully doesn’t take the libido-reducing drug so he can feel the same pain as his beloved. But when it’s over and he’s gone away to feel sorry for himself, she remarks to her little explaining computer thing that she’s somewhat used to it because of… something something…
I haven’t read the other two books though… they sound terrible.
The first romance book that I ever read was another Johanna Lindsey book called Once a Princess. The hero (a prince) reluctantly sets out to America to claim his promised bride only to find that instead of living the life of luxury she’s been working as a bar maid, stage dancer and apparent whore. He kidnaps her and sets out for his country. She trys to escape repeatedly… they suffer trials (his mistress, his lack of self confidence over his appearance (he has a scar), her apparent lack of virginity and his (and the kings) guilt over her having such a hard life, assasinations) they declare their love just before their wedding. Nicely touching romantic scenes, not so much horrid purple prose, humourous and believable. Lovely.
One of the most memorably funny scenes from a romance book happened in a Nora Roberts book. The Hero and Heroine are archiologists (?) and used to be married. They’re staying in a hotel in rooms next to each other and the heroine is practising her cello. The hero did something annoying that day and so the heroine decides to do something that she knows he’ll hate. The scene cuts to the hero’s room where he’s ruminating over how infuriating the heroine is. Then the strains of music start to float into his room through the wall. He starts to get creeped out and even more annoyed and exits his room and starts pounding on her door to get her to stop playing the Jaws theme. Classic! I LOLed. Can’t remember the name of the book though… HaBO?
Moth said on 06.04.08 at 04:47 AM • [link]
And now, because this is too fun and I’m a quote-fiend (a fiend, I tell you!) here are my Top 5 non-Georgette Heyer quotes.
I know. I know. But it is my favorite book.
(ok, I cheated a little and looked those up to get it word for word…but still, good quotes).
Mk…out of my system. I’m done now. Promise.
Joanna said on 06.04.08 at 04:54 AM • [link]
There’s also a book of the Princess Bride, which is quite good. Different from the movie, but still funny and enjoyable.
Sarah Frantz said on 06.04.08 at 05:08 AM • [link]
Joanna, that Roberts was one of my favorite, Birthright. Although they are too young to both have tenure, it’s a fabulously amazing book otherwise! One I recommend all the time as part of my conversion packet!
Lorelie said on 06.04.08 at 05:13 AM • [link]
WTF does it say about me that when I sit here and try to remember fave Romance lines I visualize naughty bits? Up against the wall in Deveraux’s The Duchess. In the jungle lean-to in Brockmann’s Out of Control. When I specifically try to remember my first read romance I remember the chick loosing her virginity on the wood floor of a cabin. And the door was open.
I think I’m broken. Or I’m that chick who gives romance readers a bad name.
I taught my 5 year old to say that as he played swords. Funniest thing ever. He still trots it out (two years later) when he wants to make me laugh.
Kylara said on 06.04.08 at 05:36 AM • [link]
Hee hee! It’s like that Lisa Kleypas novel Dreaming Of You. Sara Fielding and Derek Craven, and upon their marriage….
I could be the only one silly enough to come to that conclusion.
AD said on 06.04.08 at 06:08 AM • [link]
First romance was Kathleen Woodiwiss’ Flame and the Flower, OMG I about wore out that book. My grandmother gave it to me as I was hitting puberty - I don’t think my Mom realized ...
Somewhere in the JDRobb series, Eve thinks Roark’s asleep, and she says “I love you” before falling asleep The paragraph continues that Roark smiled in the dark “he never fell asleep first.”
SonomaLass said on 06.04.08 at 06:35 AM • [link]
My first romance books were large bags of Harlequins that my aunt would loan me when I complained of being bored during summer vacation at Grandma’s. I don’t remember any dialog from those, but I do remember my father’s reaction when he realized what I was spending my time reading. He handed me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Talk about memorable dialog!
How about this bit, when Elizabeth tells Jane that she and Darcy are engaged:
Or this priceless bit from a bit later in the same conversation:
Priceless. Jane Austen is priceless.
Oh, and save me a space on the Kushiel squee-wagon! Jacqueline Carey is a damn fine writer, too.
Lisa said on 06.04.08 at 06:49 AM • [link]
Han Solo! Courtesy IMDB:
AGH hormone overload just thinking about it.
Wryhag said on 06.04.08 at 07:17 AM • [link]
To me, that means my “hero” is about to pass gas.
snarkhunter said on 06.04.08 at 07:24 AM • [link]
Heee!! Funny you should mention Han Solo, Lisa. The line of his that gets stuck in my head all the time is—bizarrely—“I feel terrible.” After he’s been released from being tortured by Vader? Just the way he says that… It runs through my head on continuous loop, and no one EVER gets it when I’m quoting him when I don’t feel all that well.
And, of course, let’s never, ever forget “Stuck-up, scruffy-looking nerfherder!” / “Who’s scruffy-looking?”
PnR said on 06.04.08 at 07:48 AM • [link]
Aargh! I read those (or at least the first one)! It was the Terrilian Saga, from the early 80’s. I was no more than 13-14 when I first read those books. God knows how I got my hands on them. There’s a scene where Terri takes revenge on the “hero” (I believe after he rapes her for the the first time, but I could be wrong) by putting him in a virtual reality machine where’s forced to live out a violent rape scene from the victim’s perspective- and then Terri’s boss has the memory wiped from his memory because it would have left him broken and traumatized. The scene that made me throw the book against the wall, though, was the one where the hero gives Terri to a visitor for the evening - just to be hospitable, you know - and then is surprised when she’s in pain later.
In fact, it was another Sharon Green novel that probably counts as my first! The Rebel Prince - yet another Green novel where a psychically gifted heroine from a more advanced civilization is sold off to a barbarian. In this case, the heroine is a princess in a technologically advanced, but closed, society ruled by a few elite, and is forced into marriage with the leader of a faction of rebels. Rape and submission ensue, of course. Then she gets amazing psychic powers and starts killing people. I must have read that book two dozen times.
Lisa said on 06.04.08 at 08:57 AM • [link]
Thought of another movie quote… in the BBC North and South.
The rival is a guy named Henry, who’s traveling with the heroine as she makes an investment scheme for the hero’s factory. She meets up with the hero in a trian station and is trying to tell him about her ideas.
It’s the delivery… Richard Armitage as Thornton. By “You don’t need Henry to help you explain,” he’s really saying, “Leave the other man out of this, you’re coming home with me.” And Armitage knows it. And it is so hot.
lizziebee said on 06.04.08 at 09:07 AM • [link]
The letter that Wentworth writes to Anne in Persuasion. Makes me quibble every time! Book/movie - any! *sniffle*
“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath…
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.”
You get to that part, and you’re like “OMG YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE HOUSE!!!” I LOVE IT!! I am such a sucker for that book.
And Pride & Prejudice. The words that WEREN’T said when Darcy and Lizzie finally got engaged. *sigh* Is it any wonder I turned out to be an incurable hopeless romantic?
I remember lots of Han Solo lines.. *Star Wars fanatic* (I’m reciting that scene mentioned above right now, by memory…)
orangehands said on 06.04.08 at 10:49 AM • [link]
I have the personal belief that everybody in America knows dialogue from The Princess Bride. :) Not really that big on the movie, but has some great lines. (“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die”).
And if we’re doing movies/books, Niles from Frasier is the most romantic beta hero EVER with Daphne (though, ok, the whole Mel thing…):
(Niles has admitted to loving her since he first met her, and wants her to run away with her):
or here. Niles comforting Daphne that he would always love her:
*yes, I have a crush on David Hyde-Pierce*
SF said on 06.04.08 at 12:18 PM • [link]
Damn, I really want to quote Fortunes of War (possibly my favourite book of all time) but I make an effort not to memorize it so I can rediscover it each time I read it.
And it’s not even any particular phrase that stands out, it’s just about the whole frigging book that’s incredibly romantic and beautiful, so I’ll just quote a random spot from probably the most intense bit of the story.
Around the time of the Spanish Armada these guys Robin and Channon (it’s a gay romance) one English, one Spanish are separated for 7 years by war and are finally reunited by chance when Robin’s ship is sunk by Channon’s privateer ship. This is old school true love, passionate declarations, no indecision whatsoever, these guys know exactly how much they mean to each other and how incredibly unlikely it is that they found each other again. Hot vigorous sex is imminent, but Robin is injured so…
Soon he was fatigued and Channon sent him back to the Divan. He slept at once, unaware of the soldiers quiet presence as Channon sat watching him in the shifting patterns of light from the stern-ports.
The gallizabra butted into the south-west, the sun had painted the sea the colour of blood and gold when Robin woke again. He opened his arms and Channon lay down with him, aroused in a moment, humping slowly at his hip. Clothes marred the pleasure and at last Robin stopped him.
“Against me,” he whispered.
seven11 lol
LizC said on 06.04.08 at 01:24 PM • [link]
Lisa, that entire train scene at the end of North and South is possibly one of the hottest things ever to appear on television. The way he just holds her hand and she’s trying not to get flustered and explain her idea as they’re sitting and then he puts his hand on her face and they kiss and it’s just so hot and so understated. I love it.
Dami said on 06.04.08 at 02:22 PM • [link]
It’s probably not really a romance but the first ‘semi’ I remember specifically reading (not counting things so mediocre they didn’t stick) was ‘A Princess of Mars’ by Burroughs.
That proposal ...‘that you are a princess does not abash me but that you are you is enough to make me doubt my sanity as I ask you my princess to be mine’... WHY has no one ever said that to me (well details I admit)
also.. add me to the Kushiel swooners
Cat Marsters said on 06.04.08 at 03:13 PM • [link]
Oh Rebecca, I love that bit from Men At Arms, too. Carrot and Angua have some really sweet moments. His insistence that “Personal isn’t the same as important,” and then the way he takes off after her, disregarding the whole mess of crap in Ankh Morpork because he thinks she might stay with Gavin in The Fifth Elephant. Gorgeous.
Lisa, I LOVE Richard Armitage (i’ve never experienced lust like i did watching him in black leather in Robin Hood). But I haven’t seen North & South! I keep meaning to get hold of the DVDs, but I can’t even find half an hour to watch Scrubs these days without some member of my household complaining about it, so several hours of BBC bonnet drama probably won’t go down well. Le sigh. This is what’s great about books: You read them privately, in your own world, and don’t impose on others.
I also remembered that one of my very favourite exchanges comes from one of my very favourite plays, Much Ado About Nothing (which also contains one of my very favourite heroines…do we see a pattern?).
Then there’s the scene at the end of Buffy, where Spike tells her:
Which is gorgeous not just for the almost Shakespearean cadence of his speech, but for the way he turns on a dime there at the end (mad props to James Marsters and Joss Whedon for it!). In fact a few weeks ago I got bored and translated it (with my hot GCSE English skills) into Shakespearean.
Fangurl over and out.
Lorelie said on 06.04.08 at 03:21 PM • [link]
Got Netflix? It’s in their play on demand list. And really? It won’t matter if it doesn’t go down well - you won’t be able to hear the complaining over the sound of your own drooling.
(Because that whole “sound of drooling” didn’t come out right the first time: I’m picturing Homer Simpson except instead of “yum. . . donut. . .” it’s “yum. . . broody. . . sexy. . . ” I could go on.)
Cat Marsters said on 06.04.08 at 03:30 PM • [link]
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?
Chicklet said on 06.04.08 at 04:08 PM • [link]
Oh, Rina, YES.I’ll probably end up rereading it tonight. *g*
Marcella said on 06.04.08 at 04:49 PM • [link]
Warrior’s Woman!! Just knowing the title makes me loathe the book more!
Lorelie said on 06.04.08 at 04:50 PM • [link]
Busting the Alpha hero mold, pacing, showing vs. telling, dynamic subplots? It’s *totally* research.
shaunee said on 06.04.08 at 04:56 PM • [link]
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.”
Joanna said on 06.04.08 at 05:08 PM • [link]
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*
Becky H said on 06.04.08 at 05:26 PM • [link]
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.
Ri L. said on 06.04.08 at 05:41 PM • [link]
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.
Jenyfer Matthews said on 06.04.08 at 05:48 PM • [link]
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…
Jenyfer Matthews said on 06.04.08 at 05:50 PM • [link]
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…
TracyS said on 06.04.08 at 06:50 PM • [link]
bwahahahahaha just based on this quote, I’m going to find this book and read it!! My kind of humor!
SonomaLass said on 06.04.08 at 07:10 PM • [link]
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:
jennyOH said on 06.04.08 at 07:23 PM • [link]
Cat Marsters: That Beatrice/Benedick scene gets me every time. I just teared up at her last line :>
Quercus said on 06.04.08 at 07:40 PM • [link]
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. :D
che said on 06.04.08 at 08:26 PM • [link]
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.”
La Reine Noire said on 06.04.08 at 08:38 PM • [link]
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.
mirain said on 06.04.08 at 08:46 PM • [link]
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?”
Rebecca said on 06.04.08 at 09:25 PM • [link]
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 :)
Sandy Beck said on 06.04.08 at 09:45 PM • [link]
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).
CEmerson said on 06.04.08 at 09:47 PM • [link]
Middlemarch, always Middlemarch:
The Diving Belle said on 06.04.08 at 09:51 PM • [link]
“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.
Ziggy said on 06.04.08 at 10:16 PM • [link]
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:
RStewie said on 06.04.08 at 10:44 PM • [link]
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.
Cat Marsters said on 06.05.08 at 12:29 AM • [link]
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!
Mac said on 06.05.08 at 12:54 AM • [link]
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?”
Chrissy said on 06.05.08 at 01:36 AM • [link]
Much Ado… the line that rips me apart…
Ouch, ouch!! Stab, twist! OMG, she’s ME!!!
BevQB said on 06.05.08 at 02:39 AM • [link]
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),
orangehands said on 06.05.08 at 03:33 AM • [link]
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
orangehands said on 06.05.08 at 03:35 AM • [link]
(uh, second to last line)
Chrissy said on 06.05.08 at 04:43 AM • [link]
Dylan Thomas from Fern Hill:
Rene said on 06.05.08 at 05:11 AM • [link]
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.
Erin said on 06.06.08 at 12:53 PM • [link]
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.)
Mac said on 06.07.08 at 05:12 AM • [link]
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*
Another Damn Sarah said on 06.08.08 at 06:16 AM • [link]
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.
rooruu said on 06.08.08 at 09:17 AM • [link]
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.
Erica said on 06.09.08 at 01:25 AM • [link]
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?”
Meriam said on 06.09.08 at 02:55 AM • [link]
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.
——-
Mac said on 06.09.08 at 03:33 AM • [link]
I wibbled. Oh yes, I wibbled. :-D
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.)
LizC said on 06.09.08 at 03:55 AM • [link]
Well if Meriam’s bringing the Pacey Witter quotes one my favorites is:
And:
Sigh.
Shawna said on 06.18.08 at 07:58 AM • [link]
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. :P
wimseynotes said on 06.18.08 at 10:06 AM • [link]
Lord Peter is the monarch of not only piffle, but of the simple declarative: I love you, I am at rest with you - I have come home. and How can I find words? Poets have taken them all.
Georgette Heyer (virtually all of them), Scarlet Pimpernel (of course) Prisoner of Zenda, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice: all deeply influential and significant, no doubt about it.
But the romance between Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey was, is, and always will be the form of marriage between equals for me.
spa soil screening said on 12.12.08 at 12:56 PM • [link]
HI,
Nice post.One of my favorite lines in the history of the written word comes from NR’s Carnal Innocence. The FBI dude has Tucker in for questioning and asks if he wants to make a statement.
spa soil screening
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