Memorable Lines

Great lines stay with us. Is there anyone who's watched GONE WITH THE WIND who doesn't remember Rhett's infamous line to Scarlett? Even people who haven't seen the movie know the quote: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. In Jaws, the memorable line is: You're gonna need a bigger boat. I can even visualize the scene where this takes place as clearly as if I were watching the movie. It's that evocative. We appreciate great lines so much, that the American Film Institute even did a television special titled AFI's 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes.

Of course, this started me thinking about what lines from romance novels have stuck with me long after I've read the book. I narrowed it down to my top five.

Is there anyone who's read Linda Howard's Mackenzie's Mountain who doesn't remember the first line of the book?

1. He needed a woman. Bad.

I saw this quote in a topic on the old Prodigy bulletin boards. I'd never read Linda Howard before, but I found it intriguing enough to go shopping and pick up the book. As soon as I finished the story, I went looking for every other book Howard had written.

Which other lines made my personal most memorable list?

Jayne Ann Krentz has written a lot of great books, with many, many great lines, but my absolute favorite is from PERFECT PARTNERS.

2. "Good news, Dixon," he said thickly. She doesn't need therapy."

With this line--and the heroine's actions--the hero puts her cheating ex-boyfriend in his place, and sends him running back home.

Another of my favorite bits of dialogue is an exchange between the hero and heroine of Debra Dixon's BAD TO THE BONE. At this point, they've just finished making love and the ramifications are registering.

3. "My medical history is clear."
   "Yeah, well, if your fallopian tubes are, too, we're in big trouble," Sully snapped.

This is a Bantam Loveswept from 1996 and I love this story so much, I keep buying backup copies. I always want to be able to reread it when the mood strikes.

This next quote is one of those lines that has really lodged itself in my head. I'm not sure exactly why, but there's just something about this bit of dialogue from Linda Lael Miller's HERE AND THEN that gets me shivery.

4. "If there's no baby inside you now," he said huskily, "I'll put one there when I get back."

This was a time travel romance from Special Edition.

To close out my top five I chose Julie Garwood. I adore her books, and they're filled with great lines that are laugh out loud funny. It's impossible to narrow it down to one, but for the sake of brevity, I will.

5. He never knew what hit him.

This is the opening line in Garwood's THE PRIZE and truer words have never been written. Throughout the book, the heroine continually stuns the hero, but there are a few times when he returns the favor.

Thinking about these lines, though, made me wonder if the authors themselves loved them as much as I did? Did other writers even have favorite quotes from their own books? So then I started wondering about the stories I've written. Are there lines that readers remember and enjoy? I know what some of my favorites are.

In my second book, THE POWER OF TWO, my favorite moment was a bit of dialogue that I wrote during the revision process. It comes while Jake and Cai are in bed, and he stops her from touching him, telling her he needs time to recuperate. Cai's response?

"I thought you Special Forces guys had stamina.

There was a lot of stuff I thought was fun in my current release, THROUGH A CRIMSON VEIL. That makes it much harder to pick my favorite, but I think I have to go with what Mika says to Conor in chapter three. He's trying to resist his need for her, and she's pushing him. Before he loses his head and gives in, Conor lifts her off his lap and puts her on the kitchen table—right into a pool of spilled orange juice.

"Conor," she purred with a smile that made him twitch, "there are more pleasurable ways to get my panties wet."

Now that I've talked about lines I've really enjoyed in my books as well as other author's stories, what quotes have stayed with you?

Patti O'Shea
Through a CrimsonVeil
http://www.pattioshea.com/