Lines that have provoked a physical reaction...

sorgoth

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When reading a book, are there any lines that made you cry, or made a chill go down your spine?

I remember the scene in Brave New World where the children are conditioned to not like flowers...they walk towards the flowers and loud noises suddenly come out, causing the children to cry and cower. Sent a chill down my spine.

Also, the last line from 1984.
 
"It was our 119th year in the computer."
From Harlen Ellisons "I have No Mouth and I Must Scream".
It's about a huge sentient computer that has killed the entire human race except for 4 that he keeps alive and tortures inside itself because it's pi$$ed that they made him exist.
At one point he says to the humans something along the lines of:
"I have [so many billion miles of circutry} if you printed hate on every inch in one micron long letters, that would not begin to express 1 one billionth of how much I hate you."
 
Brian said:
"It was our 119th year in the computer."
From Harlen Ellisons "I have No Mouth and I Must Scream".
It's about a huge sentient computer that has killed the entire human race except for 4 that he keeps alive and tortures inside itself because it's pi$$ed that they made him exist.
At one point he says to the humans something along the lines of:
"I have [so many billion miles of circutry} if you printed hate on every inch in one micron long letters, that would not begin to express 1 one billionth of how much I hate you."
Click to expand...

I've got to read that book.
 
You'll get plenty of physical reactions if you read Ellison's collection of short stories "Angry Candy," 17 stories and a brilliant preface that all deal with death. I found "Paladin of the Lost Hour" the most emotionally moving.
 
"All the world will be your enemy, prince with a thousand enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you."

Watership Down.

Regards;
Beanbag
 
"Part of me remained forever at Latitude 80 deg 08' South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my skepticism"

Adm. Richard E. Byrd, Alone. The story of his experiences manning the Bolling Advance Weather Station, completely alone in Antarctica in the winter in 1934. A malfunctioning oil stove, his only source of heat for survival, nearly killed him with carbon monoxide poisoning, and left him to have to do a balancing act between risking freezing to death or continue poisoning himself with the fumes, all the while keeping his situation secret from the other members of the Antarctic expedition in Little America.

Regards;
Beanbag
 
This particular book offers many lines that provoke physical reaction. This quote is the one that came first to my head when I read the topic of the thread.


“Theodore took another mouthful from the flask, spread his cape over the count and lying down close to him for warmth, let his weary limbs relax, indifferent to danger, void of fear, empty of everything but the imperitive need of sleep”

Violet Needham. The Woods of Windri

If you like, I have more.

The Deviant Pixie
 
Quoting from memory, a line from 1984 always provokes some kind of physical reaction from me:

If you want a vision of the future, picture a jackboot stamping on a human face, forever.

I just googled that and came up with nothing. Let's see how far off I was:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- for ever.
Click to expand...

Not too bad, if I do say so myself. :D
 
sorgoth said:

Also, the last line from 1984.
Click to expand...

"It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050."

Doesn't seem like that emotional a line to me. :D
 
The beginning of Naked Lunch
I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooing over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train... Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me. I am evidently his idea of a character...
Click to expand...
Especially as read by Burroughs himself.
 
How's this for a first line?

"There was a killer loose on the range."

Arthur C.Clarke. "The Deep Range."
 
Herman Charles Bosman's short story "The Rooinek" {literally 'redneck' a derogatory phrase for the British}.

You have to read it of course, and I bet no-one else here has, but I challenge even the most stony-hearted person to not shed a tear after the last line.
 
A story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. I do not recall the title. It is about a young woman who meets a writer she worships. I read the story, left the library, and sat on a bench. I put my head between my knees to keep from vomiting.

The is no lone line which I recall from that story.

*****

"And anything that happened me afterwards, I never felt the same about again." From "Guests of the Nation", a story by Frank O'Connor.
 
shemp said:
You'll get plenty of physical reactions if you read Ellison's collection of short stories "Angry Candy," 17 stories and a brilliant preface that all deal with death. I found "Paladin of the Lost Hour" the most emotionally moving.
Click to expand...
Did you know that story was made into a very good episode of the New Twilight Zone? Come to think of it I think it was a screenplay first.
A side note, in the short story one of the characters is black and the other is white. Ellison made it unclear which was which on purpose. I have no idea why.
 
RCNelson said:

I just googled and found Paladin of the Lost Hour on the web.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I just read it. I had never done so, although I saw Ellison get the award at Worldcon. It comes across to me as a fairly cynical manipulation of the wish-fulfillment formula. It's almost as if Ellison thought to himself, "Ha ha! I'll sit down and write a tearjerker."

Also in the wish-fulfillment category, but to me not as cynical, is the last line in Ray Bradbury's I Sing the Body Electric. Also from Bradbury, the scene where the father decides to laugh at the Dust Witch, the story about the boy with the birthday and the stars as candles, the story about the luggage shop on Mars, and many others.

From Dick, the scene in Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, in which Felix, after having passed through to a gentler universe, lands at the filling station and presents the picture to the black man.

From Pohl, the last chapter in Gateway.

From Fitzgerald, the scene in The Great Gatsby with the shirts.

From the unknown author of the Poema de Mio Cid, the one line (in modern translation) "de los sus ojos tan fuertamente llorando," roughly, "from those his eyes so strongly crying." Mostly because of the viewpoint of Spanish culture, that crying and expressing emotion is an essential property of masculine strengh, in contrast to the stiff upper lip of Anglo culture.

I have to reread Don Marquis. A lot of good stuff in there.

From Nietzsche, "The Grave Song" and the pre-penultimate line, "Only where there are graves are there resurrections."

This is only the crying and spine-shivering stuff. Projectile vomiting is also a physical reaction, and I'm sure there's more literature that would support that.
 
The last page of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is astounding. The first time I read it, I was moved to tears. I won't reveal here what happens, but if you haven't yet but will read the book, do not read ahead to the last page!
 
The last paragraph of Zelazny's "lord of Light".
And pardon a scot for saying so but :
" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
 
Wudang said:
The last paragraph of Zelazny's "lord of Light".
And pardon a scot for saying so but :
" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"
Click to expand...

No pardon needed; those are good ones.

The funny thing is that the lines originally penned by Jefferson really sucked. This version was actually made by committee. It's probably the first and last time a committee has come up with good language.
 
"Oh my God, it's full of stars!"

paraphrase of a line from 2001: A Space Odyssey
 
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