Top five sentences

In a recent issue of Empire, Frank Darabont contributed his top ten lists of movies of various genres. He wrote a interesting introduction about how subjective these lists are and how they fill him with anxiety because they depend on the mood you’re in at the time and then someone always comes up and says, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t include _____’. So with that in mind, this is a very subjective list. It only includes books from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries written in English. It's a while since I last read some of these books and there may possibly be better sentences in them, or indeed in other books. However, these sentences are ones that consistently affect me powerfully when I read the books and have etched themselves into my memory strongly enough that even if I can’t remember them exactly word for word, I can at least find them within a minute of grabbing the book off my shelf. I suppose these sentences have been included because they’re from books that I love and have read many times. Interestingly, each one is from a book I first read in my teens and then have returned to over the years. These passages are ones that continue to affect me as I have grown up and gone back over them, some times it’s because of the emotional context of the sentences, or the character they involve is one I love but I also like the sentences on their own as effective and beautiful crafting of language. (Besides, it’s raining outside, the Dom is sleeping peacefully and my brain is trying to sort out exactly what should happen in Chapter 12 of my book. I can’t think of a more pleasant form of reflective meditation (OK, procrastination is probably a more accurate description) than to pull out my old books and mull through them…) 1. I lingered round them, under the benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and the hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Possibly one of the most famous last lines in English literature but stuns me every time I read that book. Not only is the sentence itself beautifully composed and rich in imagery but it shows the incredible skill of Bronte to create a satisfying resolution and a happy ending to a book that seemed impossible to do either for. I’m still to this day gobsmacked that you can close that book with a sense of hope and peace when it predominantly a story focussed on death, abuse, tragically parted lovers, more abuse, more death, betrayals, hatred, alcoholism, iniquitous and unreasonable inter-generational revenge surrounded with more abuse and death, really messed-up unhappy marriages, hauntings, imprisonment, and then finally more death. The ending is extraordinary in that with Heathcliff’s death, there is a sense that the next generation are free to be happy and peace is restored to Wuthering Heights but also Cathy and Heathcliff can be reunited as ghostly heathen lovers to roam the moors once more. In spite of everything, Heathcliff gets both the ending he wants (to be tormented by Cathy’s ghost until he dies to be with her) and the ending he deserves (weakening so that he can’t completely destroy the prospect of the younger Catherine’s and Hareton’s love and then dying to leave them in peace). The love between Catherine and Hareton happily reflects the love between Cathy and Heathcliff because she represents her mother and Hareton is more like Heathcliff than his own son was, but they are also a Linton and an Earnshaw so Edgar and Cathy are connected through them again also. When Lockwood sees the three tombstones of Cathy, Edgar and Heathcliff it is in some sense validating both of Cathy’s loves. One the socially acceptable, polite but still caring marriage with Edgar, and also the deeper, intense, primal connection she had with Heathcliff. Lockwood’s assertion that he couldn’t imagine ghosts lying in the quiet earth is again neatly tying up his limited perspective on the things around him. He can no more believe the notion of unquiet slumbers than he could understand the love Cathy felt for Heathcliff being as necessary as the ‘eternal rocks beneath’. With the wild and untamed heaths themselves being such powerful symbols throughout the book, it’s hard not to feel serene at the closing description of them in such a quiet and peaceful state. 2. I was aghast to realise that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died, and felt as a husband might feel, who, in the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew that he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, or esteem, for a once-beloved wife; no pleasure in her company, no wish to please, no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think; no hope of setting things right, no self-reproach for the disaster. -Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh It’s surprising for me that when I look back on this book, the bleak opening is often more powerful for me than the seductive and charming descriptions of Oxford, Venice and indeed Brideshead itself, not to mention the equally seductive and charming characters he encounters. (‘Aloysius wouldn’t approve of that at all, would you, you pompous old bear?’ – nearly beat out this sentence because it’s such a great Sebastian line and everyone loves pompous teddy bears.) I was about 16 or 17 when I first read this book and became obsessed with it from the first page. Something about the description of how Charles Ryder ‘at the age of thirty-nine, began to be old’ really struck a chord with me. This book had me hooked before it launched its powerful charm offensive and I’m always impressed with any book that can make me care deeply for depressed or apathetic characters when I’m normally drawn to lively, funny or passionate ones who would never acquiesce or give up. Charles describing how his ‘last love’ – his love for the army – died does really get to me though, every time I read it. The metaphor is extended throughout the opening of the book and it remains most of the most compelling prologues of any book I’ve ever read. I probably could have picked just about any sentence from it to be in the top five actually. (Other faves include : ‘I would go on with my job, but I could bring to it nothing more than acquiescence.’ and of course, ‘Here my last love died.’) What I love about the sentence however is how acutely it gets across the pain not of a love dying but the worse moment of realisation that it has already died and you didn’t notice its death until now. I also like the list of what Waugh refers to as ‘the whole drab compass of marital disillusion’. It’s not merely the end of affection and desire, but the complete and utter end of any connection or wish to be connected to the other person. For me, the most powerful and bleak element is ‘no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think’ – curiosity is often an unrecognised aspect of any relationship but it’s an important one. If you ever got to that point with another person, I suspect that there really would be no hope of setting things right. The final phrase ‘no self-reproach for the disaster’ is really effective at driving a final nail in the coffin. 3. He found her agitated and low – Frank Churchill was a villain; - He heard her declare that she had never loved him – Frank Churchill’s character was not so desperate; - She was his own Emma, by hand and word, when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow. - Emma by Jane Austen I love how this comically shows how jealousy can somewhat impair our judgement of others, and also rather typically of Austen, it’s a rather sweet but also realistic portrayal of how people in love behave. However, what I really like about this sentence though is it’s the first time Austen mocks Knightley at all, and I feel he deserves a bit of authorial hassling. As romantic heroes go, Knightley’s not my favourite. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with him and he seems like an honourable, kind and decent guy with his heart in the right place and he’s certainly not a snob like Emma. I just worry that ending up with him might be a bit like being married to Jimminy Cricket. I fear for Emma and worry that her marriage might end up being a series of lengthy lectures on propriety and being nice as Knightley continues on his mission to mould her into the perfect woman. I like to imagine that this sentence is dear old Aunty Jane reassuring me that Knightley is as susceptible to having his good judgement clouded by affections as anyone else and Emma will be able to manipulate him as easily as she does her father. I take comfort in the hope that Emma might never be entirely reformed. She might have learnt to be more considerate of other’s feelings and lost some of her snobbish attitudes but I like to think that she’ll be back to scheming and match-making before long. After all, she and Knightley already have nieces and nephews who’ll be grown up in a few years. As an affectionate Aunt, I’m sure Emma would be unable to resist a bit of romantic interference on their behalf and then if she and Knightley had children, I doubt they’d be safe from her plotting. 4. To find oneself locked out of a country-house at half-two in the morning in lemon-coloured pyjamas can never be an unmixedly agreeable experience, and Baxter was a man less fitted by nature to endure it with equanimity than most men. - Leave it to Smith by PG Wodehouse There are a lot of fantastic sentences in any Wodehouse books but this was one of the first I read and has remained a favourite. (I also like Psmith’s explanation of why he was avoiding going into the family business of fish: I like to be surrounded by joy and life, and I know nothing more joyless and lifeless than a dead fish. Multiply that dead fish by a million, and you have an environment which only Dante could contemplate with equanimity.) Baxter is an excellent character in this book. While normally it is left to Aunts to fill the role of nemesis and villain, in this book the efficient Baxter makes for a terrific Malovolio-like antagonist. He is Emworth’s secretary and organises him with ruthless efficiency but to the dismay of his employer. Baxter soon becomes suspicious of Psmith when he arrives, and sets out to expose him which of course leads to much chaos and eventually Emsworth becomes convinced of Baxter’s ‘pottiness’ much to the relief of everyone except his sister. I love the artful understatement of this line. I always enjoy Wodehouse’s ability to describe even the mundane in colourful and humourously poetic terms. (He once described a character with a hangover as looking like the poet Shelly after he’d had a night out on the town with Lord Byron.) 5. Having been through the Total Perspective Vortex, Zaphod Beeblebrox now knows himself to be the most important being in the entire universe – something he had hitherto only suspected. - The Restaurant at the end of the Universe by Douglas Adams Adams is another one of those authors with whom I could easily find dozens of sentences to be included in a favourites list. I still really like the anti-simile (is there a term for such a thing?) ‘…hung in the air the same way that bricks don’t’. This line makes it in though because it’s about Zaphod who is my favourite Hitchhikers character and this sentence pretty much encapsulates everything that makes him awesome. I particularly enjoy Peter Jones’ delivery of the line in the radio series and always hear his voice when I read the books now. Why do I like this line so much? I love the set up of the extreme superlative of Zaphod’s importance and then comic undercutting of the final phrase. His suspicion of his own greatness being tacked on as a throwaway aside is brilliant. Who wants a modest and humble hero to become the most important being in the universe when you can have Zaphod?