# What are your favorite stupid lines from books?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 5, 2006, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442 "2006-08-05T07:25:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2006, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/1 "2006-08-05T07:25:30Z")
In the most recent [sucky book thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=381152&page=1&pp=50), **CaseSensitive** mentioned his (?) favorite line from a Thomas Covenant novel: [“They were featureless and telic, like lambent gangrene. They looked horribly like children.”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7643249&postcount=118)
Shortly after laughing myself to death and resurrecting, I ran across my own Stupid Book Line. It hails from the ST:TNG book\* **Boogeymen** : “Wesley didn’t feel like such a gazebo if Picard also seemed to be afraid to touch anything.”
Let’s make a trend of this. What are your favorite stupid line that you’ve run across in your reading?
Yes, I realize I was letting myself in for some stupid writing in a TNG novel. What can I say, I’m on vacation and it’s brain candy.
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### Author:  [@Arrimus\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrimus_2)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/2 "2006-08-05T18:47:42Z")
From James Silke’s Death Dealer trilogy:
“[The mountains were strewn about the] land like the turds of some incontinent god.”
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### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/3 "2006-08-05T19:00:11Z")
It’s from a ST:TNG book I read once kinda by accident: An away team meets up with some inhabitants of a mysterious space station. The inhabitants happen to be the remnants of the crew of a starship that had gone missing soome thirty years previously. Paraphrase:
> [@](#):
>
> One of the newcomers was an elderlay Asian man, and another was an African-American woman.
Uhh, _huh_.
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### Author:  [@Foldup\_Rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foldup_Rabbit)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2006, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/4 "2006-08-06T06:02:19Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again.
Douglas Adams - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It’s not particularly insightful, nor does it hold a great load of meaning. But it is so absurd and out of left field that it gives me the Rampaging Giggles. Even better in context.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2006, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/5 "2006-08-06T11:12:29Z")
There was a book called “Term Limits” by Vince Flynn that I had the…experience of reading, once. (It wasn’t _Plan 9_ bad, and it was fun enough, but it wasn’t really a “classic,” by a long shot, either) At one point, when trying to narrow down a list of suspects in a string of assassinations, from eyewitness descriptions and the killers’ _modus operandi_, they figure their suspect is a current or former member (likely the latter) of the U.S. special forces, who happens to be black.
So they decide to focus their investigation on, quote, “former black commandos.” I think they even repeat that a couple of times.
So, apparently, they’re looking for someone who _used_ to be a black guy, but gave it up when he left the service. Quite a trick.
I never could figure out if that was an editing oversight, or if the author was being really clever and including ungrammatical dialogue on purpose, to add a _vérité_ feel. (Then I couldn’t decide if I was rationalizing, or just being overly kind.)
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### Author:  [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2006, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/6 "2006-08-06T22:02:32Z")
Are you supposed to like this line?
One of the most quotable books I’ve read (apart from HHGTTG) is My Blue Heaven with these two exquisite gems:
My dear aunt effie was dressed in a white gown that made her look like nothing so much as an alp.
And
While I’m certain there are any number of heterosexual boys in New York who adore Sondheim, I was pretty sure this wasn’t one of them.
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### Author:  [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2006, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/7 "2006-08-06T22:58:19Z")
> [@Foldup Rabbit](#):
>
> Douglas Adams - The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Quote:
> > Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again.
>
> It’s not particularly insightful, nor does it hold a great load of meaning. But it is so absurd and out of left field that it gives me the Rampaging Giggles. Even better in context.
You’re talking about the context of finding out, two books later, _why_ it thought that, right?
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### Author:  [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)
#### Post date: [August 6, 2006, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/8 "2006-08-06T23:24:24Z")
[Thog’s Masterclass](http://news.ansible.co.uk/thog.html) (still an ongoing feature of Dave Langford’s _Ansible_ SF newsletter) deserves mention in this context …
Outside of Thog, I’ve never forgotten the guy in the “Doctor Who New Adventures” novel _The Bodysnatchers_ who “stood out like a diamond on a plate of kippers”.
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### Author:  [@Foldup\_Rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foldup_Rabbit)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2006, 7:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/9 "2006-08-07T07:44:51Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#):
>
> You’re talking about the context of finding out, two books later, _why_ it thought that, right?
That, and the bit about the whale right before it. Poor whale.
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### Author:  [@AwSnappity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AwSnappity)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2006, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/10 "2006-08-07T15:41:27Z")
In Augusten Burroughs’ _Magical Thinking_, there’s a chapter where he relates an incident with an opossum. He describes the opossum’s appearance thusly:
“It had a long nose, thin, like a Swedish man’s penis.”
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### Author:  [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)
#### Post date: [August 7, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/11 "2006-08-07T22:23:24Z")
Vladimir Harkonnen in **House Atreides** , one of the rank **Dune** prequels: “You nervous coward!” I wouldn’t have thought it possible for three words to be simultaneously a tautology _and_ an oxymoron, but the writers somehow managed it.
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### Author:  [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2006, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/12 "2006-08-08T00:42:40Z")
From Anthony Burgess’ **A Clockwork Orange**
> [@](#):
>
> What’s it going to be then, eh ?
😉
Cartooniverse
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2006, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/13 "2006-08-08T02:16:59Z")
From Isaac Asimov’s _Foundation:_
"If you ask me, _the Galaxy is going to pot!"_
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### Author:  [@LiveOnAPlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LiveOnAPlane)
#### Post date: [August 8, 2006, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-favorite-stupid-lines-from-books/367442/14 "2006-08-08T06:34:13Z")
Remember the old Nick Carter spy books? Just pick one and open it up at random. Watch out for the exclamation points!!