They Said WHAT?

It's the last Sunday of March already. Where the heck did March go? Although, I have to admit, I'm rarely sad to see March go. It means the warm weather is that much closer. However, March was great reading time for me. I hope it was for you, too. Here are some of the great lines from books I was reading this month.

In THE LOCK ARTIST by Steve Hamilton:

"I had learned on freestanding safes, where I could really get my body up next to them and feel what I was doing. As the Ghost had said so many times, when he was teaching me how to do this...It's like seducing a woman. Touching her in just the right way. Knowing what was going on inside her. How do you do that if every part of the woman except her face is hidden behind a wall?"

From Pat Conroy's SOUTH OF BROAD:

"I have an affinity for choosing the tightrope walk across the abyss and have developed a genius for the wrong turn."

"Living as I do in the backwaters of South Carolina, I had not fully appreciated the corroding effect of the celebrity obsession that has taken hold in America, leading to a maggoty and fly-spotted culture."

"As we sit there watching the water recede, I think about Niles in the orphanage on the day I met him, and I guess he had wanted someone, anyone, to hold his hand during the long, dreadful forced march of his childhood. It was the least I could do, as he had long ago taught me a lesson about the great inner strength sometimes granted to the most wounded of men. And how those men can sometimes grow up to be heroes."

In THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS by John Connolly:

"Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge."

Ed Lynskey wrote in TROGLODYTES:

"The CNN reporter talking in the background...said another GI had died in Iraq. I frowned. That made one more Gold Star mom. Before the war ended, we'd see a galaxy of them."

In May, Chris Grabenstein's ROLLING THUNDER is coming out, and I think you'll agree that this is one heck of a hook for the book:

"The day starts like so many others with John Ceepak: we bust an eight-year-old girl for wearing high heels."

I just love his opening sentences - every book!

And to round out this month's awesome lines, I was listening to the audio for THE FIRST RULE on the way back from Pittsburgh yesterday and was reminded of this great line:

"He moved back along the hall, thinking how different his own home was from the home that Frank Meyer built. Pike's furnishings were minimal, and the walls were bare. Pike did not have a family, so he had no pictures of family on the walls, and he did not keep pictures of his friends. Pike's life had led to blank walls, and now he wondered if his walls would ever be filled."

I find that excerpt hauntingly beautiful, but it was even more incredible in Robert Crais' gravelly Pike voice.

I hope your March was filled with wonderfully great lines as well. If you have any YOU'D like to share, feel free to leave them in the comments. And let's meet up here again next month to share some more! Happy Reading!