The Bits of Prose stuck in your head

[Heradel]

This probably could have easily gone into any of the [genre] Fiction Discussion subfora, but it's more broad than any and it does seem somewhat more on-topic here than in Galli.

I've got a weird brain. Some things I forget shockingly easily (much to the aggravation of my girlfriend), and other things get stuck in there like Han in Carbonite. Now usually they're useless bits of trivia and news that some subset of ends up being useful in the future, but stuck in there are lines from novels that are not the pivotal or poetic. They move the scene, but are not the high art of writing. Most of the time I have to take a few minutes to even figure out where exactly they're from (and at that point, I'm fairly certain I'm misremembering the wording). I'm hoping that I'm not some mutant (though in this crowd who could tell) and that this happens to other people.

I'll start off with a line from one of the X-Wing novels (I think). If I'm remember correctly it's from one of the Wraith Squadron ones, and one of the pilots is watching a fellow squadron member that is secretly feeding information to the Empire. "He saw her walking with the with the hunched stance of a throneworlder." Meaning that the supposed farmgirl was actually from Coruscant. It's a nothing line, but somehow it's one of the ones that bubble to the surface of a blank mind.

[MacArthurBug]

If you're a mutant then I was caught in the same fallout pattern. But, as mentioned in this group no-one'd look twice if either of us were.
I compare myself with a mockingbird. At random I pick up lines, from a book, a movie, a play, a song and they stick. Usually totally useless and often bloodily mained into fitting into the spaces left in the mess of my brain. The one I was most recently caught using was to compare the thoughtful look my beloved to staring into "the middle distance" apparently the middle distance is from a song .. that I didn't remember listening to until I gave it a re-listen.

[Alasdair5000]

There's a supremely odd novel called Eureka Street by Robert Mcliam Wilson about a lapsed Catholic debt collector and a protestant layabout who talks several million pounds out of the National Lottery.  Very weird, very cool book made into a superb TV show that no one watched.  The first line is:

'All stories are love stories.'

On the other end of the critical spectrum I remain very fond of this from TekWar:

'It could be a trap.' Jake mused.  'But I should go anyway and make sure.'

[Bdoomed]

"Ford, you're turning into a penguin.  Stop it."

[SirJolt]

One of my favourite deliveries of a throwaway line comes from the cooking scene in Goodfellas,

"That's my secret- that's my trick."

The feeling that he's almost interrupting himself just makes it... and I don't even think I liked Goodfellas that much.

[Raving_Lunatic]

"He hadn't looked in a long time." Farenheit 451

[Planish]

"No wife, no horse, no mustache."

I can't recall where I first read this phrase, but I remember that it sounded cryptic and/or crazy to the POV character.
Evidently, it's from a song title - http://lyrics.smashits.com/view-144959-fifi_no_wife.html - but it's been borrowed by Robert Anton Wilson, William S. Burroughs, and others.

[Unblinking]

I don't really experience this too often for random phrases.  For me, the random storage seems to be mostly taken up by video games I played as a kid.  To this day I can play Super Mario Bros. 3 and find every pink note block and all the little secret areas, which I find kind of scary.  How much genuinely useful or fulfilling knowledge have I bypassed so that I can play a 20-year old video game with proficiency?

For a time in junior high, when I was bored in the summer, I would set up video games on the color TV and pull a black-and-white TV into the room to play whatever was on TV.  I'm still not sure why, I guess my media-saturated brain needed more input to feel satiated.  Anyway, this made for some strong associations between episodes of TV shows and levels in video games.  There is one level of "The Illusion of Gaia" with a wilderness maze, all twisty vines suspended over blackness.  That level has a strong association with an episode of Star Trek TNG, where Riker falls in love with a member of a genderless alien race--by the end of the episode this alien has decided she will adopt human female characteristics, but then her alien mates brainwash her back into gender-neutrality.

I must've watched/played those together maybe 15 years ago, but the memory is still strong.

[MacArthurBug]

The one that won't go away: Veryvery briefly Nintendo had a breakfast cerial a dulie box of super mario brothers and Zelda. To this friggin day I can remember the intro song. I too wonder what important part of my brain is wasted on this trivia when I could remember important things (like birthdays or peoples names)

[Unblinking]

Ooh, I remembered one written thing that still sticks in my head.  In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a food replicator on the Heart of Gold ship that, no matter what you ask it for, always produces a substance that is "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".  That phrase pops into my head every once in a while for absolutely no reason. 

[Bdoomed]

Ooh, I remembered one written thing that still sticks in my head.  In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a food replicator on the Heart of Gold ship that, no matter what you ask it for, always produces a substance that is "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea".  That phrase pops into my head every once in a while for absolutely no reason. 

+1 awesome

[Ben Phillips]

"It's a mistake to think that old Bill Smiles is drunk just because he can't move."

- Lord Dunsany, "The Secret of the Sea"