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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40263
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The most memorable lines seem organic and natural to both character and situation. There must be a context or it will look and feel out of place - like a motivational poster in the middle of a battlefield.

The ‘Live with Honour, Die with Glory’ line could well be the unit motto and uttered as both a reminder of unity and call for courage in battle as their brothers in arms had shown in the past.

Such a line must contain truth, if only for the character in that situation.

John Burgon’s immortal line ‘a rose red city half as old as time’ is memorable for its beauty and simplicity. It is a wonderful way to say that something is truly ancient.

Sometimes a memorable line is so because of circumstance and wordplay as with Franklin’s ‘We must, indeed,hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately’. Since Franklin’s was a response to a comment, little time was spent crafting it, but it remains and is oft quoted.

How will you craft your own brilliant and memorable line? Find a character who might say something fascinating and put him in situations until he does.

When I am reading something, I often will linger on a paragraph or reread a section that has a particular resonance or beauty - perhaps both. Much of Les Miserables is like that - Hugo describes how a person who remembers Paris remembers not just the streets down which they walked, but those they never passed, homes they entered and more they never even saw, for even that which one did not experience colours and shapes them and is remembered. The beauty of the prose and the profundity of the thought held me there.

The best lines come naturally, part of the whole and inspired by what preceded and what shall follow.

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