Sometimes, first lines are the best.
Saigon… s**t; I’m still only in Saigon… Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.
When I was home after my first tour, it was worse.
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
For more than a year, ominous rumors had been privately circulating among high-level Western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the ultimate weapon: a doomsday device. Intelligence sources traced the site of the top secret Russian project to the perpetually fog-shrouded wasteland below the Arctic peaks of the Zhokhov Islands. What they were building or why it should be located in such a remote and desolate place no one could say.
Some last lines are pretty good.
Sir! I have a plan!
[standing up from his wheelchair]
Mein Führer! I can walk!
I was cured, all right!
The horror… the horror…
Some are in the middle.
Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.
There are many other wonderful examples of a single line that captures much more than the moment in which it is spoken.