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Last month, I announced the return of my “Next Line, Please,” column, which ran on this site from 2014 to 2015. In that first reprise (read it here), I proffered up 15 quotations from books, plays, and movies, challenging readers to identify the source of the quotations. Here are the first three identified, plus a prompt to go with each. Choose one prompt and enter your effort in the comments field.
- “Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.” This is the opening sentence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover—perhaps a surprise to readers expecting something racy. The prompt: write a one-paragraph narrative prose poem that surprises the reader by ending with this sentence.
- “It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.” Thus concludes Virginia’s Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The prompt: write a one-paragraph narrative prose poem that begins with these two sentences.
- “Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life”: This may be the most memorable sentence uttered by the title character of Muriel Spark’s 1961 novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The late Maggie Smith spoke the line in the brilliant 1969 movie adaptation. The prompt: write a short elegy for Maggie Smith, or a poem about either the book or the movie, quoting this line.
Please remember that, as a loquacious fellow once said, brevity is the soul of wit. It is also kinder on the eyes of the reader. There will be intangible prizes not only for the best entries, but also for the shortest.
The next post will reveal the winning entries—and will announce a new prompt.
Deadline: Monday, December 2nd, 2025
