lisahickey replied:

The other one is from Nabakov's Lolita: "My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three." THAT one changed me because of the way "Picnic, lightning" is simply two nouns strung together, but it tells nearly a complete story. Brilliant! I just loved the structure of the whole sentence, and it helped me think about my own "voice" and how to develop one.

lisahickey replied:

OH! Everyone's suggestions are GREAT! Am adding 2: One was deep in a boring self-help type book. Nothing helpful, 'cept for this one nugget ~ "Seek to connect, not to impress." And in my life up to that point, I was someone who was so terrified of making a bad impression that all I ever sought to do was impress people. Once I focused on *connecting* with them instead, it made all the difference.

StephenClayBush replied:

I read "The Road" (Cormac McCarthy). Near the end of the story there's a line that explained how the man looked at his son as "his charge." That one sentence, in context of the story, allowed me to see something in my own life very differently. It was, in essence, a life-changing moment for me. One sentence. Otherwise, the story would have been, to me anyway, mediocre and irrelevant.

duponthumanite replied:

Probably mine for the moment (I picked it up last January, before I ever got onto Scribd) would be: "Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions - with the aid of my five senses." Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited. I think it is such a great sentence because of the way it was made, with its parallels, and its references to the abstract and concrete.