What's your favorite lyric from a song?

"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to push the knife in"

From "Dogs" by Pink Floyd 

@bander , jeez that's an unrelentingly bleak lyric. All the important relationships in life going south..

"Her daddy turned mean and her mama leaned hard"

Emmylou Harris wrote the song "Red Dirt Girl"
which is the name of the album for which she won a Grammy in 2001 for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

• Emmylou Harris explained the background to this song on her website: "I am very, very inspired by the sound of words, and the names of places are so melodic and beautiful," she said. "I was passing through Meridian on my way down to record in New Orleans and that's what started it."
  
  "But what really took it over the edge for me was on a night off in New Orleans we went to see Boys Don't Cry," Emmylou continued. "It unnerved me, not only because of the violence and homophobia, but also because of the underlying theme of how trapped those young people were. We all come into this world with so much potential and so many dreams. Who knows why some people escape and other people don't? The key idea is in the lyric, 'There won't be any mentions on The News of the World.'"

mitchchavis --- Hey, that Dylan Mr. Tambourine Man verse ("Take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind") is my number one lyric of all-time, too.  Then there's David Bowie's verse from the album Aladdin Sane -- "Jung the foreman prayed at work, that neither hands nor limbs would burst.  It's hard enough to keep formation, mid this fallout saturation."

"And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, "The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"

And whispered in the sounds of silence"

I was recently reminded of Paul Simon’s great lyric by hearing Disturbed’s quite different version.

https://youtu.be/1tSoHvQkZ-E