What's your favorite line from a Steely Dan song?

On the street he spied my face I heard him hail
In our plot of frozen space he told his tale
Poor man, he showed his hand
So righteous was his need
And me so wise I bought his prize
For chicken feed

I guess that’s a verse, not a line

 

You little purty one

 

Lots to choose from. Lots already mentioned but not this one from my favorite Dan album:

Can you show me
The shine of your Japan
The sparkle of your China
Can you show me
Bodhisattva?

 

Show Biz kids making movies of themselves and they don’t give a **** about anybody else.

 

Biscayne Bay
Where the Cuban gentlemen sleep all day

 

"Your Gold Teeth": "Even Cathy Berberian knows there's one roulade she can't sing.

Cathy Berberian was a classical vocalist once married to Italian composer Luciano Berio.

 

Mine from same song,
Daddy can’t get no fine cigar
But we know you’re smoking
Where ever you are(as in hell)

Basically my father

 

Daddy don’t live in that New York City no more.

 

I said oh no, William and Mary won't do
Well I did not think the girl could be so cruel
And I'm never going back to my old school

 

I don't if we can include Donald Fagen but I like this.

"I've got plenty of java and Chesterfield Kings but I feel like crying.
I wish I had a heart of ice"

 

"Show biz kids making movies of themselves
you know they don't give a f*** about anybody else"...

 

Drink scotch whiskey all night long
And die behind the wheel ...

 

"I'll drop him near the freeway
Doesn't he have a home"

 

Just until were out of town

 

Nothin' you can't handle
Nothin' you ain't got
Put your money on the table
And drive it off the lot
Turn on that old love light
And turn a "maybe" to a "yes"
Same old schoolboy game got you into this mess

[I know, but work with me]

 

Pour out the wine little girl
Ive got just two friends in this whole wide world

-The Second Arrangement

Any news was good news
And the feeling was bad at home
I was out of my mind and you were on the phone

- The Boston Rag

 

While he plundered far and wide
All his starving children cried
And though we sung his fame
We all went hungry just the same

- Kings (no political significance)

 

Where did the bastard run?
Is he still around?

 

You fellah, you tearin' up the street
You wear that white tuxedo
How you gonna beat the heat
Do you take me for a fool
Do you think that I don't see
That ditch out in the valley
That they're digging just for me

 

Always loved, “turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening...”

 

I had posted lines from The Pearl of the Quarter previously in this thread, but had I not gone with that one, I would have gone with this.

.

 

Like the castle in its corner
In a medieval game
I foresee terrible trouble
And I stay here just the same ...

 

She said, "Maybe it's the skeevy look in your eyes
Or that your mind has turned to applesauce
The dreary architecture of your soul"
I said, "But what is it exactly turns you off?"

How about a kiss for your Cousin Dupree

 

I love all Steely Dan lyrics except "spent the last piaster".....dunno....don't like that line much.

 

Where's that fatback chord I found?