"Did it hurt when you fell from heaven" is the most famous pick up line in the language, which makes the angel category both the easiest and the hardest to use — everyone recognises the setup, so the payoff has to swerve. The best modern angel lines acknowledge the cliché and then do something with it.
Play them knowing, not sincere. The wink is the delivery mechanism.
Every angel line lives in the shadow of the fall-from-heaven original, and that is the material's secret strength: the audience already knows the genre, so subversion is cheap and effective. Open with the classic and swerve the ending, or acknowledge the cliché outright — self-awareness converts a groan into a laugh. Sincere delivery is the only unrecoverable error.
The same knowing register runs through the classic lines and their deliberate opposites, the worst-rated collection — sometimes the best opener is a famously terrible one.
