Quotes from Books [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

Scheherazade

05-14-2006, 05:23 PM

This is from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov and I just think it's one of the funniest lines I've ever read,I love Master and Margarita and there are couple of discussion threads around the Forum if you would like to have a look at them once you've finished reading. :)

Some more quotes from The Name of the Rose:
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected inquiry. When we consdeir a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...
There are words that give power, otehrs that make us all the more derelict, and to this latter category belong the vulgar words of the simple, to whom the Lord has not granted the boon of self-expression in the universal tongue of knowledge and power.
Be on guard, my son... The beauty of the body stops at the skin. If men could see what is beneath the skin,..., they would shudder at the sight of a woman. All that grace consists of mucus and blood, humours and bile. If you think of what is hidden in the nostrols, in the throat, and in the belly, you will find only filth. If it revolts you to touch mucus or dung with your fingertip, how could we desire to embrace the sack that contains that dung?
After so many years even teh fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
Est ubi glorai nunc Babyloiae? Where are the snows of yesteryear? The earth is dancing the dance of Macabre; at times it seems to be that the Danube is crowded with ships loaded with fools going towards a dark place.This last quote reminded me of Yossarian's question in Catch-22: "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"

I would like to inform everyone that I have finally finished reading The Name of the Rose so no more quotes! :D

Idril

05-15-2006, 07:45 PM

I love Master and Margarita and there are couple of discussion threads around the Forum if you would like to have a look at them once you've finished reading. :)

I will, thank you for mentioning them. I'm cruising through the book, I just can't put it down so I should be done very soon.

Some more quotes from The Name of the Rose:...

If you liked The Name of the Rose, you should try Q (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0151010633/104-6973725-7657550?v=glance&n=283155) by Luther Blissett. It's actually written by a collaboration of 4 anonymous Italian authors using the name Luther Blissett but that's not really important, what's important is that it's a fascinating book, it takes place during the Reformation but it focuses on the Anabaptists and Catholics, not the Lutherans although they certainly do pop up from time to time. It's not a particularly easy read, much like Name of the Rose but the historical context is riveting and it's interesting to look at the Reformation from a slightly different angle and to learn that those Anabaptists were a violent bunch. :eek:

SurrealDialogue

05-15-2006, 08:50 PM

I'm currently re-reading "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges. Here is a quote:

...I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world.

Earnshaw

05-16-2006, 11:40 AM

"My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff.
If all else perished, and he remained.
I should still continue to be. . . .
Nelly, I am Heathcliff!
He's always, always in my mind:
not as a pleasure . . . but as my own being."

Truth Untold

05-16-2006, 12:23 PM

Now I'm reading an Anita Blake novel, Book 9 Obsidian Butterfly let's see, quotes quotes quotes...

'I was covered in blood, but it wasn't mine, so it was okay.'

Shannanigan

05-17-2006, 09:42 AM

lol, Truth. God I love Anita Blake :P

I'm reading "True Notebooks" by Mark Salzman (he's writing about teaching a writing class in Juvenile Hall). The inmate boys are discussing how they're going to make themselves look good for the inmate girls who will be at an open mic event. Quote:

"Listen up! I figured out a way to crease our pants using the hot plate."
"Jackson, you gotta get some Scotch tape from the pantry. That way we can make cuffs."

and that's pant leg and sleeve cuffs...not the other kind ;)

beer good

05-17-2006, 09:43 AM

"For every complex problem there is a simple solution, and it's wrong."
- Umberto Eco quoting HL Mencken in "Foucault's Pendulum"

grace86

05-17-2006, 12:12 PM

From Anna Karenin:

1) "He walked down, for a long while averting his eyes from her, as though she were the sun, but seeing her, as one sees the sun, without looking."

2) "Well, such women do exist...and they are terrible. Woman, don't you know, is the sort of subject that study it as much as you will it is always quite new."

3) "The child's presence called up both in Vronsky and in Anna a feeling akin to that of a sailor who can see by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly sailing is wide of the proper course, but is powerless to stop. Every moment takes him farther and farther astray, and to admit to himself that he is off his course is the same as admitting final disaster. This child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass which showed them the degree to which they had departed from what they knew but did not want to know."

Redshift

05-18-2006, 06:12 PM

Harrison Ford in harris tweed

Well not really, but I thought I'd give everyone a laugh.

Asa Adams

05-18-2006, 06:55 PM

this is from Orwell's "1984" on the rebellion of the proles and when and if that could ever happen.

"Untill they have become conscious they will never rebel, and untill after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

-Winston Smith

Arethusa

05-18-2006, 08:45 PM

Ian McKellen, an openly gay actor who plays Leigh Teabing in The Da Vinci Code, tried to make light of the controversy:

"I'm very happy to believe that Jesus was married," he said. "I know the Catholic Church has problems with gay people and I thought this would be absolute proof that Jesus was not gay."

That kinda cracked me up. As did the following.

Read this today in Horace's Satires. Horace's slave, Davus, comparing his master's behavior to his own at Saturnalia when all slaves are free to speak without fear of reprecussion and servant becomes master for the day:

Wretch, you who order me around serve another,

Like a wooden puppet jerked by alien strings.

So who is free? The wise man: in command of himself,

Unafraid of poverty, chains, or death, bravely

Defying his passions, despising honours, complete

In himself, smoothed and rounded, so that nothing

External can cling to his polished surface, whom

Fortune by attacking ever wounds herself. Can you

Claim any of this for your own? The woman demands

A fortune, bullies you, slams the door in your face,

Drowns you in cold water, then calls you back! Take your

Neck from the vile yoke. “I’m free, free,” say it! You can’t:

A despot, and no slight one, oppresses your spirit,

Pricking sharp spurs in your tired flanks, yanking when you shy.’

ShoutGrace

05-20-2006, 01:20 PM

From Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis", his letter to his former lover Lord Alfred Douglas. It was this relationship that eventually landed Wilde in prison, which is where he wrote the work.

“Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that loathing, bitterness and contempt should forever take the place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me . . ."

“I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write of your life and of mine, of the past and of the future, of sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things that may be turned to joy, there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick. If it prove so, read this letter over and over again till it kills your vanity. If you find in it something of which you are unjustly accused, remember that one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused. If there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison where the day no less than the night is set apart for tears."

"Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right. Remember also that whatever is misery to you to read, is still greater misery for me to set down. To you the Unseen Powers have been very good. They have permitted you to see the strange and tragic shapes of Life as one sees shadows in a crystal. The head of Medusa that turns living men to stone you have been allowed to look at in a mirror, merely. You yourself have walked freely among the flowers. From me the beautiful world of colour and motion has been taken away."

cuppajoe_9

05-24-2006, 06:57 PM

From Catch-22: "If they wanted to fly combat missions they were insane and they didn't have to fly them, but if they didn't want to fly combat missions they were sane and they had to fly them."

From The Grapes of Wrath: My signature.

Cormeister37

05-25-2006, 01:05 AM

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.
-The Great Gatsby

Idril

05-26-2006, 03:18 PM

From The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

...there's a folk saying about the search which covers the subject: They are looking for something which was never put there.

NNoah3

05-26-2006, 07:39 PM

Here is a thread to share the sections you like in the book you are reading at the moment.

Can we post quotes about books that we read already?

superunknown

05-29-2006, 06:36 PM

Lennie said, "Tell about that place, George."
"I jus' tol' you, jus' las' night."
"Go on - tell again, George."
"Well, it's ten acres," said George. "Got a little win'mill. Got a little shack on it, an' a chicken run. Got a kitchen orchard, cherries, apples, peaches, 'cots, nuts, got a few berries. They's a place for alfalfa and plenty water to flood it. They's a pig pen-"
"An' rabbits, George."
"No place for rabbits now, but I could easily build a few hutches and you could feed alfalfa to the rabbits."
"Damn right, I could," said Lennie. "You God damn right I could."
George's hands stopped working with the cards. His voice was growing warmer. "An' we could have a few pigs. I could build a smoke house like the one gran'pa had, an' when we kill a pig we can smoke the bacon and the hams, and make sausage an' all like that. An' when the salmon run up river we could catch a hundred of 'em an' salt 'em down or smoke 'em. We could save them for breakfast. They ain't nothing so nice as smoked salmon. When the fruit come in we could can it - and tomatoes, they're easy to can. Ever' Sunday we'd kill a chicken or a rabbit. Maybe we'd have a cow or a goat, and the cream is so God damn thick you got to cut it with a knife and take it out with a spoon."
Lennie watched him with wide eyes, and old Candy watched him too. Lennie said softly, "We could live offa the fatta the lan'."
- John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men"

Rachy

05-30-2006, 04:44 PM

The Green Mile:

"Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day."

"When I die and stand before God awaiting judgement and he asks me why I let one of his miracles die, what am I going to say? It was my job?"

Psycheinaboat

05-31-2006, 03:02 PM

"But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death."

J.P. Donleavy
The Ginger Man

Psycheinaboat

05-31-2006, 03:13 PM

I enjoyed Tom's school days with Mr. Stelling a great deal...

"Tom Tulliver, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never called it an instrument of torture; and it was not until he had got on some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was advanced enough to call it a "bore" and "beastly stuff." At present, in relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent shrewmouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash-tree in order to cure lameness in cattle."

George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss

Hyacinth Girl

05-31-2006, 03:47 PM

"I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybbe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit - the human sperit - the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent - I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it." - Preacher Casy
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

cuppajoe_9

06-01-2006, 06:20 PM

You're reading Grapes of Wrath too? I'm reading that for english right now.

Hyacinth Girl

06-02-2006, 11:42 AM

So how are you finding it? I have to admit, I am not a fan of Steinbeck at ALL, but a friend of mine wanted to know what I thought of the ending, so I am reading to oblige. I am about halfway through now, and it's not as bad as I feared it would be - body count is only up to 2 people, a dog and a jackrabbit! =-) Casy is actually my favorite character so far - I like his train of thought.

Lambert

06-07-2006, 12:30 PM

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5

"The American was astonised. He stood up shakily, spitting blood. He'd had two teeth knocked out. He had meant no harm by what he'd said, evidently, had no idea that the guard would hear and understand.
'Why me?' he asked the guard.
The guard shoved him back into the ranks. 'Vy you? Vy anybody?' he said."

Shannanigan

06-08-2006, 09:18 AM

Laurell K. Hamilton's Incubus Dreams:

"At 3:00 that afternoon, I was at work, right on time. Neither sex, vampires, shapeshifters, nor metaphysical meltdowns will deter this animator from her appointed rounds. At least not today."

poetru_fanatic

06-08-2006, 10:11 AM

"It's not the destination, but the journey when walking the witches road."

The Outer Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczak

Taime

06-08-2006, 11:30 AM

'' I awoke trembling and sweating, the sheets soaking wet beneath me as my mind recalled the visions from the nightmare that had ripped me from my sleep. The recollections were sadly all too vivid as I had been fighting them all night, a battle I was destined to lose."

'Redemption' by Wayne Sharrocks

cuppajoe_9

06-10-2006, 06:39 PM

Erna

06-11-2006, 11:20 AM

Some passages out of Extremely loud and incredibly close by Jonathan Safran Foer that made me laugh, think or otherwise impressed me.

"I changed the Sahara!" "Which means?" he said. "What? Tell me." "Well, I'm not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer. I'm just talking about moving that one grainof sand one millimeter." "Yeah?" "If you hadn't done it, human history would have been one way..." "Uh-huh?" "But you did do it, so...?" I stood in the bed, pointed my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: "I changed the course of human history!" "That's right." "I changed the universe!" "You did." "I'm God!" "You're an atheist." "I don't exist!" I fell back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together.

But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say. It became difficult to navigate from Something to Something without accidentally walk through Nothing, and when Something - a key, a pen, a pocketwatch - was accidentally left in a Nothing Place, it never could be retrieved, that was an unspoken rule, like nearly all our rules have been.

literaturerocks

06-26-2006, 12:41 PM

Dante's Inferno

One must fear only those things that have the power to harm; not other things, for they are not fearful. i love that quote..for some reason it just struck me as brilliant..but then again.. Dante was brilliant

Hyacinth Girl

06-26-2006, 03:39 PM

"Ever since then I have understood that strength, intelligence, stupidity, beauty, cowardice and weakness are situations and roles which sooner or later hapen to everyone." Claudio Magris, Danube

TEND

06-28-2006, 01:22 PM

Scheherazade

06-28-2006, 05:38 PM

"My Mother is a fish." As I Lay Dieing - Faulkner
That's an entire chapter...what is that? I loved it though :D , just started reading yesterday and after that chapter I figured I'd reaed enough for one day.I love that quote. I don't think there are many other quotes capable of saying so much with so few words.

TEND

07-05-2006, 01:54 AM

Thank you very much. I was also considering quoting something from the last bit of Darl's chapter previous to it, all about being and not being very interesting. I'm absolutely loving this book, as I've had trouble getting into Faulkner previously, this one really hits home, partly due to characters I can identify with and the unique style it's also a much shorter novel than the others I own. Very good way to start off my Faulkner reading (Although I have read some short stories from my big book :D ).

Basil

07-05-2006, 03:41 AM

"....he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and he knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never."

Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

lavendar1

07-15-2006, 03:06 PM

"Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that -- I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up," she added, smiling playfully.

--Dorothea Brooke, Middlemarch (George Eliot)

Asa Adams

07-15-2006, 04:19 PM

Bag of bones

the more debased and devious we become, the more we cloud the launguage with erudition.

Timothy Findley

Gallantry

07-15-2006, 04:41 PM

"Why do I always begin to feel sad at such moments; explain that mystery; you learned person? I've been thinking all my life that I should be goodness knows how pleased to see you and recalling everything, and here I somehow don't feel pleased at all, although I do love you..."
- Lizaveta Nikolaevna from The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mary Sue

07-15-2006, 06:11 PM

"Perhaps a man builds for his future in more ways than one, builds not only toward the body which will be his tomorrow or next year, but toward actions and the subsequent irrevocable courses of resultant action which his weak senses and intellect cannot foresee but which ten or twenty or thirty years from now he will take, will have to take in order to survive the act."-William Faulkner

dreamweaver_tri

07-16-2006, 09:26 PM

"The choice we have is not whether to be gay or straight. For the majority of gay people, we are who God made us to be. The real choice is between denial and embracing who we are. The real choice is between living life in the shadows or walking proudly in the light. The real choice is between a slow death or an honest life."
-"Letters from the closet"

Behemoth

07-18-2006, 11:50 AM

"I take this lock of hair as a solemn offering to Dis, and now I free you from your body." With these words she raised her hand and cut the hair, and as she cut, all warmth went out of Dido's body and her life passed into the winds.
Virgil, "The Aeneid"

byquist

07-18-2006, 09:18 PM

This novel, "White Noise" by Don DeLillo, has too much gab and banter, yet some is good.

Here's a nice quote: "I wanted to be near the children, watch them sleep. Watching children sleep makes me feel devout, part of a spiritual system. ... If there is a secular equivalent of standing in a great spired cathedral with marble pillars and streams of mystical light slanting through two-tier Gothic windows, it would be watching children in their little bedrooms fast asleep. Girls especially."

Two others:

"Babette and I tell each other everything. I have told everything, such as it was at the time, to each of my wives. There is more to tell, of course, as marriages accumulate. But when I say I believe in complete disclosure I don't mean it cheaply, as anecdotal sport or shallow revelation. It is a form of self-renewal and a gesture of custodial trust."

"Who will die first? She says she wants to die first because she would feel unbearable lonely and sad without me, especially if the children were grown and living elsewhere. She is adamant about this. She sincerely wants to precede me. She discusses the subject with such argumentative force that it's obvious she thinks we have a choice in the matter."

It's not all this decent; a lot of redundancy and treading water. Something going on though. It's very casual. I don't like casual that much; seems too easy-going. But I'll give it a plug. It does move fast.

Good beach reading if you get to the beach.

Ahmed-Adel

07-22-2006, 05:10 PM

Well, I have just finished Sons and Lovers some days ago. Thus, I think I can write a quote from that excellent novel!

"I do like her... I do like to talk to her – I never said I didn't. But I don't love her."
Paul, Sons and Lovers - D. H. Lawrence

miss tenderness

07-22-2006, 10:57 PM

" ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy,and persue with eagerness the phantoms of hope;who expect that age will perform the promises of youth ,and the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow..."
Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas.

superunknown

07-26-2006, 08:15 PM

"Stately plump Buck Mulligan..."

Best beginning ever.

Woland

08-01-2006, 02:30 AM

Lear 1.2

"...Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"

HarryPercy

08-11-2006, 03:54 AM

I am now of all humours that haved showed themselves humours since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

James Joyce

melancolia

08-15-2006, 03:08 PM

"Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one"
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

white camellia

08-16-2006, 12:38 PM

But, in accordance with the primitive arrangement of things, the most trifling causes produce the greatest events, and the grandest undertakings end in the most insignificant results.

I am not fond of reflections when they remain mere reflections.

Old-Fashioned Farmers
Nikolai Gogol

(Although it's a short story, I read it as a book and loved it!)

btw, very interesting avatar from you, melancolia! :D

Ahmed-Adel

08-16-2006, 02:14 PM

Success in life may come to anyone at any level in any walk of life, but whatever the degree or the profession, one's success is shaped by the help of a multitude of other people -- a team effort. Recognizing this fact, the haves should help the have-nots.
Dr Ahmed Zewail, Voyage through Time - Walks of Life to the Nobel Prize.
This book is really excellent. It makes you feel you are living with Dr Zewail. He is a charming and lovely character; I love him!

melancolia

08-16-2006, 03:10 PM

Why, thank you white camellia! :D

To become the spectator of one’s own life, is to escape the suffering of life.
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

aeroport

08-17-2006, 11:39 PM

"And your idea is worth, this time, quite as much as any of mine..."
Fanny Assingham (great name) from The Golden Bowl speaking to her husband

(my italics)

ShoutGrace

08-19-2006, 05:03 PM

"The briefest of images can sometimes blossom into the most complex thoughts, particularly when we think about them in the context of the whole poem. The second pun, on 'standing', compares Donne 'standing' to watch his mistress undress with a soldier 'standing' waiting for a battle to begin; but the pun additionally relies on us to link 'standing' with the poet's erect penis." :rolleyes:

Analysing Texts - John Donne - The Complete English Poems

carina_gino20

08-26-2006, 01:18 AM

Mr. Sleary in Dickens's Hard Times. "People mutht be amuthed. They can't alwayth be a learning; nor can they alwayth be a working. they an't made for it."

white camellia

09-01-2006, 08:39 AM

One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same.

The Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad

Why, thank you white camellia! :D

It made me laugh.

Trackster

09-03-2006, 06:30 PM

"Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am you master;-obey!"

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley

It is such a strong image I feel. This is the first time the monstar really puts Victor in his place. There is so much to reflect on in the quote. The whole book is amazing.

-Me

Skipping Record

09-04-2006, 03:47 AM

"If the world weren't such a beautiful place, we might all turn into cynics." -Paul Auster, Moon Palace.

Geoffrey

09-05-2006, 12:40 PM

"Listen, my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become Buddha. Now this 'someday' is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carried grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people-eternal life."

Siddhartha
Herman Hesse

ShoutGrace

09-17-2006, 09:53 AM

“A credulous father, and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms,
That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
My practises ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.”

- - - King Lear, Act 1 Scene 2.

Viridis

09-18-2006, 11:02 PM

The bishop, who was sitting near him, touched his hand gently and said: "You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. I tell you, who are a traveller, that you are more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me, I knew it."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment:
"Really? You knew my name?"
"Yes," answered the bishop, "your name is my brother."

- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Scheherazade

09-19-2006, 12:02 PM

Although I have already finished reading this book, I couldn't help posting this section, which I love:
It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasinal basis. So that the fable of the Virginia ham was nonsense, the same as that of the miraculous pills and the Yuletide toilets, and by a decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist.One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez

kmwmn

09-25-2006, 03:46 PM

"In the abstract but not in the concrete," Said Ursula. "When it comes to the point, one isn't even tempted - oh, if I were tempted, I'd marry like a shot. I'm only not tempted not to." The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up with amusement. Women in Love - D. H. Lawrence On the idea of getting married or not.

Maida

10-02-2006, 10:49 PM

"With the approach of autumn, a layer of long golden fur grows over their bodies. Golden in the purest sense of the word, with not the least intrusion of another hue. Theirs is a gold that comes into this world as gold and exists in this world as gold. Poised between all heaven and earth, they stand steeped in gold."

Hard-boild Wonderland and the End of the World Haruki Murakami

Erna

10-08-2006, 07:00 AM

"Ik heb ontdekt dat het niet de zwaartekracht is die alles op de aarde houdt, maar de kleuren, zij hij langzaam maar heel stellig en dwingend. Als de hemel groen was en de aarde blauw, zouden zelfs de stenen naar boven vallen. De bomen zouden ontworteld worden."
From Kort Amerikaans by Jan Wolkers

Translation:
"I found that it's not gravity that keeps things down to earth, but the colours, he said slowly but positive and binding. If the sky would have been green and the earth blue, stones would fall upwards. The trees would get out of the ground."

orra

10-10-2006, 06:29 PM

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta .
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted lines. But in my arms she was always Lolita"
From Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

subterranean

10-10-2006, 07:17 PM

I'm currently reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. There's a movie coming soon based on this book, I think.

Outside of school, the typical American child spends more time watching television than doing any other activity except sleeping

F.Emerald

10-28-2006, 09:41 AM

Porno - Irvine Welsh:

“…more drinks come over and I see their three faces with the blotches on them getting bigger and redder as the alcohol rapidly fires through the system, flashing them like beacons, as the hormones shoot all over the place. Aye, it’s like a Vegas sign which says: C*CK PLEASE.”

Neovia

10-30-2006, 10:29 AM

Robin Hobb - Ship of Magic:
"Let me take you back o the cabin," the ever-present whore said from behind his shoulder. He had just been about to tell her to do that. Now, of course, he could not. He'd have to wait until she believed it was his own idea, or until he could think of a good reason why he had to go there. Damn her!
I love Kennit <3

Pensive

11-04-2006, 01:18 AM

How often have we been urged to cultivate a good heart! Yet we are forbidden to follow its dictates where a man is in question

From Translation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Sylph

11-06-2006, 07:41 AM

These lines are from Endymion by John Keats.....which I like most..

“To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

“Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: in the whole world wide
There was no one to ask me why I wept,—
And so I kept
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears
Cold as my fears.

“Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping: what enamour’d bride,
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,
But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side?

umeyo

11-10-2006, 02:43 AM

"Things may not be easy, but they have to be done."

orra

11-11-2006, 01:02 PM

I have already finished this play The White Devil by John Webster but there were some lines I did really like(Act I, scene1)
" Great men sell sheep, thus to be cut in pieces,
When first they have shorn them bare and sold their fleeces"

Helga

11-11-2006, 01:18 PM

I have had to convince a number of friends and relatives that the kindest act to the writer is remembering them- and that all art comes from a human being, not out of mysterious thin air.

a letter John Fowles sent a friend, published in Fowles biography

Eulalia

11-12-2006, 11:15 AM

From Walter Scott´s Rob Roy:

...And the unit of that life for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.

Ubiquitous Prat

11-17-2006, 11:33 AM

I am reading Cousin Bette by Honere de Balzac and For whom the bells toll by Ernest Hemmingway Balzac is one of the greats.

Mark F.

11-17-2006, 02:15 PM

"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

Janine

11-19-2006, 06:25 PM

Wonderful idea this thread!

"It seemed almost as if, at home, I might lift my hand to the ceiling of the valley, and touch my own beloved sky, whose familiar clouds came again and again to visit me, whose stars were constant to me, born when I was born, whose sun had been all my father to me. But now the skies were strange over my head, and Orion walked past me unnoticing, he who night after night had stood over the woods to spend with me a wonderful hour."

D.H.Lawrence “The White Peacock” (his first published novel)
Poem may refer to the author’s own feeling, working in London

"... his black hair was moist and twisted into confused half-curls. Firmly planted, he swung with a beautiful rhythm from the waist ...; his shirt, faded almost white, was torn just above the belt, and showed the muscles of his back playing like lights upon the white sand of a brook."

D.H.Lawrence “The White Peacock”

Virgil

11-19-2006, 11:30 PM

Nice quotes, Janine. I'm pooped. See you around tomorrow

jarradalexander

11-20-2006, 06:30 AM

'yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, i have had my vision.'

Virgil

11-20-2006, 08:20 AM

'yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, i have had my vision.'

I see jarra that you are reading Virgina Woolf's To The Lighthouse. That is a great line from a great novel.

brainstrain

11-30-2006, 08:07 PM

I just finished A Tale of Two Cities. one of my all time favorite books (besides Inkheart, the third harry potter, and Peter and the Starcatchers). I am sure most of you have heard this, but it is worth repeating:

"It is a far, far better thing that i do, than i have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that i go to than i have ever known"

-Sydney Carton

also, one i like simply because of the elemental reference:

"Tell the wind and fire where to stop; not me!"

-Madame Defarge

I love this book. my older sister loved this book. my oldest sister is in africa so i don't know about her, but still. The last three paragraphs brought tears to my eyes

brainstrain

11-30-2006, 08:09 PM

Also, from a book I read for English II earlier this year (A Separate Peace, also a book that I loved):

"All of them...at infinite cost to themselves constructed these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way-if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy"

"It wasn't until much later that i recognized sarcasm as the protest of those who are weak"

"It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were instead made by something ignorant in the human heart
~Gene
A Seperate Peace

Tasartir

12-13-2006, 04:18 PM

Yep, I'm a newbie! Hi everyone! Well, I'm rereading Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer for the third time now! I enjoy this book so much, it's so personal, Miller is amazing; it feels like you've stepped into the mind of this author while you're reading. Here's the quote:

"Suddenly it all died down. It was as if he remembered, in the midst of his antics, that he had on a cutaway suit. He arrested himself. A great mistake, in my humble opinion. Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT. Ravel sacrificed something for form, for a vegetable that people must digest before going to bed."

DragonScale101

12-16-2006, 10:41 PM

From the book I'm reading right now, The Little Country, by Charles de Lint- I searched back a while to find this particular quote.

Could it be true? If the Widow DID have a Small, hidden away in that old house of hers..
Wouldn't that be something?
And if it WAS true, did she herself have the nerve to sneak in and have a look at him?
Not likely.
She didn't have the nerve.
Nor would there really be a Small.
But what if there was?

Horatio

12-20-2006, 08:35 PM

"THE CAB I HAD was a real old one that smelled like someone'd just tossed his cookies in it."

LPRox015

12-20-2006, 09:23 PM

My favorite quote from Come Into The Garden Maud by Lord Alfred Tennyson is:

"Half the night I waste in sighs,
Half in dreams I sorrow after
The delight of early skies;
In a wakeful doze I sorrow
For the hand, the lips, the eyes,
For the meeting of the morrow
The delight of happy laughter,
The delight of low replies."

slipperyyoke

12-23-2006, 12:46 AM

This is just one of many that I love from Walden..

"The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."

grace86

12-27-2006, 06:07 PM

ghideon

12-28-2006, 08:50 PM

I am half way through Paradise Lost by Milton. He is an extraordinary writer and comes closer to Shakespare then most, which is saying a lot and not saying much since nobody comes too close to The Bard of Bards.

Satan is about to enter Eden and reek his vengance. But, as he looks down on his destination he ponders on his destiny and expresses profound distress for the first time in the poem.

"...Now conscience wakes despair
That slumbered , wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be"

"O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere,
Till pride and worse ambition threw me down."

jon1jt

12-28-2006, 09:05 PM

From Crime and Punishment - I just loved this part:

"Do you like street music?" said Raskolnikov, addressing a middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering.

"I love to hear singing to a street organ," said Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject--"I like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings--they must be damp--when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there's no wind--you know what I mean?--and the street lamps shine right through it...."

"I don't know...Excuse me..." muttered the stranger, frightened by the question and Raskolnikov's strange manner, and he crossed over to the other side of the street.

That part just to me sums up Raskolnikov at this point of the novel, and it is morbidly funny as well.

that's a great quote grace, wow, it doesn't get any better than that---it reminds me how much dostoyevsky was as much a poet as he was a prose writer. thanks!

genoveva

12-28-2006, 09:05 PM

From Opal Whiteley's diary:

"By the wood-shed is a brook. It goes singing on. Its joysong does sing in my heart... Between the ranch house and the house we live in is the singing creek where the willows grow. We have conversations. And there I do dabble my toes beside the willows. I feel the feels of gladness they do feel."

Woland

12-28-2006, 10:02 PM

The Merchant of Venice

PORTIA
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

grace86

12-28-2006, 11:36 PM

that's a great quote grace, wow, it doesn't get any better than that---it reminds me how much dostoyevsky was as much a poet as he was a prose writer. thanks!

Glad you liked it. :p

euterpe

01-04-2007, 07:54 PM

"Without lust we cannot fly."
_Sappho's Leap_ by Erica Jong

Yelena

01-04-2007, 08:36 PM

"Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush cracking wrack and shells. You are walking though it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short spaceof time though very short times of space..." - I love how J. Joyce played with words.

Scheherazade

01-05-2007, 01:42 PM

Summer of 1918--Never was life in the line more bitter and more full of horror than in the hours of the bombardment, when he blanched faces lie in the dirt, and the hands clutch at the one thought: No! No! Not now! Not now at the last moment!

Summer of 1918--Breath of hope that sweeps over the scorched fields, raging fever of impatience, of disappointment, of the most agonizing terror of death, insensate question: Why? Why do they not make an end? And why do these rumours of an end fly about? from All Quiet on the Western Front by Remarque

Logos

01-05-2007, 01:54 PM

last time
.......Last time you see someone and you don't know it will be the last time. And all that you know now, if you'd known then. But you didn't know, and now it's too late.

rupture
.......Something ruptured and began bleeding in my chest when I bent over my mother, when I saw my mother in that way. It will happen to you, in a way special to you. You will not anticipate it, you cannot prepare for it, and you cannot escape it. The bleeding will not cease for a long time.
-Joyce Carol Oates, Missing Mom
.
.

dramasnot6

01-10-2007, 12:52 AM

Post any quote from the book you are currently reading! Also, say why you like it in terms of your personal appreciation and it's context in the book.
I'll start.
"The really great men must have great sadness on earth"-Raskolnikov
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
This quote is said by the protagonist, who is remorseful from murdering a person without getting caught, in a debate about criminals with the fiance of his sister whom he does not like. I like it because it is not only powerful from that particular character, but poses the question "Do the means justify the end?" It also makes us question the actions of so many leaders we consider great, could one truly improve society through otherwise criminal actions? Even if most consider particular killing for the best, would that exonerate someone from their guilty conscience?

missjane

01-10-2007, 01:09 AM

I read a Chinese version, so I translate it into English. Hope that you can understant what i mean.
"We can walk to the Heaven, but we can never get to it. 'Walk to' means there is somewhere we can go, while 'get to' give us an aimless world.'
I cannot reinterpretate it with beautiful words and correct meaning. i can use a metaphor to make it clear. when one is standing in the bank of a river, and the other side of the river is an ideal aim. so you can sail to it. but once you get it . there would be no "other side". :) So hard to explain it.

Gallantry

01-11-2007, 05:30 PM

from "The Varieties of Religious Experiences" by William James.

"Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree. What immediately feels most 'good' is not always most 'true', when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in corroboration. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience."

Riddleman

01-12-2007, 01:25 PM

(sorry, misspelled the title;)

"The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place"
(Kavalier & Clay, p. 339)

Kavalier and Clay is a very poetic book about war, love and comic books. Sometimes I even think that the poetry is a bit over the top, I prefer it when it's about the two lead characters. Anyway, this quote does reflect the sens of doom that you feel throughout the book. It's light and funny, but you just know something's gonna go horribly, horribly wrong.....

bouquin

01-13-2007, 06:33 AM

from The Birthmark, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne:

"... our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make."

Laindessiel

01-16-2007, 03:24 AM

From Crime and Punishment - I just loved this part:

"Do you like street music?" said Raskolnikov, addressing a middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering.

"I love to hear singing to a street organ," said Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject--"I like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings--they must be damp--when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there's no wind--you know what I mean?--and the street lamps shine right through it...."

"I don't know...Excuse me..." muttered the stranger, frightened by the question and Raskolnikov's strange manner, and he crossed over to the other side of the street.

That part just to me sums up Raskolnikov at this point of the novel, and it is morbidly funny as well.

Hehe, very nice, Grace.. I'd like to quote from the same book, which I'm curretly in the midway of...

Facts are not everything; it is important to know how to interpret them. - Zosimoff

Crime is a protest against a badly-organized social state of things.- Razoumikhin

Moral license of authority to kill is even more terrible than official legal authority to the same effect. - Porphyrius Petrovitch

Suffering is part and parcel of extrensive intelligence and a fleeting heart. - Raskolnikoff

Reason is the only slave of passion, and I have only injured myself. - Arcadius Svidrigailov

andave_ya

01-16-2007, 11:34 AM

"Here lies an anachronism in the vague expectation of eternity."
Lord Peter Wimsey's epitaph he wrote for himself in The Wimsey family

Rather morbid, perhaps, but one that has stayed in my memory.

bouquin

01-18-2007, 04:35 AM

from The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith:

If everybody had a nice, uninterfering mother-in-law, such as I have, what a deal of happiness there would be in the world.

Adolescent09

01-18-2007, 08:32 AM

Hehe, very nice, Grace.. I'd like to quote from the same book, which I'm curretly in the midway of...

Facts are not everything; it is important to know how to interpret them. - Zosimoff

Crime is a protest against a badly-organized social state of things.- Razoumikhin

Moral license of authority to kill is even more terrible than official legal authority to the same effect. - Porphyrius Petrovitch

Suffering is part and parcel of extrensive intelligence and a fleeting heart. - Raskolnikoff

Reason is the only slave of passion, and I have only injured myself. - Arcadius Svidrigailov

I've been hacking my way through Crime and Punishment (finally finishing last week) as well and although the writing and quotes are memorable and the recurring theme is blatant and auspicious, the book gets tedious very quickly... But Pulcheria Alexandrovna line is intriguing: "God knows what concerns and plans you may have; or what ideas you are hatching; so its not for me to keep nudging your elbow.."

kathycf

01-19-2007, 11:56 PM

I downloaded and read My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse earlier this afternoon. I had read it years ago, but it certainly need re-reading.

She was rather like one of those
innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out
to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
you will knock his head off.

"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies
in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he
says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite
bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
of animals slain in anger and pie.

Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet
from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as
if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing
arm-chairs tight about the hips that season.

bouquin

01-21-2007, 01:05 PM

... and from his pain he knew he was not dead.

- from The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway

LauraJayne

01-22-2007, 04:08 PM

This is from 'Eragon' by Christopher Paolini.

"My mind is the only sanctuary that has not been stolen from me. Men have tried to breach it before, but I've learned to defend it vigorously, for I am only safe with my innermost thoughts."

I'm not quite sure why I like this quote, I just think it's ace :]
Then again, I also like the character that said it, Murtagh. Rather mysterious is he :]

x

Cien

02-11-2007, 01:19 PM

So he left her at the end of the garden, sitting in the sunlight on the ground before a hive, whence the bees buzzed like golden berries round her neck, along her bare arms and in her hair, without thought of stinging her.

-Abbe Mouret's Transgression

white camellia

02-11-2007, 02:34 PM

'Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'T is woman's whole existence;'

'Don Juan' by Lord George Gordon Byron

kemal

02-14-2007, 07:05 AM

Yâ Rab belâ-yı ‘aşk ile kıl âşinâ meni
Bir dem belâ-yı ‘aşkdan etme cüdâ meni
Az eyleme ‘inâyetüni ehl-i derdden
Ya‘ni ki çoh belâlara kıl mübtelâ meni[11]
Oh God, let me know the pain of love
Do not for even a moment separate me from it
Do not lessen your aid to the afflicted
But rather, make lovesick me one among them

fuzuli divan

Anthony Furze

02-14-2007, 08:56 AM

"The black leafless trees gave no protection: they stood around like broken waterpipes, and the rain dripped off his dark hat and ran in streams down his black civil servants overcoat."

"There are men one has an irresistible desire to tease: men whose virtues one doesnt share."

The incomparable Graham Greene in "The End of the Affair."

carina_gino20

02-16-2007, 09:55 PM

"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends." -Helen Burns in Jane Eyre

"Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings." - Prince Myshkin, The Idiot

bouquin

02-22-2007, 11:44 AM

Receive what cheer you may:
The night is long that never finds the day.

- from Macbeth, Act IV, Scene iii

ngtotd_dtrt

03-07-2007, 11:27 AM

"He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes
to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed." --FULLER.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

It's a quote of a quote...guess that counts. :)

jab

03-07-2007, 11:59 AM

I like this forum idea!

"It seems to me that when any belief leaves our minds, the loss is either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary when the belief is false and we learn better, involuntary whenever the belief is true"

The Republic, Plato -- Plato's explanation of this comment is the beginning of a chain of logic that rips into the veil of free will and judgment in theistic worldviews. I had come to this conclusion, in different words, as a student in a Christian university. When last month I came across this statement, which forms the cornerstone of my own thought process, which I considered a very modern one inasmuch as it questions free will, I marveled, wondering whether Plato saw the theological implications of this statement or if he only saw its value pertaining to his purpose of training and evaluating Guardians for his Republic.

SFG75

03-07-2007, 03:44 PM

I'm almost done with Absurdistan by Gary Shtyengart, who is interestingly enough, the great-great grandson of Nikolai Gogol. I'm also reading Sea Change by Robert B. Parker for some fast and easy reading.

Banville

03-12-2007, 03:17 AM

"I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere, as they call it, and all that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you.
"Get off the mark, on the other hand, like a scalded cat, and your public is at a loss. It simply raises its eyebrows, and can't make out what you're talking about."

P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves

ejarg7

03-12-2007, 10:35 PM

Hi, I'm new here... :) Here's a quote:

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are!
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Stieg

03-13-2007, 11:56 PM

From Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood.

Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to be polite, half rose to acknowledge the pretty speech, and to stammer some sort of reply, but as he did so his hand by chance touched her own that was resting on the table, and a shock that was for all the world like a shock of electricity, passed from her skin into his body. His soul wavered and shook deep within him. He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a look of most curious intentness, and the next moment he knew that he had sat down wordless again on his chair, that the girl was already half-way across the room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with a dessert-spoon and a knife.

Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped down the remainder of his dinner, and then went at once to his bedroom to be alone with his thoughts. This time the passages were lighted, and he suffered no exciting contretremps; yet the winding corridor was dim with shadows, and the last portion, from the bend of the walls onwards, seemed longer than he had ever known it. It ran downhill like the pathway on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly down it he felt that by rights it ought to have led him clean out of the house into the heart of a great forest. The world was singing with him. Strange fancies filled his brain, and once in the room, with the door securely locked, he did not light the candles, but sat by the open window thinking long, long thoughts that came unbidden in troops to his mind.

- Ancient Sorceries (the inspiration for Lewton's The Cat People)

Jakattak

03-15-2007, 08:12 PM

Great Expectations

malwethien

03-15-2007, 11:33 PM

"Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and universe, there is a reason." -Slartibartfast (Life, The Universe and Everything)

carina_gino20

03-18-2007, 08:02 AM

"It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiat delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack."

- an eerie description of the guillotine from A Tale of two Cities by Charles Dickens

ezsbookpal

03-18-2007, 02:20 PM

We all begin as close readers. Even before we learn to read, the process of being read aloud to, and of listening, is one in which we are taking in one word after another, one phrase at a time, in which we are paying attention to whatever each word or phrase is transmitting. Word by word is how we learn to hear and then read, which seems only fitting, because it is how the books we are reading were written in the first place.

optimisticnad

03-18-2007, 02:58 PM

'Abandon all hope ye who enter here' American Psycho.

Should be the tag-line for this forum!

Lioness_Heart

03-18-2007, 05:07 PM

"...if something real enters the imagination, it can seem almost as eerie as if some fantasy figure had suddenly loomed up in real life."

-Jostein Gaarder, The Ringmaster's Daughter

Sully1966

03-20-2007, 08:02 PM

I love The Trial by Franz Kafka and what's weird is that I can't find any quotes in particular that stand out to me! It's just the whole book. Other than The Trial, I would say the Metamorphosis is another favorite.

jon1jt

03-20-2007, 10:52 PM

"I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered quilt."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

subterranean

03-20-2007, 11:07 PM

Confusion was the beginning of philosophy
Buddha by Karen Armstrong.

brainstrain

03-24-2007, 03:22 PM

"Go to thy cold bed and warm thee!"
-The taming of the Shrew

Ah, this book is hilarious!!!

Katie-Lou

03-25-2007, 01:23 AM

*thinks* Well since i have to learn quotes for Frankenstein i won't look at the book to get one...

"Her hair was the brightest living gold"
Mary Shelly - Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) This quote is what Victor sees in his cousin Elizabeth

Adudaewen

03-25-2007, 06:12 AM

"It was Yefrem's tongue that had been hit - his quick, ever-ready tongue, which he had never really noticed, but which had been so handy in his life. In fifty years he'd given it a lot of exercise. With it he'd talked his way into pay he'd never earned, sworn blind he'd done things when he hadn't, stood bail for things he didn't believe in, howled at the bosses and yelled insults at the workers. With it he'd piled filth on everything most dear and holy, reveling in his politics. He sang Volga songs. He lied to hundres of women scattered all over the place, that he wasn't married, that he had no children, that he'd be back in a week and they'd start building a house. "God rot your tongue!" one temporary mother-in-law had cursed him, but Yefrem's tongue had never let him down except when he was blind drunk."

Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

bouquin

03-26-2007, 06:10 AM

"... eat well, don't skimp. Look after yourself. Don't live out of the microwave. Use love and care."
-- fromTHE LIGHT OF DAY by Graham Swift

Madhuri

03-28-2007, 12:35 PM

"Things have a life their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "Its simply a matter of waking up their souls." -- One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Bii

04-01-2007, 03:18 AM

"So it goes." - Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut

bouquin

04-02-2007, 02:20 PM

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep ...

-- from The Tempest (Act IV, Scene 1)
by William Shakespeare

optimisticnad

04-02-2007, 02:29 PM

bazarov

04-02-2007, 03:41 PM

We cannot predict consequences of great decisions.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo

Ricochet

04-02-2007, 06:01 PM

"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches."
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

grace86

04-04-2007, 01:09 AM

The Kreutzer Sonata

You might not want to read this if you intend on reading it...I might spoil it.

"When people say that they do not remember what they do in a fit of fury, they talk nonsense. It is false. I remember everything."

and

"I well remember the horror of that concsiousness and I know vaguely that, having plunged in the dagger, I drew it out again immediately wishing to repair and arrest my action. She had straightened up and cried:

'Nurse, he has killed me!'"

Aiculík

04-04-2007, 09:54 AM

"Dear me, dear me," say I. "These are not the times to be writing books, Don Eligio, even fool books like mine. Of literature I must begin to say what I have said of everything else: 'Curses on Copernicus!'"
"Oh, wait now," exclaims Don Eligio, the blood rushing to his face as he straightens up from his cramped position. (It is hot at noon time, and he has put on a broad-brimmed straw, for a bit of artificial shade.)
"What has Copernicus got to do with it?"
"More than you realize, perhaps ... "

The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello.

Asa Adams

04-06-2007, 08:11 PM

'Do you know what a ****ing loser you are?' He starts nodding helplessly and I pull out a long, think knife, with a serrated edge and, being very careful not to kill him, push maybe half an inch of the blade into his right eye, flicking the hand up, instantly popping the retina.

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

I thought that might have been your diary...:lol: please don't detach my retinas, opti:thumbs_up :p

"and you, are you still here, tilting in this stranded ark, blind and seeing in the dark." Phyllis Web-Leaning

Janine

04-07-2007, 02:47 PM

'Do you know what a ****ing loser you are?' He starts nodding helplessly and I pull out a long, think knife, with a serrated edge and, being very careful not to kill him, push maybe half an inch of the blade into his right eye, flicking the hand up, instantly popping the retina.

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

I will remember not to watch that movie! or read the book. Oh yuk, almost worse than Lear when the eyes are pushed in, even more graphic here. Yes, as Asa said - don't detach my retina:eek:

optimisticnad

04-07-2007, 02:54 PM

I thought that might have been your diary...:lol: please don't detach my retinas, opti:thumbs_up :p

"and you, are you still here, tilting in this stranded ark, blind and seeing in the dark." Phyllis Web-Leaning

Play nice and I won't have to! And you Janine!

Janine - that was nothing! Just a taster. You should read it, but its not for the faint hearted!

Oh and my diaries much much darker than that. :eek: (we have no sinister smileys!)

bazarov

04-08-2007, 04:51 AM

Why would world care for me when I don't care for him?

Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Asa Adams

04-08-2007, 10:46 PM

Why would world care for me when I don't care for him?

Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The most powerful line of this masterpiece.

bazarov

04-09-2007, 03:40 AM

The most powerful line of this masterpiece.

So you have notice it too? Very nice, Asa aka Orwell!:lol:
That's only one of many many great quotes I've found in Hunchback. I agree, it really is a masterpiece!
But I don't get it; why do they have to kill everybody??? This realism sometimes makes me really sad.:bawling:

Pensive

04-09-2007, 06:02 AM

Even mothers who love you better than anyone ever will, don't always understand- The Railway Children

amanda_isabel

04-09-2007, 07:01 AM

to the most beautiful woman i know,
now that i'm alone again, nopthing is as it once was.
the sky is grayer, the ocean is more forbidding.
will you make it right?
the only way is to see me again.

i miss you.'

message in a bottle, by nicholas sparks

just finished it actually.

bouquin

04-12-2007, 08:15 AM

... you are cursed when you realize true things, because then you can't act with the full confidence of dumbness anymore. (from Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, winner of The Man Booker Prize 2003).

bazarov

04-15-2007, 02:41 AM

World is really strangely managed; something happy becomes unhappy if you're looking at it too long.
Gogol - Dead Souls

ngtotd_dtrt

04-16-2007, 03:09 PM

some of my favorites from Middlemarch (Eliot)... the first in the list made me lol

===
Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would become
like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry--the mother
too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy--

===

Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the consequences of their recklessness."

===

"I mean that he ought not to put such questions until he has done
something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it."

===

That evening he seemed to be talking widely for the sake of resisting any personal bearing.

===

1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
2d Gent. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright The coming pest with border fortresses,
Or catch your carp with subtle argument. All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
Unless effect be there; and action's self Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience."

===

In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much," is easier to bear than the fear, "I shall love her no more."

===

kathycf

04-16-2007, 03:28 PM

I just downloaded The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge by Conan Doyle. I haven't read any Sherlock Holmes in ages, and this is one I haven't read before. :)

"I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters,"
said he. "How do you define the word 'grotesque'?"

"Strange--remarkable," I suggested.

He shook his head at my definition.

"There is surely something more than that," said he; "some
underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible. If you
cast your mind back to some of those narratives with which you
have afflicted a long-suffering public, you will recognize how
often the grotesque has deepened into the criminal.

cows

04-17-2007, 12:23 PM

In the name of irony!

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know"

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

kathycf

04-17-2007, 05:27 PM

In the name of irony!

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know"

-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great quote, although this is the quote the book you are reading thread. Which of Emerson's works are you currently reading? :)

cows

04-18-2007, 07:01 PM

Yes, my appologies, it fit too well.

I wrapped up Emerson's Self-Relience yesterday. Here's a quote:

"No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."

malwethien

04-19-2007, 12:41 AM

Well since I just finished reading Jane Eyre...I thought it only fitting that I read Wide Sargasso Sea next........I'm quite excited to begin!! :D

malwethien

04-19-2007, 03:27 AM

oopss...sorry...i posted on the wrong thread!!!

malwethien

04-23-2007, 03:07 AM

“I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.” - "Edward Rochester" (Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys)

JaneB

04-23-2007, 04:04 AM

"twist the neck of the swan" as the Mexican poet said, is to write from my heart and not have anyone notice my tears

Memories of My Melancholy Whores- Gabriel G. Marquez

bouquin

04-24-2007, 05:50 AM

You orchestrate happiness ... you work at it. You don't catch it as it hurls towards you like a football.
---- She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

zarathustra2007

04-24-2007, 06:27 PM

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. "
Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (http://www.helotsoftware.co.uk/friedrich-nietzsche.htm)

Guida

04-27-2007, 10:34 AM

"It was day time because the daylight was coming into the room"
my translation, from Uma casa na Escuridão by José Luís Peixoto

Scheherazade

04-27-2007, 11:27 AM

"How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."Slaughterhouse - 5 by Vonnegut

Madhuri

04-28-2007, 04:57 AM

[QUOTE=zarathustra2007;367090]"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. "
Friedrich Nietzsche

helotsoftware.co.uk/friedrich-nietzsche.htm

I like it :nod:

mazz

04-28-2007, 10:25 AM

"The universe," he continued, "this universe that we know, began in almost absolute simplicity, and it has been getting more complex for about fifteen billion years. In another billion years it will be still more complex than it is now. It is moving toward ....something. It is moving toward some kind of ultimate complexity. We might not get there. An atom of hydrogen might not get there, or a leaf, or a man, or a planet, to that ultimate complexity. And that final complexity, that thing we are all moving to is what I choose to call God. If you don't like that word, God, call it the Ultimate Complexity. Whatever you call it, the whole universe is moving towards it.
........(para phrasing)
It was my turn to laugh.
"Okay,okay. And you want to say--let me guess--that everything that helps this along is good , right? And anything that goes in the other direction--your spin on it is that it's evil, na?"
Shantaram by Gregory Roberts.

smile

05-01-2007, 07:23 AM

"Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"

Animal Farm, finished the book- but it's recent as I am currently studying it. Fantastic little book- a definite must read, literary classic.

Stieg

05-01-2007, 09:35 PM

Falling Angel:

Seated there in a custom-made blue pin-stripe suit with a blood-red rosebud in his lapel was a man who might have been anywhere between forty-five and sixty. His hair was black and full, combed straight back on a high forehead, yet his square-cut goatee and pointed moustache were white as ermine. He was tanned and elegant; his eyes a distant, ethereal blue. A tiny, inverted golden star gleamed on his maroon silk necktie. "I'm Harry Angel," I said, as the maitre d' pulled out my chair. "A lawyer named Winesap said there was something you wanted to speak to me about."

"I like a man who's prompt," he said. "Drink?"

I ordered a double Manhattan, straight up; Cyphre tapped his glass with a manicured finger and said he'd have one more of the same. It was easy to imagine those pampered hands gripping a whip. Nero must have had such hands. And Jack the Ripper. It was the hand of emperors and assassins. Languid, yet lethal, the cruel, tapered fingers perfect instruments of evil.

Anne Boleyn

05-02-2007, 11:24 AM

" until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent"

in the book the sentence was not positive at all, it was just one of the countless wicked words mrs Reed adressed to Jane, but being quite a short-tempered person, keeping this sentence in my mind is a great help! :)

whyhello

05-03-2007, 01:30 AM

He went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the bank, half-way up a steep hill. He rested his basket on the top of the stone, placed his elbows on it, and gave way to a convulsive twitch, which was worse than a sob, because it was so hard and so dry.
"If I had only got her with me--- if I only had!" he said. "Hard work would be nothing to me then! But that was not to be. I ---Cain---go alone as I deserve---an outcast and a vagabond. But my punishment is not greater than I can bear!"

Countess

05-04-2007, 09:59 AM

Another quote from The Name of the Rose:

Please tell me who wrote the book! I'm a big romantic/lover!

bazarov

05-04-2007, 03:19 PM

Please tell me who wrote the book! I'm a big romantic/lover!

Umberto Eco.

Stieg

05-09-2007, 03:12 AM

From Slaughterhouse-Five

Lazzaro said that he could have anybody in the world killed for a thousand dollars plus traveling expenses. He had a list in his head, he said.

Derby asked him who all was on the list and Lazzaro said, "Just make ****ing sure you don't get on it. Just don't cross me, that's all." There was a silence, and then he added, "And don't cross my friends."

"You have friends?" Derby wanted to know.

"In the war?" said Lazzaro. "Yeah - I had a friend in the war. He's dead." So it goes.

"That's too bad."

Lazzaro's eyes were twinkling again. "Yeah. He was my buddy on the boxcar. His name was Roland Weary. He died in my arms." Now he pointed to Billy with his one mobile hand. "He died on the account of this silly ****sucker here. So I promised him I'd have this silly ****sucker shot after the war."

Lazzaro erased with his hand anything Billy Pilgrim might be about to say. "Just forget about it, kid," he said. "Enjoy life while you can. Nothing's gonna happen maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. But lemme give you a piece of advice: Whenever the doorbell rings, have somebody else answer the door."

Alittle more:

Lazzaro was talking to himself about people he was going to have killed after the war, and rackets he was going to work, and women he was to make **** him, whether they wanted to or not. If he had been a dog in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory, to see if he had rabies. So it goes.

Furthermore from Slaughterhouse-Five, an account of English and American POWs:

Somewhere in there was a lecture on personal hygiene by the head Englishman, and then a free election. At least half the Americans went on snoozing through it all. The Englishman got up on the stage, and he rapped on the arm of the throne with a swagger stick, called, "Lads, lads, lads - can I have your attention, please?" And so on.

***

What the Englishman said about survival was this: "If you stop taking pride in your appearance, you will very soon die." He said that he had seen several men die in the following way: "They ceased to stand up straight, then ceased to shave or wash, then ceased to get out of bed, then ceased to talk, then died. There is much to be said for it: it is evidently a very easy and painless way to go." So it goes.

I have around 60 pages left, the book has been a hit and miss personally for me but does have keen high moments of anti-war sentiments and morality. And poignant pieces of the human soul too.

From there he traveled in time to 1965. He was forty-one years old, and he was visiting his decrepit mother at Pine Knoll, an old people's home he had put her in only a month before. She had caught pneumonia, and wasn't expected to live. She did live, though, for years after that.

Her voice was nearly gone, so, in order to hear her, Billy had to put his ear right next to her papery lips. She evidently had something very important to say.

"How . . . ?" she began, and she stopped. She was too tired. She hoped that she wouldn't have to say the rest of the sentence, that Billy would finish it for her.

But Billy had no idea what was on her mind. "How what, Mother?" he prompted.

She swallowed hard, shed some tears. Then she gathered energy from all over her ruined body, even from her toes and fingertips. At last she had accumulated enough to whisper this complete sentence:

"How did I get so old?"

weepingforloman

05-11-2007, 10:24 PM

This is a little something from C.S. Lewis's Perelandra. It's a good book if you haven't read it. Sort of a creepy imagining of a demon.

For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared: but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out-its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. ON the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness? (p. 123)

weepingforloman

05-11-2007, 10:28 PM

Friedrich Nietzsche is a creepy guy. He advocated a couple of weird ideas: notably that all of humanity was progressing, or should be progressing toward the Ubermensch (over-man, or super man for the German illiterate), a man who "overcomes" (I don't know if it's intentional, but Nietzsche's continual use of "overcoming" echoes eerily of Revelation), and the idea that all values and morals are temporary, and that new morals must be created in each age. He also believed in "the will to rule," a sort of idea corrupted by the Nazis, but already a little too close to their ideas for comfort.

NotWoodhouse

05-12-2007, 02:13 AM

"To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's a rub, for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come." -Hamlet

I'm not actually reading Hamlet at the moment but is my favorite quote.

RaatKiRanii

05-13-2007, 09:30 PM

"Why do you despise yourself?"she asked, hardly knowing that she spoke, as though she were continuing without a break the earlier conversation.

He put down his book and observed her reflectively. He seemed to gather his thoughts from a remote distance.

"Because I loved you."

snowangel

05-13-2007, 09:40 PM

I just finished it too!
I don't have my book in front of me but I loved the part where Townsend told Kitty that women often think men are more in love with them than they really are.

Stieg

05-13-2007, 10:28 PM

From The Stars My Destination

It was an age of freaks, monsters, and grotesques. All the world was misshapen in marvelous and malevolent ways. The Classicists and Romantics who hated it were unaware of the potential greatness of the twenty-fifth century. They were blind to a cold fact of evolution ... that progress stems from the clashing merger of antagonistic extremes, out of the marriage of pinnacle freaks. Classicists and Romantics alike were unaware that the Solar System was trembling on the verge of a human explosion that would transform man and make him the master of the universe.

It is against this seething background of the twenty-fifth century that the vengeful history of Gulliver Foyle begins.

grace86

05-13-2007, 11:39 PM

A key phrase from Don Quixote:

"I know who I am," replied Don Quixote, "and I know, too, that I am quite capable of being not only the characters I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and all the Nine Worthies as well, for my exploits are far greater than all the deeds they have done, all together and each by himself."

Quark

05-14-2007, 12:07 AM

I started reading Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. My favorite part has been Hans Castorp's ascent. Mann relates the seperation Castorp feels from his old life during the climb.

He says, "Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabond of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly".

Haven

05-24-2007, 09:42 AM

It is a way now, approximately, of being at home. The forum has become one of the most consistent places in her life, like a familiar café that exists somehow outside of geography and beyond time zones.

THE WEBSITE OF DREADFUL NIGHT

Five hours: New York jet lag and she wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.

It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash in limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully, flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above, and none really an option now.

She knows, now absolutely…that Damien’s theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in one some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here…Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind. That must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

She seats herself in his high-backed workstation chair and clicks the transparent mouse. Stutter of infrared on the pale wood of the long trestle table. The browser comes up. She types Fetish:Footage:Forum, which Damien, determined to avoid contamination, will never bookmark.

The front page opens, familiar as a friend's living room. A frame-grab from #48 serves as backdrop, dim and almost monochrome, no characters in view. This is one of the sequences that generate comparisons with Tarkovsky. The cult of the footage is rife with subcults, claiming every possible influence. Truffaut, Peckinpah . . . The Peckinpah people, among the least likely, are still waiting for the guns to be drawn.

She enters the forum itself now, automatically scanning titles of the posts and names of posters in the newer threads, looking for friends, enemies, news. One thing is clear, though; no new footage has surfaced. Nothing since that beach pan, and she does not subscribe to the theory that it is Cannes in winter.

She also sees that her friend Parkaboy is back in Chicago, home from an Amtrak vacation, California, but when she opens his post she sees that he's only saying hello, literally.

She clicks Respond, declares herself CayceP.

Hi Parkaboy. nt

When she returns to the forum page, her post is there.

It is a way now, approximately, of being at home. The forum has become one of the most consistent places in her life, like a familiar café that exists somehow outside of geography and beyond time zones.

The Cube sighs softly and makes subliminal sounds with its drive, like a vintage sports car downshifting on a distant freeway. She tries a sip of tea substitute, but it's still too hot. A gray and indeterminate light is starting to suffuse the room in which she sits, revealing such Damieniana as has survived the recent remake.

Moira

05-24-2007, 01:01 PM

"But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

Brave New World - A. Huxley

Haven

05-24-2007, 04:50 PM

"But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

Brave New World - A. Huxley

Well apart from Huxley [who was my major solace at boarding school along with Jean Paul Satre] try Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, you'll get all of the above and be begging for more. Know what I mean? Can't blame you for not reading my post by Wm. Gibson. Had to be done. Bit on the long side. Pls read this next little bit it is so true of how we now live:

It is a way now, approximately, of being at home. The forum has become one of the most consistent places in her life, like a familiar café that exists somehow outside of geography and beyond time zones.
Jet Lag: her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here…Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind. That must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.. If this catches you, have a read of my previous [just skim, know lengthy] thread, I think it sums up much of what we do. And the next generation will read it as Jane Ayre...:)

Moira

05-25-2007, 01:07 AM

Well apart from Huxley [who was my major solace at boarding school along with Jean Paul Satre] try Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, you'll get all of the above and be begging for more. Know what I mean? Can't blame you for not reading my post by Wm. Gibson. Had to be done. Bit on the long side. Pls read this next little bit it is so true of how we now live:

It is a way now, approximately, of being at home. The forum has become one of the most consistent places in her life, like a familiar café that exists somehow outside of geography and beyond time zones.
Jet Lag: her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here…Souls can’t move that quickly, and are left behind. That must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.. If this catches you, have a read of my previous [just skim, know lengthy] thread, I think it sums up much of what we do. And the next generation will read it as Jane Ayre...:)

Thank you Haven.
I googled a little bit and yes it does sound interesting.
:thumbs_up

Orpheus

05-25-2007, 01:46 AM

"It is better to be hurt by the truth than comforted by a lie" The Kite Runner

tudwell

05-27-2007, 10:19 AM

...I learned what I had read in books but I never had actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the value of love is the sum of what you have to pay for it and any time you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.

The Wild Palms by William Faulkner.

Gracewings

05-29-2007, 03:16 PM

He bowed gravely, jabbed his forefinger three times at the books and winked. But as he left the room he said gently, "I've allowed you to fire me, Mr Hale. Now you do one thing for me. Read the essay again and discover the true love your son holds for the missionaries. Only a mind steeped in true love can write irony. The others write satire."

~from Hawaii The essay referred to was written by a descendant of the Hawaiian missionaries who tried to "reconstruct the actual conditions under which [his] forebears struggled against the sea" in their long journey from Boston around Cape Horn and to Hawaii.

symphony

05-30-2007, 12:04 AM

Thats right I'm finally reading The Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I really liked the engaging tone of Hawking in this book, and the wit with which he made this book a quality-read.

...The concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. When asked: What did God do before he created the universe? Augustine didn't reply: He was preparing Hell for people who asked such questions. Instead he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe. ...

CaptureLife

05-30-2007, 12:17 AM

"Words! Mere words!
How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could
not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!
They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things,
and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute.
Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?"

-The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I finally got around to reading

grace86

06-03-2007, 02:32 AM

Some quotations I like from Don Quixote:

"For I would have you know, Sancho, that a mouth without molars is like a mill without a stone, and a tooth is more precious than a diamond."

Said by Don Quixote: "That is why I say that the sage I mentioned has put it into your thoughts and into your mouth to call me now The Knight of the Sad Countenance, a name which I intend to use from this day on; and to make it fit me better, I intend to have a very sad countenance painted on my shield when I have an opportunity....."

Said by Sancho: "'There's no need to waste time and money on painting a face,' said Sancho. 'Your worship has only to uncover your own and shot it to anyone who looks at you, and they'll call you The Knight of the Sad Countenance all right, without any picture or shield, and that's the truth.'"

Ahmed-Adel

06-04-2007, 09:03 PM

DUKE

...
For women are as roses, whose fair flower
Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour.

VIOLA

And so they are. Alas that they are so:
To die, when they to perfection grow.

Act II, Scene iv, Lines 36 - 39 => Twelfth Night – Shakespeare.

Scheherazade

06-04-2007, 09:20 PM

"Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!"

From A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

The Catcher

06-05-2007, 01:13 PM

"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky- seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad.

grace86

06-05-2007, 01:54 PM

Catcher...stick with Heart of Darkness. It is a tough read but nice to get through.

From The Ivory Child by Haggard

"We spoke but little during all this time. It was as though the silence of the wilderness had got hold of us and sealed our lips. Or perhaps each of us was occupied with his own thoughts. At any rate I know that for my part I seemed to live in a kind of dreamland, thinking of the past, reflecting much upon the innumberable problems of this passing show called life, but not paying much heed to the future. What did the future matter to me, who did not know whether I should have a share of it even for another month, or week, or day, surrounded as I was by the shadow of death? No, I troubled little as to any earthly future, although I admit that in this oasis of calm I reflected upon that state where past, present and future will all be one; also that those reflections, which were in their essence a kind of unshaped prayer, brought much calm to my spirit."

The Catcher

06-05-2007, 03:59 PM

Catcher...stick with Heart of Darkness. It is a tough read but nice to get through.

i just finished it today, but you are so right. its one of the most beautifully written...anything i have ever read. It was exhausting but worth it. :)

grace86

06-05-2007, 04:14 PM

i just finished it today, but you are so right. its one of the most beautifully written...anything i have ever read. It was exhausting but worth it. :)

See :) I told ya! I think the fact that one has to have a certain amount of patience is what makes it so great to have read.

hockeychick8792

06-06-2007, 09:34 AM

Hatsue ~ It is just like before when we lived up north!

Prisoner ~ No. Then there were no bars to separate us and no guard watching my every move.

(how romantic, the prisoner wrongly accused still cares for his wife and children)
(Snow Falling on Cedars)

Ahmed-Adel

06-07-2007, 05:52 AM

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Jaques, As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii, Lines 139 – 166 –– Shakespeare

Stieg

06-07-2007, 09:16 PM

From Cat's Cradle:

While Miss Faust and I waited for an elevator to take us to the first floor, Miss Faust said she hoped the elevator that came would not be number five. Before I could ask her why this was a reasonable wish, number five arrived.

Its operator was a small and ancient Negro whose name was Lyman Enders Knowles. Knowles was insane, I'm almost sure - offensively so, in that he grabbed his own behind and cried, "Yes, yes!" whenever he felt that he'd made a point.

"Hello, fellow anthropoids and lily pads and paddlewheels," he said to Miss Faust and me. "Yes, yes!"

"First floor, please," said Miss Faust coldly.

All Knowles had to do to close the door and get us to the first floor was to press a button, but he wasn't going to do that yet. He wasn't going to do it, maybe, for years.

"Man told me," He said, "that these here elevators was Mayan architecture. I never knew that till today. And I says to him, 'What's that make me - mayonnaise?' Yes, yes! And while he was thinking that over, I hit him with a question that straightened him up and made him think twice as hard! Yes, yes!"

"Could we please go down, Mr. Knowles?" begged Miss Faust.

"I said to him," said Knowles, " 'This here's a research laboratory. Re-search means look again, don't it? Means they're looking for something they found once and it got away somehow, and now they got to re-search for it? How come they got to build a building like this, with mayonnaise elevators and all, and fill it with all these crazy people? What is it they're trying to find again? Who lost what? Yes, yes!"

"That's very interesting," sighed Miss Faust. "Now, could we go down?"

"Only way we can go is down," barked Knowles. "This here's the top. You ask me to go up and wouldn't be a thing I could do for you. Yes, yes!"

"So let's go down," said Miss Faust.

"Very soon now. This gentleman here been paying his respects to Dr. Hoenikker?"

"Yes," I said. "Did you know him?"

"Intimately," he said. "You know what I said when he died?"

"No."

"I said, 'Dr. Hoenikker - he ain't dead.'"

"Oh?"

"Just entered a new dimension. Yes, yes!"

He punched a button, and down we went.

"Did you know the Hoenikker children?" I asked him.

"Babies full of rabies," he said. "Yes, yes!"

The Catcher

06-07-2007, 11:09 PM

See :) I told ya! I think the fact that one has to have a certain amount of patience is what makes it so great to have read.

amen to that. and considering i dont have a lot of patience this was definately an accomplishment for me lol...woo heart of darkness! :)

abner28

06-08-2007, 01:54 AM

I am currently reading "iTV" by David Rose. It takes place in a television and the reader is flipping through the different channels as the main character is revealed. 2 favorite quotes (so far). 1 is when David, the main character, is reminded of his 1st love coming out of the shower:

"he was watching television and Zoe came out of the shower...David once wrote that civilization was a louse's fart in comparison to Zoe coming out of the shower...she had that sweet smelling shampoo...it was honey and mango...she was standing there wrapped in her big white towel her hair still wet...David told her terrorists could be raping his mother and he wouldn't give a rat's *** because of the way she looked..."

The second one is a joke: "The bible, the Roman Empire and the Oedipus Complex are walking into a bar. -Excuse me, says the Roman Empire, do you know how many commandments there are? - I have no idea, says the Oedipus Complex, but why don't you ask the bible?"

That's it for now, I highly recommend this book. It is the most original work I have read in ages.

Stieg

06-12-2007, 12:27 AM

Another one of those moments where Vonnegut shines through his play of words and sense of irony.

Cat's Cradle:

"One time," said Castle, "when I was about fifteen, there was a mutiny near here on a Greek ship bound from Hong Kong to Havana with a load of wicker furniture. The mutineers got control of the ship, didn't know how to run her, and smashed her up on the rocks near "Papa" Monzano's castle. Everybody drowned but the rats. The rats and the wicker furniture came ashore."

That seemed to be the end of the story, but I couldn't be sure. "So?"

"So some people got free furniture, and some people got bubonic plague. At Father's hospital, we had fourteen hundred deaths inside ten days. Have you ever seen anyone die of bubonic plague?"

"That unhappiness has not been mine."

"The lymph glands in the groin and the armpits swell to the size of grapefruit."

"I can well believe it."

"After death, the body turns black-coals to Newcastle in the case of San Lorenzo. When the plague was having everything its own way, the House of Hope and Mercy in the Jungle looked like Auschwitz or Buchenwald. We had stacks of dead so deep and wide that a bulldozer actually stalled trying to shove them toward a common grave. Father worked without sleep for days, worked not only without sleep but without saving many lives, either."

Castle's grisley tale was interrupted by the ringing of my telephone.

"My God," said Castle, "I didn't even know the telephones were connected yet."

I picked up the phone. "Hello?"

Bebbin

06-12-2007, 05:41 PM

Currently reading: Demian
Author: Herman Hesse

"Genuine communion," said Demian, "is a beautiful thing. But what we see flourishing everywhere is nothing of the kind. The real spirit will come from the knowledge that separate individuals have of on another and for a time it will transform the world. The community spirit at present is only a manifestation of the herd instinct. Men fly into each other's arms because they are afraid of each other--the owners are for themselves, the workers for themselves, the scholars for themselves! And why are they afraid? You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them! They all sense that the rules they live by are no longer valid, that they live according to archaic laws--neither their religion nor their mortality is in any way suited to the needs of the present."

Pensive

06-13-2007, 10:15 PM

Being partially off-topic (As this is the book which I just finished yesterday and am not reading now). But couldn't resist quoting it.

"What is she, after all?" he said to himself. "Here is the sea-coast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is she fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble of foam. What does she mean to me, after all? She represents something, like a bubble of foam represents the sea. But what is she? It's not her I care for." - Paul about Clara

Julian Koller

06-15-2007, 01:07 AM

"Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on"

Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

ngtotd_dtrt

06-19-2007, 01:05 PM

-----------

"When I've made up my mind that I can't afford to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of him, because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me, the struggle between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly severe. I pique myself on my wisdom there, Arthur, and as an old fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow it upon you."
============================================

But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man.
============================================

When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.
============================================

"Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note
lies within convenient reach; but he won't make us think him an honest
man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way."

"But surely you don't think a man who struggles against a temptation
into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all?"

"No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us.
=============================================

"Ah, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, emphatically, "you make but a poor
trap to catch luck if you go and bait it wi' wickedness.
=============================================

"Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, "an' it's poor work allays settin' the dead
above the livin'. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon--it 'ud
be better if folks 'ud make much on us beforehand, i'stid o' beginnin'
when we're gone. It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crop."
=============================================

"the smell o' bread's sweet t' everybody but the baker.
=============================================

"… if we stay, it's for our own worldly interest, and it looks as if we'd put up with anything for the sake o' that. I know that's what they'll feel, and I can't help feeling a little of it myself. When folks have got an honourable independent spirit, they don't like to do anything that might make 'em seem base-minded."
=============================================

It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it-- Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, & passing from pain into sympathy—
=============================================

"Said? Nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till
folks say things afore they find 'em out."
=============================================

"I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after."
=============================================

"Ah!" said Bartle sneeringly, "the women are quick enough-they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself."

"Like enough," said Mrs. Poyser, "for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made'em to match the men."
==============================================

Stieg

06-24-2007, 03:28 PM

From Nam-A-Rama:

When Gearheardt was seated next to him, a cold Lone Star in hand, the President put one arm around his shoulder and with his other arm made a sweeping motion past all of the dark-suited men arguing heatedly around the table.

"Know what these boys are figuring out, son?"

"I don't believe so, Mr President."

"Call me Larry Bob, son. Saves a lot of time when you're talking to me. All that President this and President that. Slows down a good confab. Just call me Larry Bob and I'll tell you when to stop." He squeezed Gearheardt's shoulder and withdrew his arm.

"These sons-a-*****es are figuring up how much it's gonna cost to run this damn Veetnam war deal. Some of the smartest boys in the U.S., right here at this table." He looked at him as if expecting a comment.

"I guess they're trying to calculate the budget for the war, Larry Bob. Is that right?"

"Yep, pretty close. These boys are trying to figure how much they can make off it. See that gray-haired feller with the yellow tie? Builds airports. Want to put military airfields in every Veetnam city that has more'n about two thousand people. Feller next to him is a concrete guy. Over there"-he pointed his long finger-"feller builds ships and is lobbying for us to give some battleships to Veetnam so we can have ourselves a sea battle like we ain't seen since the Big One. I think that little skinny feller is a tire man, but I ain't sure. And, oh yeah, you'll love this one, that fat tub-o'-lard is in the medical supply business. Lookit that possum-eatin' grin on his face. Already made himself a deal with the Rooskies so he can supply both sides."

"Is that legal, Larry Bob?" Gearheardt asked.

"It is if I say so," the President replied.

"You suppose I could have another Lone Star, Larry Bob?"

"I reckon you can. Don't get too familiar with that 'Larry Bob' ****. You're still just a damn Marine." The President signaled by raising his hand, and one of his aides ran over with a beer. He began to whisper in the President's ear. Something about Congress and naked women in the Oval Office. The President excused himself and left the room, carrying one shoe.

Gearheardt sipped his beer and inspected his surroundings. There was no other furniture in the room except for the conference table surrounded by leather swivel chairs and simpler chairs, evidently for aides, behind them. The ceiling was low, there were no windows. Bright lighting hung over the conference table, leaving the edges of the room in near darkness. Each of the four walls had a door. Gearheardt guessed the room was about twenty-five feet square. He had expected to be in a "war room" with maps, electronic gizmos, telephones, televisions, and transparent boards with greased penciled aircraft filling every available space. This room was important without looking important, Gearheardt decided.

He tried to concentrate on the conversations going on at the table. They were of little interest to him, but he knew that he was in the presence of America's greatest businessmen. When he tuned in they were speaking in a language that he did not recognize.

"...short-term returns, my ***. I've got shareholders, you know. You build up faster than I can ramp up, and I'll have to charge the Army double or triple margins." The man, who sounded angry, actually smiled. He was the "tire" guy, Gearheardt remembered the President saying.

"Well, somebody needs to remind old Slickhair that the Street doesn't like surprises near year end. We need to manage the action on a quarterly basis, with the military placing their estimates when it allows my planning boys to get the best spin. Couldn't we allocate the Army on a quarterly basis? If they run out of ammunition near the end of the month, that's their problem. If they see there's going to be a surplus, surely a few big battles can be scheduled without a lot of hoopla. Just to burn up the excess. I would think a quota for each soldier, say 500 bullets a month he needs to shoot, wouldn't be unreasonable."

A skinny young guy that Gearheardt hadn't noticed before popped up near the end of the table. He was wearing heavy black-rim glasses and a gray suit. He waved a tablet of paper wildly.

"TEN YEARS," he yelled.

There was a great deal of consternation around the table.

"Ten years?" asked the medical supply king.

"Hell, I'll be living on a golf course in Florida in less than year," the concrete man mused to no one in particular.

"You gentlemen asked me to calculate how long the war had to last in order to get over the fifteen percent hurdle rate. It works out, on the average industry investment that you gave me, to a seventeen percent internal rate of return, again on average, if the war lasts ten years and the average soldier shoots three times his weight in bullets, the enemy shoots down an average of three helicopters and two fighters a day, and the soldiers generally ruin any equipment in their possession in, again on the average, ninety days."

The room was quiet while the businessmen doodled on pads that had been placed in front of them and conferred with aides, who now leaned in with earnest brows. The mumbling was subdued...

More later(?)

Argyroneta

06-25-2007, 02:45 PM

If only it could be one thing or the other: let him fall into a real fever or let his aching joints ease up.

from One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solhenitsyn

Scharphedin2

06-25-2007, 03:29 PM

The last sentence on the page of text prefacing the beginning of Michael Ondaatje's new novel Divisadero ~ "For I have taken myself away from who I was with them, and what I used to be. When my name was Anna."

I was reading on the train this morning, and felt very guilty, when I had to cut at page 37, but I could not very well miss my stop... So far, the book has all of the atmosphere of time and place, and poetic narrative cadence, of Ondaatje's previous novels. Taking the passage quoted above into consideration, the book so far appears to relate most closely to The English Patient.

Bartholomew

06-25-2007, 03:32 PM

"She has claws all over her, you don't know how to get at her."
-Père Ubu, about Mère Ubu

potus13

06-27-2007, 07:32 AM

"Francisco, what's the most depraved type of human being?"

"The man without a purpose."

--Quite possibly my favorite quotation of Ayn Rand, taken from "Atlas Shrugged."

Stieg

06-28-2007, 05:37 AM

The first three pages of I, Zombie:

I remember how the bottom of the lake looked as I was drowning. The thought of being buried in the mud frightened me more than the sensation of suffocating. My throat was jammed shut so that no water could go down but I wasn't thinking about air. I could feel my heart slow where at first it had thundered and leaped against my ribs as if it were trying to escape what was happening to it. It couldn't and neither could I. After a while I relaxed and drifted with the cold current while silence came to put me to sleep.

Funny how that nightmare was with me when I woke up in the cargo bound for Land's End. I apologized to Fry for being on top of the pile, not that I could help the way they stacked us in the crate, but she was in a snit and wouldn't respond to me.

Thoughts of death and life were in my mind, disturbing me, so I concentrated on the creaking and swaying cargo. My head felt strange, as if one piece of my brain were in a kind of trance while the other, smaller portion bellowed in terror and tried to attract attention. I didn't know which piece was me. Maybe both, maybe neither.

The packs were implanted in our brains on Earth so that all the driver had to do was think what he wanted us to do. Quidler got us moving as soon as the ship landed in the cradle. The compound was short of workers and had been waiting for the four of us for .... I don't know, a long time, I guess.

Frye began squirming beneath me so I told her to take it easy and wait a minute until I rolled over and opened the lid. Inside of me the little piece of brain was doing a lot of yelling, as if it were scared and not sure of what was happening.

I shoved the lid too hard and broke the hinges. Frye came out behind me and I stuck out my hand and said "Hi." I knew the difference between someone it was okay to talk to and someone it wasn't. Frye, LeMay, and Zottinger were big dumb bunnies without much personality and not enough looks to make me feel self-conscious, so I felt right at ease with them, even when they ignored my greeting and didn't say anything back to me.

Land's End was a world of ice and snow, oases, aliens, factories, people who made me nervous and Peterkin.

"Move it, dum-dums!" said Quidler in a tone that said he was bored out of his mind. He gave me a particularly unfriendly stare as I walked down the ramp from the ship and I knew right away I wasn't going to get along with him. He was one of those insecure people who took an instant dislike to me because I was so big. About five-ten, he was contemptuous of tall women, especially tall and muscular women. Back on Earth at the institution for hopeless cases, an acquaintance told me men liked muscles on women so I took up body building. I found out later she was no friend. Men didn't like muscled women, big women, or freak women. They liked cute little icebergs like Bates.

We were taken to the ground in an elevator, then for a couple of hours we stood on a motorized sled that slid over miles of gray ice until finally we arrived at the compound.

No sooner did we march into our quarters, which was a room fifteen by fifteen, than Zottinger climbed on a chair, slung his belt up over a ceiling beam, buckled it around his neck and did a jig in midair.

Frye selected one of the lower bunks while LeMay chose the other lower, at about the time I was sitting down on it. I threw her out so she climbed onto the bed above me. There were just bare springs and naked matresses. Lying down, I looked up at the rusty metal and knew I could never endure such a view for very long. "Get out," I said. "I've changed my mind. I want that bunk you're on."

LeMay's head appeared over the side and she gave me a steady stare with her coaly eyes.

"No lip," I said. "I want us to be friends but I'll never take lip from anybody ever again. I have to have the top bunk."

We traded places and by and by the place settled down. The only noise was the creaking of Zott's belt as he hung swaying from the rafter.

"They want to freeze me to death," I said. "Are you cold?" LeMay didn't answer so I kicked the wall until she did. No, she wasn't cold.

Quidler and Peterkin came down the hall, looked in and saw Zott, came in cursing and got him down from the rafter.

"When the stiffs go nuts then the whole place is nuts," said Quidler. "How do you account for this?"

"How should I know? This whole business is unnatural so why should any particular part of it seem weird?"

Quidler cut Zott's belt with a knife and allowed the body to drop to the floor. "Maybe he isn't really dead."

"You're always saying that! He's dead!"

"Sure, now that he's hanged himself. He's probably been up there for hours. I wonder why his pack didn't shut down?"

"I suppose the belt wasn't that tight around his neck and he was getting some air."

Hauling Frye onto the floor, Quidler laid Zott on her bunk.

"Why did you do that?" said Peterkin. "Do you think maybe he feels bad and should be made a little comfortable?"

"I'm messed up, okay? I admit it. I can't bear the thought that one of these days they're going to send us a live one."

...

Dickens59

07-01-2007, 12:38 PM

From A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch. A book about the Book of Revelation. The first two sentences.

"I know the ending," goes the slogan on a license-plate frame that can be spotted here and there on the streets and highways of America. "God wins."

Dori

07-03-2007, 11:04 AM

From "Les Miserables":

"What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and sepcially upon their desitinies, as what they do." (Page 11)

"Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfiguresthe wretched." (Page 122)

"No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child." (Page 329)

Those are a few. When I read more, I'll post them.

Stieg

07-03-2007, 05:59 PM

"It's bulletproof, like my wife, and impregnable. Not like my wife."

- Demon Theory

defeated

07-06-2007, 04:35 PM

this is one of my favorite quotes from the estepary wolve by herman hesse

"at nights I dream of him sometimes, And deep down I feel disturbed, upset on his cause, by the mere existance of such a human being, even when I grew to have true affection for him"

Night Closet

07-08-2007, 05:10 PM

Virtue itslef turns vice, being misapplied;
And vice sometime's by action dignified.

Frair Laurence , Romeo And Juliet, Act II,scene iii ,W.Shakespeare

bouquin

07-10-2007, 04:09 AM

... you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.
from Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Gracewings

07-11-2007, 05:30 PM

~from Tears of the Giraffe

The maid glanced at her employer. "Oh, you have heard of me," she said. "I am glad that he speaks of me. I would not like to think that nobody speaks of me."

"No," said Mma Ramotswe. "It is better to be spoken of than not to be spoken of. Except sometimes, that is." :p

Pensive

07-18-2007, 04:54 AM

From A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin:

"Wait. Manhood is patience. Mastery is nine times patience." - Ogion

"Ged, have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?" - Ogion

detritus

08-01-2007, 03:31 PM

"I know not yet what I shall sing;
I only know the song is there."

from The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader: Recollections of Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky.

earthboar

08-12-2007, 10:47 AM

Taken from chapter 4 of The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. Architect Guy Francon is reading a review on his recent work in the August edition of New Frontier. His new understudy Peter Keating is watching him as he reads:

Francon was smiling over the article, reading it again. Keating had never seen him so pleased; no drawing in the office, no work accomplished had ever made him as happy as these words from another man on a printed page to be read by other eyes.

bookfaerie

08-14-2007, 02:14 PM

From Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

"What no man may know, nor woman tell."

caffeinecups

08-14-2007, 02:39 PM

rich14285

08-14-2007, 02:54 PM

Yeats and the Divine
Although Yeats is often characterised as a mystical or even spiritual writer he is little concerned with God or with spiritual experience of the divine. It would be wrong to say that he is an atheist, since he certainly believes in the divine ‘uncreated spirit’, however, he does not see himself as concerned with the divine. He puts God onto one side of his System, the primary, and distances Him from creation to such an extent that He is no longer relevant, at least to those of antithetical disposition. When God appears in the poetry, He is often addressed through a character such as Crazy Jane or Ribh, or in a mythifying phrase, such as the ‘Primum Mobile that fashioned us’ in ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’ or ‘the Great Questioner’ in ‘At Algeciras—A Meditation upon Death’. Considering the mystical Christian philosopher Friedrich von Hügel, Yeats admits much similarity of character, since he too accepts ‘the miracles of the saints’, but he cannot embrace the religion in which they lived and died:

I—though heart might find relief
Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief
What seems most welcome in the tomb—play a predestined part.
Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
‘Vacillation’ VIII (VP 503)

Note: the above is part of a discussion of the book "A Vision" by Wm B Yeats.

aeroport

08-16-2007, 04:39 AM

"Every one of us is losing something precious to us... Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive."

Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore

Whoa! You're reading it too?

"I know. You've never killed anyone, and don't want to. But listen to me - there are tmes in life when those kinds of excuses don't cut it anymore."

Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

bazarov

08-16-2007, 04:46 AM

Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections.

A hundred years is youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man's lodging partook of his ephemeral character, and God's house of his eternity.

Hugo Victor - Les Miserables

Tabula_Rasa

08-16-2007, 05:17 AM

"Who is John Galt?"

(from Atlas Shrugged... by Ayn Rand... I'm on page 40... and this is what making me go on with it.. right now...)

caffeinecups

08-16-2007, 01:06 PM

Whoa! You're reading it too?

Yep, actually finished. It's a good read. I wanna try his other works.

"... Once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."

Kafka on the Shore, still. :D

NikolaiI

08-20-2007, 10:27 AM

"Good luck to the farmer! Good luck to the man who owns this place, the man who works it, the faithful, the virtuous! I can love him, I can revere him, I can envy him. But I have wasted half my life trying to live his life. I wanted to be something that I was not. I even wanted to be a poet and a middle-class person at the same time. I wanted to be an artist and a man of fantasy, but I also wanted to be a good man, a man at home. It all went on for a long time, till I knew that a man cannot be both and have both, that I am a nomad and not a farmer, a man who searches and not a man who keeps. A long time I castigated myself before gods and laws which were only idols for me. That was what I did wrong, my anguish, my complicity in the world's pain. I increased the world's guilt and anguish, by doing violence to myself, by not daring to walk toward my own salvation. The way to salvation leads neither to the left nor the right: it leads into your own heart, and there alone is God, and there alone is peace..."

Wandering, Notes and Sketches,
by Herman Hesse