Beautiful descriptions

[Helga]

I was reading a book called 'The Virgin suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides and I started thinking about how one girl is described.

'She (Lux) was lying back in a beanbag chair,her knees lifted and spread apart,her upper half sunk into the bag,wich closed over her like a straitjacket. She was wearing blue jeans and suede clogs. Her long hair fell over her shoulders.She had a cigarette in her mouth, the long ash about to fall.'

I find this so beautiful. I want to ask you guys, what is the most beautiful, sweet or dark or whatever, something that moved you in a description you have ever read?

[Basil]

William Faulkner describes a deer:

"Then the buck was there. He did not come into sight; he was just there, looking not like a ghost but as if all of light were condensed in him and he were the source of it, not only moving in it but disseminating it, already running, seen first as you always see the deer, in that split second after he has already seen you, already slanting away in that first soaring bound, the antlers even in that dim light looking like a small rocking-chair balanced on his head."

from Go Down, Moses

[Koa]

In general, I find descriptions as the least interesting parts of a book... if they're short and effective they can be ok (I remember I was impressed by how concisely and sharply Agatha Christie is able to describe things perfectly in a few words), but when they're long I tend to lose concentration and interest...like the pages-long descriptions of the aesthets, like in Dorian Gray... that's hard to endure...

[Scheherazade]

I like Steinbeck's descriptions beautiful... especially those of people... He achieves the maximum effect with minimal number of words... Unfortunately, I don't have any of his books at home so unable to quote.

And Hemingway's descriptions, too... even though I personally like Steinbeck better than Hemingway.

[mono]

I enjoyed this recently read description from Oscar Wilde's The Picture Of Dorian Gray:

She [Sybil Vane] crouched on the floor like a wounded things, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiseled lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the emotion of people whom one has ceased to love.

[Nightshade]

As I remember A tale of two cities has some beautifully gruesome discriptions, which is probably why I hated it! The descripitions were so effective I could almost smell the blood that made me so quesy I just couldnt manage to enjoy it!

[Maverick]

this is one of the most beautiful things i have ever heard

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament," it was an extrodinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in and other person and which is not likely I shall ever find again.

-F. Scott Fitzerald
The Great Gatsby

[EAP]

Tolkien. Tolkien takes the cake.

Ainulindale, Silmarillion:

Then the Edain set sail upon the deep waters, following the Star; and the Valar laid a peace upon the sea for many days, and sent sunlight and a sailing wind, so that the waters glittered before the eyes of the Edain like rippling glass, and the foam flew like snow before the stems of their ships. But so bright was Rothinzil that even at morning Men could see it glimmering in the West, and in the cloudless night it shone alone, for no other star could stand beside it. And setting their course towards it the Edain came at last over leagues of sea and saw afar the land that was prepared for them, Andor, the Land of Gift, shimmering in a golden haze. Then they went up out of the sea and found a country fair and fruitful, and they were glad. And they called that land Elenna, which is Starwards; but also Anadûnë, which is Westernesse, Númenórë in the High Eldarin tongue.