Quotes from Books

[NNoah3]

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]

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]

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]

"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]

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]

"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]

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

[Hyacinth Girl]

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]

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]

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]

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

The Outer Temple of Witchcraft by Christopher Penczak

[Taime]

'' 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]

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.

Just finished it on Tuesday. I am absolutely in love.

[Erna]

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]

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