Quotes from Books

[grace86]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

"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]

-----------

"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]

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]

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