Quotes from Books

[bouquin]

There are two choices only. You can be capable or uncaring. You can produce a masterful cake by your own hand or, barring that, light a cigarette, declare yourself hopeless at such projects, pour yourself another cup of coffee, and order a cake from the bakery.

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We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.
Heaven only knows why we love it so.

[Scheherazade]

There are two choices only. You can be capable or uncaring. You can produce a masterful cake by your own hand or, barring that, light a cigarette, declare yourself hopeless at such projects, pour yourself another cup of coffee, and order a cake from the bakery.

Great book!

[Cailin]

"A politician is someone who promises you a bridge, even when there's no river"

Classic line from Chapter 12 of Shantaram

[Vintage34]

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.
Heaven only knows why we love it so.

I've read this paragraph from The Hours, so many times, that the page in my book is actually worn and wrinkled. The older you are, the more you relate to those words. I love that book. I've read it many times and never tire of it.

[_Shannon_]

"He shut their voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, they shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair."

[prendrelemick]

"Mother feared for our lives with fresh vigour."

From The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

[polgara]

"Mother feared for our lives with fresh vigour."

From The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

That is such a wonderful sentence! Thank you for sharing it

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

'It was life but was it fair? It was free but was it art?' (94)
-Finnegans Wake

[Jack_Aubrey]

I am sitting over coffee and cigarets at my friend Rita's and I am telling her about it.
Here is what I tell her.

[Babyguile]

"It's like things are in the world. Hopes fail. An end comes. We have only a little time to wait now."

"The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.”

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."

"Many that live deserve death and many that die deserves life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so quick to deal out death and judgement for even the very wise cannot see all ends."

"Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped."

- The Lord of The Rings, J.R.R Tolkien.

[Cailin]

I am sitting over coffee and cigarets at my friend Rita's and I am telling her about it.
Here is what I tell her.

Intriguing! Where does this come from?

[TheFifthElement]

I have been sitting at this desk for hours, staring into the darkened shelves of books. I love their presence, the way they honour the wood they rest upon.
I know it's going to rain.
Clouds have been playing with the blue style of the sky all day long, moving their heavy black wardrobes in, but so far nothing rain has happened.

************************************************** *********************

What an abstract thing it is to take your clothes off in front of a stranger for the very first time. It isn't really what we planned on doing. Your body almost looks away from itself and is a stranger to this world.
We live most of our lives privately under our clothes, except in a case like Vida whose body lived outside of herself like a lost continent, complete with dinosaurs of her own choosing.
'I'll turn the lights out,' she said, sitting next to me on the bed.
I was startled to hear her panic. She seemed almost relaxed a few seconds before. My, how fast she could move the furniture about in her mind. I responded to this by firmly saying, 'No, please don't.'
Her eyes stopped moving for a few seconds. They came to a crashing halt like blue aeroplanes.
'Yes,' she said. 'That's a good idea. It will be very hard, but I have no other choice. I can't go on like this forever.'
She gestured towards her body as if it were far away in some lonesome valley and she, on top of a mountain, looking down. Tears came suddenly to her eyes. There was now rain on the blue wings of the aeroplanes.
Then she stopped crying withoun a tear having left her eyes. I looked again and all the tears had vanished. 'We have to leave the lights on,' she said. 'I won't cry. I promise.'
I reached out and, for the first time in two billion years, I touched her. I touched her hand. My fingers went carefully over her fingers. Her hand was almost cold.
'You're cold.' I said.
'No,' she said. 'It's only my hand.'
She moved slightly, awkwardly towards me and rested her head on my shoulder. When her head touched me, I could feel my blood leap forward, my nerves and muscles stretch like phantoms towards the future.
My shoulder was drenched in smooth white skin and long bat-flashing hair. I let go of her hand and touched her face. It was tropical.
'See,' she said, smiling faintly. 'It was only my hand.'
It was fantastic trying to work around her body, not wanting to startle her like a deer and have her go off running into the woods.
I poetically shifted my shoulder like the last lines of a Shakespearen sonnet (Love is a babe; then might I not say so, / To give full growth to that which still doth grow.) and at the same time lowered her back onto the bed.
She lay there looking up at me as I crouched forward, descending slowly, and kissed her on the mouth as gently as I could. I did not want that first kiss to have attached to it the slightest gesture or flower of the meat market.

[PabloQ]

I found this really funny:
"Her bosom is still a pavement she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness."
And then I found it sad and pathetic.

[littlelit]

RED- I.A.Sealy

I just started reading this book. I liked the following line in which the narrator describes the colour of a girl's tracksuit:
"...expressly chosen, that shade of blue, to dampen any ardour in the onlooker and possibly in the wearer too. It's not exactly Virgin Mary blue but nor is it water-nymph aqua, or odalisque turquoise, or even a crackling protopunk electric blue. It's by no means that bacchanalian midnight blue that verges on purple, nor a savage sadomasochistic bruised-eye indigo, and it's a long way from the gentian violet of the orgiast.
No. It's a straight-out daytime sky blue, bland as a button."

And later:
"Zach stares helplessly through the window like a prisoner who, after years in his cell, finds there are no bars."

[Dr. Hill]

"Call me Ishmael."

Take a guess at that one