Favorite Novel Quotes....

[SEVERUSMAX]

Well, got any?

 

[Selena_Kitt]

"I will remember you in the morning and in the evening, every day until I close my eyes forever. I forgive your every harsh thought of me and the curses you may hurl at my name. And when at last you do forgive me, I forbid you to suffer a moment's guilt in my name. I ask that you remember only my blessing upon you."

~ Dinah to her son in The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

 

[BlackShanglan]

Yossarian, explaining to Milo Minderbinder how his chef, Corporal Snark, poisoned the entire squadron:

‘He mashed hundreds of cakes of GI soap into the sweet potatoes just to show that people have the taste of Philistines and don’t know the difference between good and bad. Every man in the squadron was sick. Missions were canceled.’

‘Well!’ Milo exclaimed, with thin-lipped disapproval. ‘He certainly found out how wrong he was, didn’t he?’

‘On the contrary,’ Yossarian corrected. ‘He found out how right he was. We packed it away by the plateful and clamored for more. We all knew we were sick, but we had no idea we’d been poisoned.’

From Catch-22, by Joseph Heller - one of the most darkly humorous books ever written.

Shanglan

 

[Guest]

Book Quotes

"...'Will you tell how he died? -- Will you tell us about the other worlds out among the stars -- the other kinds of men, the other lives?'"

Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"You say the book is indecent. You say that I am immodest. But Sir in the depiction of love. modesty is the fullness of truth; and decency frankness..."

Jane Austen, Letter, as quoted in Pride and Promiscuity, The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

"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."

~ the Savage, in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

 

[Equinoxe]

"Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday."

The opening lines from The Stranger, they express the character of Meursault so perfectly and so immediately in the story.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”


(Anyone want to guess?)

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

 

[BabyBlue2005]

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”


(Anyone want to guess?)

"On the Road"?

One of my favorite storm descriptions:

"It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land."
Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett

 

[Selena_Kitt]

"There are two kinds of people in this world; those who think there are two kinds of people and those who are smart enough to know better."

- Tom Robbins, "Still Life with Woodpecker

 

[TheEarl]

I will not fear.
Fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total oblivion.
I will face my fear.
I will allow it to pass over me and through me.
When it has gone, I will turn my eyes to see its path.
Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Litany Against Fear
Dune - Frank Herbert

The Earl

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

"Then give him THESE! They go with the purple! And remind him, and yourself, that it takes more than CLOTHES to be an Emperor!" from Gore Vidal's Julian

also from Julian

"I have known all along that you were the prince."

 

[Selena_Kitt]

"We do not know what things look like, as you say," the beast said. "We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing."--from A Wrinkle in Time.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

"The only thing that a committee can organize is a catastrophe." Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough

 

[Guest]

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Amicus? Your torturer's name is Amicus?

*snort*

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

"Anyway, now you know. Now your education is complete. No glory, no honor. Just Heini over there, lying on his back." from Night of the Fox by Jack Higgins

 

[Equinoxe]

Amicus? Your torturer's name is Amicus?

Lindsey Davis, The Jupiter Myth.

Now that's funny on two levels.

 

[Guest]

 

[AppleBiter]

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say 'Holden Caulfield' on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say 'Fuck you.' I'm positive, in fact."

Holden Caulfield

"The Catcher in the Rye" by: J.D. Salinger

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Three by Raymond Chandler:

"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." -- The Big Sleep

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."--Farewell, My Lovely

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."--The High Window

Three favorite opening lines:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. --Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

There once was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it. --Voyage of the Dawn Trader, C S Lewis

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.--1984, George Orwell

Rumple Foreskin

 

[SummerMorning]

"Four legs good, two legs bad."

... and a bit later ...

"Four legs good, two legs better."

 

[Colleen Thomas]

"For the honor of the regiment"

Bolo by Keith Laumer

 

[Young-Impressionable]

My Tribute to Tolkien

I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

It's a dangerous business going out your front door.

It's the job that's never started takes longest to finish.

The wise speak only of what they know.

Never laugh at a live dragon.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Amicus? Your torturer's name is Amicus?

Lindsey Davis, The Jupiter Myth.

Slight threadjack: I love Lindsey Davis, Jammies! Her "The Course of Honour" (1998), the story of Antonia Caenis, Vespasian's long-term mistress, is one of my favorite books.