Great Lines in Literature

[cheerful_deviant]

"While it may be true Mrs. Sorskins that sometimes unusually talanted and gifted children can appear to be stupid, stupid children often appear to be stupid as well. I'm affraid that's a reality you may have to face. Yes, I'm sure it's very painful. Goodbye."

~ The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams

 

[scriptordelecto]

"While it may be true Mrs. Sorskins that sometimes unusually talanted and gifted children can appear to be stupid, stupid children often appear to be stupid as well. I'm affraid that's a reality you may have to face. Yes, I'm sure it's very painful. Goodbye."

~ The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams

That was a brilliant man!

 

[Liar]

"Well, you're grownups," she said, in a tone of voice that implied that they weren't, and that even if they were they shouldn't be.
-Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman


Has he met my grandma?

 

[scriptordelecto]

"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

 

[maggot420]

"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square."

~The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

 

[impressive]

"To dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed by the garden fork because I did not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a fork into a dog after it was dead for some other reason...."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)

 

[cloudy]

"Well, you're grownups," she said, in a tone of voice that implied that they weren't, and that even if they were they shouldn't be.
-Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

I love that book!


"The end of the world is near!" shouted the crazy old Indian man in front of the Spokane Tribal Trading Post. He wasn't a Spokane Indian, but nobody knew what tribe he was. Some said Lakota Sioux because he had cheekbones so big that he knocked people over when he moved his head from side to side.

None of the Spokanes paid him much mind because they already knew the end was just around the corner, a few miles west, down by Turtle Lake.

- Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie

 

[Seamus123]

'The Department of Economy and Efficiency was today closed down for reasons of Economy and Efficiency.'

Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

"FRANCIS MARION TARWATER'S uncle had been dead for only half-a-day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up."

The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor


Rumple Foreskin

 

[floweringquince]

"Housework, the art of the infinite, is not for amateurs."

- Ursula K. LeGuin, in a short story published in "The New Yorker" sometime in the early 1980's, the title of which I forget.

Quince

 

[Liar]

I love that book!

Me 2. Eeeexcept I think I messed up. That line is form American Gods.

Which also has this:

"Say nevermore," said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.

 

[scriptordelecto]

Me 2. Eeeexcept I think I messed up. That line is form American Gods.

Which also has this:

"Say nevermore," said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.

Have ya'll read Neverwhere?

 

[JustHoney]

"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

 

[bluebell]

Which is surprising because I'm not really a camp-er...

Cheer, great thread idea. I may have to set up camp.
Shoot. I already promised the Obscure Words thread I would set up camp there.
I'm committing thread infidelities...
Eh. It'll live.

Two of Miss Trunchbull's, er, shinier verbal moments, from "Matilda" by Roald Dahl:

"I cannot for the life of me see why children have to take so long to grow up. I think they do it on purpose."

"I have never been able to understand why small children are so disgusting. They are the bane of my life. They are like insects. They should be got rid of as early as possible. We get rid of flies with fly-spray and by hanging up fly-paper. I have often thought of inventing a spray for getting rid of small children.
How splendid it would be to walk into this classroom with a gigantic spray-gun in my hands and start pumping it. Or better still, some huge strips of sticky paper. I would hang them all around the school and you'd all get stuck to them and that would be the end of it.
Wouldn't that be a good idea, Miss Honey?"

 

[McKenna]

"Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and pre-human to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the ante-human, the other world which frightens not through danger or hostility but in something far worse --its implacable indifference."

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

 

[Misty_Morning]

Actually I quoted this line a several days ago...It is one of my all time favorites:

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" -John Milton, Paradise Lost

 

[drksideofthemoon]

There were three thousand, six hundred and fifty three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand, six hundred and fifty three days. The extra three days were for leap years.

A Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovitch~Alexander Solzehnitsyn

 

[Stella_Omega]

Have ya'll read Neverwhere?

That was a book that I read to the end- turned it over and started at the beginning again. But I don't have a copy, so I can't quote from it.

Anyways, from the book I am reading, "Tristam Shandy":

"I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me;"

 

[only_more_so]

"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."

-James Michener, "Space"

 

[Frank Noir]

"To dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed by the garden fork because I did not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a fork into a dog after it was dead for some other reason...."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)

And the whole book is like that. Brilliant!

 

[Frank Noir]

"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