Stuff from an author's notebook.

[AG31]

I get a lot of pleasure from novel, apt phrases in the books I read. I find myself wanting to tell someone. Well, why not tell you folks on AH? I'm hoping to start one of those threads that wakes up every couple of months where such authorial gems can be collected. I call it "Stuff from an author's notebook" because when I come across such turns of phrase I alway imagine the author thinking it up in the absence of a current need for it and writing it down in their notebook.

Here are two examples that I came upon this morning.

"conversations that went deep into whiskey bottles and long into the night"
Andrew Klavan A Strange Habit of Mind

And then there's this one (recalled for me in the same book), that is so apt and frequently quoted as to become a cliche. But imagine when Wordsworth first thought of "intimations of immortality."

 

[Rob_Royale]

“I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

I had this quote on the first page of my poetry notebook, many years ago. I read the book as a teen and that quote resonated in me in ways I can't describe. I know that it was characters in all the books I read who taught me the meaning of friendship and loyalty and nobility and courage. They made me understand what sort of person I wanted to be.

Secondly
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts On Common Things

 

[NightPorter]

"…I’ve never been the kind of man who laughs in the face of danger, much preferring to snigger behind its back and make vulgar hand gestures while it isn’t looking."
-Sandy Mitchell "The Last Ditch"

 

[THBGato]

"the sloe black, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea." - Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I love the opening of Ralph Emmerson's novel Invisible Man, which is a novel about being back in America in the 40s and 50s.

"I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass."

 

[CockSparrow]

"the sloe black, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea." - Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood

Ah, yes. The wonderful Dylan Thomas.

'One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.' - A Child's Christmas in Wales

 

[gunhilltrain]

Ah, yes. The wonderful Dylan Thomas.

'One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.' - A Child's Christmas in Wales

With poets, almost everything they write tries to be an apt phrase. Emily Dickinson could do it with only eight lines. I wonder what she would think of our present celebrity-driven age?

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

 

[StillStunned]

With poets, almost everything they write tries to be an apt phrase. Emily Dickinson could do it with only eight lines.

I've always loved these twelve lines by Stevie Smith:

Not Waving but Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

 

[AG31]

I had occasion to post about the word "ping" in another thread, and that has prompted me to go ahead and suggest "ping" as a word that the author might have had in her head for a long time. It may even have prompted the whole romantic sub-plot in the book where I found it.

I read a book in which a man and woman, who had been good friends since childhood, decided to get married because they were rounding the bend toward late middle age and wanted to stop the merry-go-round and have a family. They wondered allowed how sex would go. After the sex went, either the female MC or the author, I forget which, said/wrote "Ping!" It worked so perfectly for me. That told me they were in love.

 

[gunhilltrain]

“I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, Go Ask Alice

I've never read it, but the book was published fifty-three years ago and Beatrice Sparks herself was 54 when she wrote it. I suspect that a 2024 version would be "things I've gotten from the Internet" or even "things I've gotten from social media."

 

[AG31]

"Pigeons waddled.... They made pigeon noises" - Skinflick by Joseph Hansen

Who hasn't struggled to try to describe a familiar sound? How about just naming the sound???

 

[AG31]

"...the noisy silence of the bullfrogs, the grasshoppers, the distant cars rushing endlessly on I-65..."
John Green - Looking for Alaska

 

[AG31]

"...sunlight feels warm and rough against your skin like a kiss on the cheek from your dad..."
John Green - Looking for Alaska

 

[AG31]

"It was a coloring-book kind of day--blue sky, white clouds, orange and yellow trees--as if the artist only had four colors and wasn't allowed to blend."

Gerry Boyle, Bloodline

 

[Kelliezgirl]

We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.
- Steven Erikson, Memories of Ice

 

[VallesMarineris]

Two lines immediately come to mind for me:

From a Dashiell Hammett novel (IIRC):

"He had lips that would have been inconspicuous on a carp."

And the perfect first line from Ken Follett's The Key to Rebecca:

"The last camel died at noon."

Every time I start writing a scene I think about that sentence. In six words Follett laid out the time, location, and dire predicament his protagonist is in. You can't avoid reading the next line, and the next paragraph and, before you know it, the whole scene.

 

[AG31]

The good testosterone of the alpha wolf rather than the bad testosterone of the cornered weasel."

Double Fault by @TheRedChamber

 

[AG31]

I knew it was a stupid question the moment it slipped off my tongue and into the conversation.

Mike Gayle - My Legendary Girlfriend

 

[StillStunned]

I knew it was a stupid question the moment it slipped off my tongue and into the conversation.

Mike Gayle - My Legendary Girlfriend

I seem to have lost track of what he's been writing lately, but I loved his earlier books.

 

[AG31]

I seem to have lost track of what he's been writing lately, but I loved his earlier books.

I'm reading this one because of a comment you made a few days ago. The library only had one, and it was recent. I didn't finish it because it was obviously not the "male chick lit," which had me intrigued. Although it was clearly well written. I got "Legendary" (his first) from Amazon at Kindle prices. Will report back when I finish it.

 

[StillStunned]

I'm reading this one because of a comment you made a few days ago. The library only had one, and it was recent. I didn't finish it because it was obviously not the "male chick lit," which had me intrigued. Although it was clearly well written. I got "Legendary" (his first) from Amazon at Kindle prices. Will report back when I finish it.

Ah, that makes sense. My favourites of his are Brand New Friend and Dinner For Two. I think he was still finding his feet with My Legendary Girlfriend.

 

[AG31]

Ah, that makes sense. My favourites of his are Brand New Friend and Dinner For Two. I think he was still finding his feet with My Legendary Girlfriend.

Amazon doesn't have Brand New Friend, but I sprang for Dinner for Two. Reading two "male chick lit" stories will be good for my little mental project.

 

[StillStunned]

Amazon doesn't have Brand New Friend, but I sprang for Dinner for Two. Reading two "male chick lit" stories will be good for my little mental project.

Mike Gayle is a couple of years older than me, and for a long time it seemed as if he was writing my life. By the time I had the book in my hand, I was experiencing the exact events he described in his books. It was quite creepy at times.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Note to self, Mary: Start a Notebook.