Unsolicited return of novel quotes....

[SEVERUSMAX]

....yes, giving this a second chance, since there are enough intelligent and well-read people who have no doubt been dying to share bits and pieces of works of literature.

However, I will expand it to include novella and erotica quotes. Don't wish to be a snob, after all.

And, seriously, threadjacks are cool up to a point, but let's try to keep them minimum. I'm trying to cut back on threadjacks, since I know that I am one of the worst offenders in that regard. I would appreciate similar self-restraint from others.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Starting with a quote from a favorite novel of mine, Fortune's Favorites, by Colleen McCullough, which fascinates because of the temptation that the character referred to here yields to,

"And he had thought while he itched and tore himself to raw and bloody tatters of being an old and ugly and disappointed man given the world's most wonderful toy to play with: Rome. Its men and women, dogs and cats, slaves and freedmen, lowly and knights and nobles. All his cherished resentments, all his grudges grown cold and dark, he detailed meticulously in the midst of his pain. And took exquisite comfort from shaping his revenge.

The Dictator had arrived.

The Dictator had put his gleeful hands upon his new toy."

 

[neonlyte]

Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho

Maria is lured to Europe from Brazil, and becomes a prostitute, a curious, intelligent prostitute searching for her 'place' in all things.

From Maria's diary, when she was still drunk on vodka and pleasure:

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself. When I experienced humiliation and total submission, I was free. I don't know if I am ill, if it was all a dream, or if it only happens once. I know that I can perfectly live without it, but I would like to do it again, to repeat the experience, go further still.

I was a bit frightened by the pain, but it wasn't as bad as the humiliation, and it was just a pretext. When I had my first orgasm in many months, despite all the men I've been with, and the many different things they have done with my body, I felt - is this possible? - closer to God. I remembered what he said about how the flagellants, in offering up their pain for the salvation of humanity, found pleasure, I didn't want to save humanity, or him or me; I was just there.

The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon.

I think this passage is brilliant in drawing such disparate threads of the 'human condition' and still conveys the message of hope.

 

[cloudy]

My favorite passage from Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie:

"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. The old man was tall, taller than any of the Spokanes, even though age had shrunk him a bit. People figured he was close to seven feet tall in his youth. He'd come to play in an all-Indian basketball tournament in Wellpinit thirty years ago and had never left. 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.

Wonderful visual and humor at the same time.

 

[AngeloMichael]

I can't recommend "The Prince of Nothing" series by R. Scott Bakker enough. It is an extremely powerful, if dark, story. It's emotionally exhausting. This is one of my favorite passages from the third and last book, "The Thousandfold Thought".

Kellhus ingnored the thing, continued speaking. "All men surrender, Akka, even as they seek to dominate. It's their nature to submit. The question is never whether they will surrender, but rather to whom..."

"Your heart, Chigraa...I shall make it my apple..."

"I--I don't understand." Achamian glanced from the abomination to Kellhus's sky-blue eyes.

"Some, like so many Men of the Tusk, submit--truly submit--only to the God. It preserves their pride, kneeling before what is never heard, never seen. They can abase themselves without fear of degradation."

"I shall eat..."

Achamian held an uncertain hand against the sun to better see the Warrior-Prophet's face.

"One," Kellhus was saying, "can only be tested, never degraded, by the God."

"You said 'some,'" Achamian managed. "What of the others?" In his periphery he saw the thing's face knuckle as though into interlocking fists.

"They're like you, Akka. They surrender not to the God but to those like themselves. A man. A woman. There's no pride to be preserved when one submits to another. Transgress, and there's no formula. And the fear of degradation is always present, even if not quite believed. Lovers injure each other, humiliate and debase, but they never test, Akka--not if they truly love.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

From Gore Vidal's Julian, "The lechery of Priscus is an unexpected consequence of his senescence. I am not aware of any 'touch of Tiberius' in myself. Quite the contrary."

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

"The more I hear of committees, the more convinced I am that the only thing that a committee can organize is a catastrophe." from Fortune's Favorites by Colleen McCullough

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

'Shit happens' is not irony.

 

[temptanddestroy]

"God is Narcissus and we are all God's Echoes." From the House of Leaves by Danielewski.

This is deep philosophy, man and I love the story of Echo; it's so poignant.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Temperance to 17th Century Germans meant not having a beer with breakfast. from 1632

Mr. Butler would do well to remember that, when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting wild boar in the forests of Saxony, mine were the princes of the Earth. from The Guns Of The South

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

With stealthy steps he crept to the head of the stairs and descended. One uses the verb “descend” advisedly, for what is required is some word suggesting instantaneous activity. But Baxter’s progress from the second floor to the first, there was nothing halting or hesitating. He, so to speak, did it now.

Planting his foot firmly on a golf ball which the Honorable Freddie Fleetwood who had been practicing putting in the corridor before retiring to bed had left in his casual fashion just where the stairs began, he took the entire staircase in one majestic vaulting sweep.

There were eleven stairs in all separating his landing from the landing below, and the only ones he hit were the third and tenth. He came to rest with a squattering thunk on the lower landing, and for a moment or two the fever of the chase left him.

P.G. Wodehouse Leave It To Psmith

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

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

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

"He’s part of everything here and everything is part of him. He has a place where he belongs." Robert Penn Warren, A Place To Go To

Rumple Foreskin

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

"Oribasius, shame on you! What would your father say?"

"I don't know. YOU see more of him these days than I do." from Julian by Gore Vidal

 

[poppy1963]

My favorite quote of all time (so far)...

"This was the great secret known to all the wise in our time...that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new..."

Morgana
The Mists of Avalon

So simple...so true.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

My favorite quote of all time (so far)...

"This was the great secret known to all the wise in our time...that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new..."

Morgana
The Mists of Avalon

So simple...so true.

Very fascinating contribution, Poppy. Glad to have you post here.

 

[poppy1963]

Very fascinating contribution, Poppy. Glad to have you post here.

Thanks, Severusmax...I have another...from Dune. It's a bit longer and I haven't read it in a while. But I will share it as well. Thank you for the welcome!

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Thanks, Severusmax...I have another...from Dune. It's a bit longer and I haven't read it in a while. But I will share it as well. Thank you for the welcome!

Ur welcum, and by all means do share it with us. We will welcome any kind of novel quotes here.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

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

Rumple Foreskin

 

[poppy1963]

Ur welcum, and by all means do share it with us. We will welcome any kind of novel quotes here.

lol...it's good you keep an open mind...test passed. LOL

Great wisdom comes from unexpected places...I got much of mine from Hawkeye Pierce in Mash.

Some from Khalil Gibran as well...and Reese Witherspoon.

 

[poppy1963]

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

Rumple Foreskin

Ah...the unparalleled C.S.! Well...let's say a "one of a kind".

 

[Hooper_X]

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..... And one fine morning--"

Ain't that the truth...

 

[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."

Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Hooper_X]

Portnoy's Complaint ~ Philip Roth

"They worship a Jew, do you knowthat, Alex? Their whole big-deal religion is based on worshiping someone who was n established Jew at the time. Now how do you like that for stupidity? How do you like that for pulling the wool over the eyes of the public? Jesus Christ, who they go around telling everybody was God, was actually a Jew! like you and me, and that they took a Jew and turned him into some kind of God after he is already dead, and then--and this is what can make you absolutely crazy--the the dirty bastards turn around afterwards and who is the first one on their list to persecute? Who haven't they left their hands off of to murder and to hate for two thousand years? The Jews! who gave them their beloved Jesus to begin with! I assure you , Alex, you are never going to hear such a mishegoss of mixed-up crap and disgusting nonsense as the Christian religion in your entire life. And that's what these bigshots, so-called, believe!"

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

lol...it's good you keep an open mind...test passed. LOL

Great wisdom comes from unexpected places...I got much of mine from Hawkeye Pierce in Mash.

Some from Khalil Gibran as well...and Reese Witherspoon.

Open minds are more liberating and exciting. Being narrow-minded never had much appeal to me.