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Favourite lines from a book

W

Wabbit

New Member
Little lines you love. You know when you are reading and go, "AHHHHH" because you have read a really great line. Something very beautiful, interesting, profound or just fun.

Well... Are there any such lines in the book you are reading right now or have read?

I'll kick off with a line from The House of Spirits that I am reading now.

Great line "In between turns of the handle, the parrot, who had learned Spanish but not lost his accent would draw the crowd." Great! :)

What little lines do you love?

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
It's from a short story though, from "An Episode of War" by Stephen Crane:

A wound gives strange dignity to him who bears it.

beautiful!
 
Argh, Silly Wabbit...there are too many of these. I keep a journal just for little lines from books...amusing, beautiful descriptions, great points...anything that captures my fancy.
 
VTChEwbecca said:
Argh, Silly Wabbit...there are too many of these. I keep a journal just for little lines from books...amusing, beautiful descriptions, great points...anything that captures my fancy.
Click to expand...

like the one in your sig! I love it.
 
What a wonderful idea :)

I think I would have several books worth if I did that. Hmmm, I might take that up anyway. It's a good idea.

Regards
SillyWabbit
 
SillyWabbit said:
What a wonderful idea :)

I think I would have several books worth if I did that. Hmmm, I might take that up anyway. It's a good idea.

Regards
SillyWabbit
Click to expand...
They do fill up quickly, but its great to go back through and read what I've copied down.


StellaLeanna said:
like the one in your sig! I love it.
Click to expand...
Its one of my favorites of all time.
 
I think this perfectly captures two thousand years of white imperialism.

"do I understand nature? do I understand myself? no more words! I shroud dead men in my stomach.... shouts, drums, dance, dance, dance! I can't even imagine the hour when the white men land, and I will fall into nothingness.

thirst and hunger, shouts, dance, dance, dance!

the white men are landing! the cannon! now we must be baptized, get dressed, go to work.

my heart has been stabbed by grace."

arthur rimbaud, a season in hell
 
Favourite lines from a book?

So what are some of your favourite lines from a book?
 
This paragraph from Gilead (Marilynne Robinson) made me smile:

I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening
toward that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst.
So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your
mother, blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them
that the poor beast was beside herself at the glut of opportunity.
She was actually leaping in the air, our insouciant Soapy!
Some of the bubbles drifted up through the branches, even
above the trees. You two were too intent on the cat to see the
celestial consequences of your worldly endeavors. They were
very lovely. Your mother is wearing her blue dress and you are
wearing your red shirt and you were kneeling on the ground
together with Soapy between and that effulgence of bubbles
rising, and so much laughter. Ah, this life, this world.

It is a simple passage; and yet quite powerful.
 
Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

Really anything by Nabokov has wonderful lines, but this one happened to catch my eye a moment ago.
The yellow window curtain swelled mellowly, and a spot of sunlight changed its shape on the floor. Instead of circles the flies described parallelograms and trapezoids around the shaft of the ceiling lamp, settling every now and then on the brass.
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But Aqua, I loved your line, I'm reading that now along with Red Mars:D
 
"It was St. Patrick's Day, and the only green I was wearing was a button that read, "Pinch me and you're dead meat." I'd started work last night with a green blouse on, but I'd gotten blood all over it from a beheaded chicken. Larry Kirkland, zombie raiser in training, had dropped the decapitated bird. It did the little headless chicken dance and sprayed both of us with blood. I finally caught the damn thing but the blouse was ruined."
From Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter book #5, Bloody Blones. ^__^
 
AquaBlue said:
This paragraph from Gilead (Marilynne Robinson) made me smile:

I saw a bubble float past my window, fat and wobbly and ripening
toward that dragonfly blue they turn just before they burst.
So I looked down at the yard and there you were, you and your
mother, blowing bubbles at the cat, such a barrage of them
that the poor beast was beside herself at the glut of opportunity.
She was actually leaping in the air, our insouciant Soapy!
Some of the bubbles drifted up through the branches, even
above the trees. You two were too intent on the cat to see the
celestial consequences of your worldly endeavors. They were
very lovely. Your mother is wearing her blue dress and you are
wearing your red shirt and you were kneeling on the ground
together with Soapy between and that effulgence of bubbles
rising, and so much laughter. Ah, this life, this world.

It is a simple passage; and yet quite powerful.
Click to expand...

Sigh, another book to add to my TBR list. :rolleyes: No really, thanks Aqua, that's lovely.
 
It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

--Huck Finn
 
"Shift it you daft cunt! Bring me more beers before I sober up!":D

-The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Hadon

and

"My mother died today, or was it yesterday?":p

-The Stranger by Albert Camus
 
"Did people leave you, did their spirits simply take off, because you wouldn't read a book that turned them on? He now knew the answer was yes." ~Alice Walker The Temple of My Familiar

"I dunno. They open doors inside of me. It's as if they're keys. To rooms inside myself. I find a door inside and it's as if I hear a humming from behind it, and then I get inside somehow, with the key the old ones give me, and are, and as I stumble about in the darkness of the room, I begin to feel the stirring in myself, the humming of the room, and my heart starts to expand with the absolute feeling of bravery, or love, or audacity, or commitment. It becomes a light, and the light enters me, by osmosis, and a part ofme that was not clear before is clarified. I radiate this expanded light. Happiness." Alice Walker The Temple of My Familiar

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God

"She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop." - Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
 
From Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs:

"We were young. We were bored. And the old electroshock therapy machine was just under the stairs in a box next to the Hoover".

"What if my mother didn't get better? What if she couldn't be pulled back from wherever she was? And more importantly, what would the cheap motel soap do to my hair?"

From A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton:

"They could call it the City of Angels if they wanted to, but if there were angels out there, they had to be flying blind."

From I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan:

"You're in pain, Lucifer."
"And the Nurofen's holding it marvelously. Mary still saving that cherry for me?"
 
Emmuska Orczy's Eldorado:
"Time, space, and distance had ceased to be; only Death, the great Lord of all, had remained; he walked on ahead, scythe on skeleton shoulder, and beckoned patiently, but with a sure, grim hand."

Emmuska Orczy's I Will Repay:
"Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god --- Love that subdues a world, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home, kindred, and religion -- what cares he for the easy conquest of the pathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?

Love means equality -- the same height of heroism or of sin. When Love stoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, that rarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in the image of God. "

"Love is sweet and tender, and judges not; love is love, whole, trustful, passionate; love is perfect understanding and perfect peace."

Marquis de Sade's "The Law of Talion":
"But, my dear, I merely took your advice. Didn't you tell me that there was no risk in sleeping with people of the cloth, that the soul is purified by such relations, that we draw close to the Supreme Being, that the Holy Spirit is then made flesh in us and, in short, it is the way to unlock the gates to heavenly joy? Well, dearest, I simply did as you said, and that makes me definitely no harlot but a saint! And I can tell you that if there's on pure soul of God who has the power to unlock, to use your words, the gates to heavenly joy, then it must be the curate, for I never saw a bigger key."
 
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