Your Favourite Novel Passages.

Dublo7

We all have our favourite books, and some of these books have paragraphs/passages that stick out amongst the rest of the writing. Some of these passages strike an emotional chord, or are simply just written so well that you can't help but set them apart.

I'll start with one of my more recent favourites.

It's taken from Poor People by Fyodor Dostoevsky. When I read this part, it was a real punch in the gut.
I find it hard to believe that D. wrote this book when he was only in his early 20's.

Poor People - Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote:

"Goodbye; I'm ending this letter because I've got neither paper nor time. Of the money I made from my clothes and hat, I've got only one silver rouble left. You gave your landlady two silver roubles; that's very good; she'll keep quiet now for a while.
Do something about your clothes somehow. Goodbye; I'm so tired; I don't understand why I'm becoming so weak; the slightest activity tires me. If some work turns up, how am I to do the work? That's what's killing me."

Of course, if there are major spoilers in your passage, make sure you use tags, and make it clear what book it's from.

Tamin

Hmm..

Clear and Present Danger - Tom Clancy wrote:

And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning--and, once decided, best unseen.

A rather perfect summation of most of Clancy's work, imo.

Quid

"THAT'S. NOT. MY. COW."

Every time Vimes told that story was always a minimum of sweet, but that time It sent a shiver down my spine.

Antihippy

Quid wrote: »

"THAT'S. NOT. MY. COW."

Every time Vimes told that story was always a minimum of sweet, but that time It sent a shiver down my spine.

I've always thought that that passage in that book is the most contrived thing Terry has ever written.

I seem to be the only one who seems to think so though. *shrugs* Other than that though, great book.

Quid

Antihippy wrote: »

Quid wrote: »

"THAT'S. NOT. MY. COW."

Every time Vimes told that story was always a minimum of sweet, but that time It sent a shiver down my spine.

I've always thought that that passage in that book is the most contrived thing Terry has ever written.

I seem to be the only one who seems to think so though. *shrugs* Other than that though, great book.

I'm sorry Antihippy, but some of us have a soul.

humorbot5

I read "The Day of the Jackal" recently, it was surprisingly good.
Similarly "The Three Musketeers" started off good but then sort of got kinda bad and then I got bored. I finished it, but I didn't like the second half or so.

I'm not sure what passages from eitehr I would specifically pick out.


In "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, there is a part where the word "Ejaculated" is used as a synonym for the word "exclaimed":

"My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tsh! Yah! Get on with you!"

I found that quite entertaining.

Antihippy

Quid wrote: »

Antihippy wrote: »

Quid wrote: »

"THAT'S. NOT. MY. COW."

Every time Vimes told that story was always a minimum of sweet, but that time It sent a shiver down my spine.

I've always thought that that passage in that book is the most contrived thing Terry has ever written.

I seem to be the only one who seems to think so though. *shrugs* Other than that though, great book.

I'm sorry Antihippy, but some of us have a soul.

I... I have a soul.

It's around here somewhere...



I nearly cried while reading Feet of Clay though. And the end part of Reaper Man. Will I have my redemption?

Oboro

Character spoilers from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale,

Here is what I'd like to tell. I'd like to tell a story about how Moira escaped, for good this time. Or if I couldn't tell that, I'd like to say she blew up Jezebel's, with fifty Commanders inside it. I'd like her to end with something daring and spectacular, some outrage, something that would befit her. But as far as I know that didn't happen. I don't know how she ended, or even if she did, because I never saw her again.

More than I enjoy the themes or story of The Handmaid's Tale, I enjoy Atwood's incredible capability to describe desperation and despondency. I have been there, in my small ways -- I have lived in what she calls reduced circumstances. When she describes the feelings, she is spot-on: it sends a chill down my spine to read, because in one paragraph she captures not just the delirious thought but the maddening sadness that inspired it, and rendered it 'plausible.'

Premier kakos

Does it have to be a novel? Because one of my favourite passages is from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill.

John Stuart Mill wrote:

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, "i maëstri di color che sanno," the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived—whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious—was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognised by the State; indeed his accuser asserted (see the Apologia) that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a "corrupter of youth." Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal.

TL;DR: There was a guy named Socrates and Democracy killed him.

Dunadan019

endymion

you are reading this for the wrong reason
if you are reading this to learn what it was like to make love to a messiah - our messiah - then you should not read on, because you are little more than a voyeur.

i always thought that telling people not to read your book in the very beginning was an odd way to start out.

Kilroy

Heart of Darkness wrote:

"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole, with the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked wood-pile. This was unexpected. We came to the bank, and on the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board with some faded pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said: 'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.' There was a signature, but it was illegible -- not Kurtz -- a much longer word. 'Hurry up.' Where? Up the river? 'Approach cautiously.' We had not done so. But the warning could not have been meant for the place where it could be only found after approach. Something was wrong above. But what -- and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely upon the imbecility of that telegraphic style. The bush around said nothing, and would not let us look very far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway of the hut, and flapped sadly in our faces. The dwelling was dismantled; but we could see a white man had lived there not very long ago. There remained a rude table -- a plank on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book. It had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It was an extraordinary find. Its title was, AN INQUIRY INTO SOME POINTS OF SEAMANSHIP, by a man Towser, Towson -- some such name -- Master in his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures, and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should dissolve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of ships' chains and tackle, and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book; but at the first glance you could see there a singleness of intention, an honest concern for the right way of going to work, which made these humble pages, thought out so many years ago, luminous with another than a professional light. The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such a book being there was wonderful enough; but still more astounding were the notes pencilled in the margin, and plainly referring to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher! Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging with him a book of that description into this nowhere and studying it -- and making notes -- in cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.

For a Polish guy, Conrad certainly had a way with English.

Rufus_Shinra

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Nonfiction

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time
immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been
extremely -- make that miraculously -- fortunate in your personal
ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of
time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one
of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a
mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate
and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your
pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck
fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of
delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at
the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of
hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly,
and all too briefly -- in you."

humorbot5

Kilroy wrote: »

For a Polish guy, Conrad certainly had a way with English.

Heart of Darkness was an extremely good read, I agree.

Elendil

Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire:

Spoiled for looooong and possible (minor) spoilers

Line 493: She took her poor young life

The following note is not an apology for suicide--it is the simple and sober description of a spiritual situation.

The more lucid and overwhelming one's belief in Providence, the greater the temptation to get it over with, this business of life, but the greater too one's fear of the terrible sin implicit in self-destruction. Let us first consider the temptation. As more thoroughly discussed elsewhere in this commentary (see note to line 550), a serious conception of any form of afterlife inevitably and necessarily presupposes some degree of belief in Providence; and, conversely, deep Christian faith presupposes some belief in some sort of spiritual survival. The vision of that survival need not be a rational one, i.e., need not present the precise features of personal fancies or the general atmosphere of a subtropical Oriental park. In fact, a good Zemblan Christian is taught that true faith is not there to supply pictures or maps, but that it should quietly content itself with a warm haze of pleasurable anticipation. To take a homely example; little Christopher's family is about to migrate to a distant colony where his father has been assigned to a lifetime post. Little Christopher, a frail lad of nine or ten, relies completely (so completely, in fact, as to blot out the very awareness of this reliance) on his elders' arranging all the details of departure, passage, and arrival. He cannot imagine , nor does he try to imagine, the particular aspects of the new place awaiting him but he is dimly and comfortably convinced that it will be even better than his homestead, with the big oak, and the mountain, and his pony, and the stable, and Grimm, the old groom, who has a way of fondling him whenever nobody is around.

Something of this simple trust we too should have. With this divine mist of utter dependence permeating one's being, no wonder one is tempted, no wonder one weighs one's palm with a dreary smile the compact firearm in its case of suede leather hardly bigger than a castlegate key or a boy's seamed purse, no wonder one peers over the parapet into an inviting abyss.

I am choosing these images rather casually. There are purists who maintain that a gentleman should use a brace of pistols, one for each temple, or a bare botkin (note the correct spelling), and that ladies should either swallow a lethal dose or drown with clumsy Ophelia. Humbler humans have preferred sundry forms of suffocation, and minor poets have even tried such fancy releases as vein tapping in the quadruped tub of a drafty boardinghouse bathroom. All this is uncertain and messy. Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business center hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently--not fall, not jump--but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off into the brush, thwarted, mangled, and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off--farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord. If I were a poet I would certainly make an ode to the sweet urge to close one's eyes and surrender utterly unto the perfect safety of wooed death. Ecstatically one forfeels the vastness of the Divine Embrace enfolding one's liberated spirit, the warm bath of physical dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the miniscule unknown that had been the only real part of one's temorary personality.

When the soul adores Him Who guides it through mortal life, when it distinguishes His sign at every turn of the trail, painted on the boulder and notched in the fir trunk, when every page in the book of one's personal fate bears His watermark, how can one doubt that He will also preserve us through all eternity?

So what can stop one from effecting the transition? What can help us to resist the intolerable temptation? What can prevent us from yielding to the burning desire for merging with God?

We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.

Andrew_Jay

Kilroy wrote: »

For a Polish guy, Conrad certainly had a way with English.

Some other passages really stand out for me, earlier in the book:

Conrad, in Heart of Darkness wrote:

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech--and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!--hidden out of sight somewhere.

"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on.

Conrad, in Heart of Darkness wrote:

No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild--and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive--not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement.

Generally though I'm terrible at remembering passages.

Dublo7

Rufus_Shinra wrote: »

Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Nonfiction

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time
immemorial to a favoured evolutionary line, but you have also been
extremely -- make that miraculously -- fortunate in your personal
ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of
time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one
of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a
mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate
and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of your
pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stuck
fast, untimely wounded or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of
delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at
the right moment to perpetuate the only possible sequence of
hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly,
and all too briefly -- in you."

I love it.

Premier kakos

Spoiler'd for heart-breaking sadness:

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men wrote:

Lennie said, “Tell how it’s gonna be.”
George had been listening to the distant sounds. For a moment he was
businesslike. “Look acrost the river, Lennie, an’ I’ll tell you so you can almost
see it.”
Lennie turned his head and looked off across the pool and up the darkening
slopes of the Gabilans. “We gonna get a little place,” George began. He reached
in his side pocket and brought out Carlson’s Luger; he snapped off the safety,
and the hand and gun lay on the ground behind Lennie’s back. He looked at the
back of Lennie’s head, at the place where the spine and skull were joined.
A man’s voice called from up the river, and another man answered.
“Go on,” said Lennie.
George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the
ground again.
“Go on,” said Lennie. “How’s it gonna be. We gonna get a little place.”
“We’ll have a cow,” said George. “An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens .
. . . an’ down the flat we’ll have a . . . . little piece alfalfa—”
“For the rabbits,” Lennie shouted.
“For the rabbits,” George repeated.
“And I get to tend the rabbits.”
“An’ you get to tend the rabbits.”
Lennie giggled with happiness. “An’ live on the fatta the lan’.”
“Yes.”
Lennie turned his head.
“No, Lennie. Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the
place.”
Lennie obeyed him. George looked down at the gun.
There were crashing footsteps in the brush now. George turned and looked
toward them.
“Go on, George. When we gonna do it?”
“Gonna do it soon.”
“Me an’ you.”
“You . . . . an’ me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more
trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.”
Lennie said, “I thought you was mad at me, George.”
“No,” said George. “No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t
now. That’s a thing I want ya to know.”
The voices came close now. George raised the gun and listened to the voices.
Lennie begged, “Le’s do it now. Le’s get that place now.”
“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta.”
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it
close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set
and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the
hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to
the sand, and he lay without quivering.

Dublo7

oh god no, I'm not reading that again.

Oboro

Dublo7 wrote: »

oh god no, I'm not reading that again.

Premier kakos

Dublo7 wrote: »

oh god no, I'm not reading that again.

Come on, Dublo7, tell me about the rabbits.

Drake

Here's a little passage from one of my favorite fantasy novels. It stands out for me because it's so atypical to what you find in most modern fantasy.

In the Silver Spike, Glenn Cook wrote:

He was serious. Unable to navigate and brain-pickled, but he was by-damned going to do something and do it right now.

"Thulda's. Why? Where you going?"
"We got to get help."
"Help? We? You forgetting I got a job here? I got responsibilities. I can't just mount up and ride off chasing lights you seen in the swamp because you got aholt of some doctored wine"

He got mad. I got mad right back. We yelled and screamed some. He threw things because he wasn't in good enough shape to run me down. I stomped his wineskin to death and watched it's blood trickle across the floor.

The landlady kicked the door in. She weighed two hundred pounds and was mean as a snake. "I told you bastards I wasn't gonna put up with no more of this..."

We rushed her. She was a liar and a cheat and a bully and she probably stole things from the rooms when she though she wouldn't get caught. We threw her down the stairs and stood around laughing like a couple of kid vandals. She started screeching again down below. She wasn't hurt.

I stopped laughing. She wasn't hurt but she might of been. And I didn't have the excuse of being drunk. "I take it your heading out of town?"

"Yeah." The humor had fled him too. His color was ghastly.
"How you going to get out of town? It's the middle of the night."
"Cash considerations. The magical key." He shouldered his bag. "You about ready?"
"Yeah." He knew I would come all the time.

Not your typical fantasy heroes. Glenn Cook is really good at gritty, gallows humor and delivering a whopping good fantasy yarn from the perspective of the Average Joe Soldier.

Nice topic. I'll post some more of my favorite passages later today.

Speed Racer

Premier kakos wrote: »

Spoiler'd for heart-breaking sadness:

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men wrote:

Lennie said, “Tell how it’s gonna be.”
George had been listening to the distant sounds. For a moment he was
businesslike. “Look acrost the river, Lennie, an’ I’ll tell you so you can almost
see it.”
Lennie turned his head and looked off across the pool and up the darkening
slopes of the Gabilans. “We gonna get a little place,” George began. He reached
in his side pocket and brought out Carlson’s Luger; he snapped off the safety,
and the hand and gun lay on the ground behind Lennie’s back. He looked at the
back of Lennie’s head, at the place where the spine and skull were joined.
A man’s voice called from up the river, and another man answered.
“Go on,” said Lennie.
George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the
ground again.
“Go on,” said Lennie. “How’s it gonna be. We gonna get a little place.”
“We’ll have a cow,” said George. “An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens .
. . . an’ down the flat we’ll have a . . . . little piece alfalfa—”
“For the rabbits,” Lennie shouted.
“For the rabbits,” George repeated.
“And I get to tend the rabbits.”
“An’ you get to tend the rabbits.”
Lennie giggled with happiness. “An’ live on the fatta the lan’.”
“Yes.”
Lennie turned his head.
“No, Lennie. Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the
place.”
Lennie obeyed him. George looked down at the gun.
There were crashing footsteps in the brush now. George turned and looked
toward them.
“Go on, George. When we gonna do it?”
“Gonna do it soon.”
“Me an’ you.”
“You . . . . an’ me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more
trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.”
Lennie said, “I thought you was mad at me, George.”
“No,” said George. “No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t
now. That’s a thing I want ya to know.”
The voices came close now. George raised the gun and listened to the voices.
Lennie begged, “Le’s do it now. Le’s get that place now.”
“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta.”
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it
close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set
and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the
hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to
the sand, and he lay without quivering.

Daaaaaamn youuuuu


The first chapter of No Country For Old Men is pretty fantastic:

Cormac McCarthy wrote:

I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didn't have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to. He'd killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He'd been datin this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely dont. I thought I'd never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strap him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was all. I really believe he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And I've thought about that a lot. He was not hard to talk to. Called me Sheriff. But I didnt know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? I've thought about it a good deal. But he wasnt nothin compared to what was comin down the pike.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I dont know what them eyes was the windows to and I guess I'd as soon not know. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that's where this is goin. It has done brought me to a place in my life I would not of thought I'd of come to. Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my hcips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothing but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. I think now that maybe I never would.

Mike Danger

Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man. The effect is somewhat ruined by this format:

In the book, Azrael's response takes up a whole page in HUGE FUCKING LETTERS. More context: Death (just one version of the Grim Reaper concept, in this case the Death of the Discworld) is about to be replaced by a new version of himself because he's become "too human". He's arguing his case before Azrael, the Death of Everything.

The Death of the Discworld stood up.

LORD, I ASK FOR--

Three of the servants of oblivion slid into existence alongside him.

One said, Do not listen. He stands accused of meddling.

One said, And morticide.

One said, And siding with chaos against good order.

Azrael raised an eyebrow.

The servants drifted away from Death, expectantly.

LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE...

Azrael's expression did not change.

THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.

The sad, dark face filled the sky.

ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION.

AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOME DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS.

Death took a step backward.

It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features.

Death glanced sideways at the servants.

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

He waited.

LORD? said Death.

In the time it took to answer, several galaxies unfolded, whirled around Azrael like paper streamer, impacted, and were gone.

Then, Azrael said:

YES.

Also, this passage from American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

"It's not easy to believe."

"I," she told him, "can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe."

"Really?"

"I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen — I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." She stopped, out of breath.

Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, "Okay. So if I tell you what I've learned you won't think that I'm a nut."

"Maybe," she said. "Try me."

Boyling

Oh, I have a soft spot for this here:

Last paragraph of George Orwell's "1984":

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving beast. Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

nameless

One of the more foreshadowed emotional climaxes in Catch-22--

He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

Mai-Kero

I could find a ton from the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, but that's four thousand pages to look through.

So instead, two from Snow Crash:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken.

Fido comes out of his doggie house, curls his long legs beneath him, and jumps over the fence around his yard before he has remembered that he is not capable of jumping over it. This contradiction is lost on him, though; as a dog, introspection is not one of his strong points.
As part of Mr. Lee's good neighbor policy, all Rat Things are programmed never to break the sound barrier in a populated area. But Fido's in too much of a hurry to worry about the good neighbor policy.
Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.

SinWithSebastian

And yet we knew, for a certainty, that when the first emissaries of Earth went walking among the stars, other sons of Earth would not be dreaming of such expeditions, but about a piece of bread.

pineconeboy

I'd really love to post the final passage of Tropic of Cancer but I don't have it with me at the time and an internet search comes up dry. Can anyone help?

PantsB

Pretty Lips and Green My Eyes, Salinger from Nine Stories.

The phone suddenly rang.

The gray-haired man said "Christ!" but picked it up before the second ring. "Hello?" he said into it.

"Lee? Were you asleep?"

"No, no."

"Listen, I just thought you'd want to know. Joanie just barged in."

"What?" said the gray-haired man, and bridged his left hand over his eyes, though the light was behind him.

"Yeah. She just barged in. About ten seconds after I spoke to you. I just thought I'd give you a ring while she's in the john. Listen, thanks a million, Lee. I mean it--you know what I mean. You weren't asleep, were ya?"

"No, no. I was just--No, no," the gray-haired man said, leaving his fingers bridged over his eyes. He cleared his throat.

"Yeah. What happened was, apparently Leona got stinking and then had a goddam crying jag, and Bob wanted Joanie to go out and grab a drink with them somewhere and iron the thing out. I don't know. You know. Very involved. Anyway, so she's home. What a rat race. Honest to God, I think it's this goddam New York. What I think maybe we'll do, if everything goes along all right, we'll get ourselves a little place in Connecticut maybe. Not too far out, necessarily, but far enough that we can lead a normal goddam life. I mean she's crazy about plants and all that stuff. She'd probably go mad if she had her own goddam garden and stuff. Know what I mean? I mean--except you--who do we know in New York except a bunch of neurotics? It's bound to undermine even a normal person sooner or later. Know what I mean?"

The gray-haired man didn't give an answer. His eyes, behind the bridge of his hand, were closed. "Anyway, I'm gonna talk to her about it tonight. Or tomorrow, maybe. She's still a little under the weather. I mean she's a helluva good kid basically, and if we have a chance to straighten ourselves out a little bit, we'd be goddam stupid not to at least have a go at it. While I'm at it, I'm also gonna try to straighten out this lousy bedbug mess, too. I've been thinking. I was just wondering, Lee. You think if I went in and talked to Junior personally, I could--"

"Arthur, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate--"

"I mean I don't want you to think I just called you back or anything because I'm worried about my goddam job or anything. I'm not. I mean basically, for Chrissake, I couldn't care less. I just thought if I could straighten Junior out without beating my brains out, I'd be a goddam fool--"

"Listen, Arthur," the gray-haired man interrupted, taking his hand away from his face, "I have a helluva headache all of a sudden. I don't know where I got the bloody thing from. You mind if we cut this short? I'll talk to you in the morning--all right?" He listened for another moment, then hung up.

Again the girl immediately spoke to him, but he didn't answer her. He picked a burning cigarette--the girl's--out of the ashtray and started to bring it to his mouth, but it slipped out of his fingers. The girl tried to help him retrieve it before anything was burned, but he told her to just sit still, for Chrissake, and she pulled back her hand.

Buddy Lee

Premier kakos wrote: »

Spoiler'd for heart-breaking sadness:

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men wrote:

Lennie said, “Tell how it’s gonna be.”
George had been listening to the distant sounds. For a moment he was
businesslike. “Look acrost the river, Lennie, an’ I’ll tell you so you can almost
see it.”
Lennie turned his head and looked off across the pool and up the darkening
slopes of the Gabilans. “We gonna get a little place,” George began. He reached
in his side pocket and brought out Carlson’s Luger; he snapped off the safety,
and the hand and gun lay on the ground behind Lennie’s back. He looked at the
back of Lennie’s head, at the place where the spine and skull were joined.
A man’s voice called from up the river, and another man answered.
“Go on,” said Lennie.
George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the
ground again.
“Go on,” said Lennie. “How’s it gonna be. We gonna get a little place.”
“We’ll have a cow,” said George. “An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens .
. . . an’ down the flat we’ll have a . . . . little piece alfalfa—”
“For the rabbits,” Lennie shouted.
“For the rabbits,” George repeated.
“And I get to tend the rabbits.”
“An’ you get to tend the rabbits.”
Lennie giggled with happiness. “An’ live on the fatta the lan’.”
“Yes.”
Lennie turned his head.
“No, Lennie. Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the
place.”
Lennie obeyed him. George looked down at the gun.
There were crashing footsteps in the brush now. George turned and looked
toward them.
“Go on, George. When we gonna do it?”
“Gonna do it soon.”
“Me an’ you.”
“You . . . . an’ me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more
trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.”
Lennie said, “I thought you was mad at me, George.”
“No,” said George. “No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t
now. That’s a thing I want ya to know.”
The voices came close now. George raised the gun and listened to the voices.
Lennie begged, “Le’s do it now. Le’s get that place now.”
“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta.”
And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the muzzle of it
close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set
and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the
hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to
the sand, and he lay without quivering.

Yes! I was going to post this exact passage. Soooo good.

squeefish

I've always loved this passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. When Johnny Depp recites that last line about the wave in the movie I get all shivery.

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...
And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Chaos Theory

For you, D&D. A bunch of Andre Malraux.

Man's Fate - Andre Malraux wrote:

She was getting away from him completely. And, because of that perhaps, the fierce craving for an intense contact with her blinded him, for a contact, no matter what kind--even one that might lead to fright, screams, blows. He got up, went over to her. He knew he was in a state of crisis, that tomorrow perhaps he would no longer understand anything of what he was feeling now, but he was before her as before a death-bed; and as towards a death-bed, instinct threw him towards her: to touch, to feel, to hold back those who are leaving you, to cling to them... She was looking at him with an intense anxiety; he has stopped two paces from her. The revelation of what he wanted finally flashed upon him; to lie with her, to find refuge in her body against this frenzy in which he was losing her entirely; they did not have to know each other when they were using all their strength to hold each other in a tight embrace.
She suddenly turned round: someone had rung.

Man's Hope - Andre Malraux wrote:

Suddenly, with a syncopated stridence of horns and klaxons, two Cadillacs tore up the road behind them, wildly zigzagging like cars in gangster films. The driver of the front car, the bald man with the small moustache, drove headlong through a barrage from rifles and machine-guns, under shells which hurtled harmlessly above him. Like a snow-plough, the car scattered the soldiers on either side, and raced between the two seventy-fives, crashing against the wall just beside the field gun, which presumably had been its objective. Black, blood-splattered wreckage-- a squashed fly on a wall.
The gunners went on firing at the second car. With its klaxon in full blast, it screamed past the two eighteen-pounders and dived into the portico at seventy miles an hour.
The field gun ceased fire. From all side-streets, workers were staring at the black maw of the portico; the klaxon was silent; all was silent. Waiting for the men in the car to reappear. None of them reappeared.
Again the sirens blared across the silence. It was as if the roar of the klaxons had swelled prodigiously, soaring up into the high air, till the whole city echoed with a dirge for the first glorious victims of the revolution. A cloud of pigeons, used to the daily hubbub of the city, circled above the avenue. Puig felt envious of his dead comrades' fate, yet at the same time eager to see the days that were at hand; for today Barcelona was pregnant with his whole life's dreams.

Just a quote:

Man's Hope - Andre Malraux wrote:

"Oh, and, speaking about priests, I'll tell you something--only you won't understand; you've never been poor. It's this. I hate a man who says that he forgives me for doing the best thing I've ever done. I don't want to be forgiven."

Shamus

I love the Malazan series, and the latest book was no different. Massive spoilers, though.

They laid the body of Anomander Rake on the slatted bed with it's old blood stains. Brood leaned over it for a long moment. And then he drew himself upright once more and faced the High Alchemist. "I shall build him a barrow. West of the city."
"Caladan, please, that can wait. We have to-"
"No." He moved to where Antsy stood and with one hand pushed the Falari away from the ox, grasping hold of the yoke. "I will do this. None other need be burdened with this journey. It shall be Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake, together one last time."
And so the ox began its fateful walk. A warrior at its side, the corpse of another in the cart.

nameless

Dublo7 wrote: »

When I read Fydor Dostoyevsky, it was a real punch in the gut.

Fixed. Seriously, I've picked up and read Crime and Punishment I think six times now and inevitably I put it down because I'm a student in poverty and a story about a starving, possibly insane student who kills and robs a pawnbroker just is way too close to home.

Chaos Theory

I read Crime and Punishment while having a horrible fever, and Raskolnikov's delusional sickness mirrored my own. It was pretty intense.

ClickForth

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Astns

It seems D&D has excellent taste, lots of great stuff here.

This passage from 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' by Oscar Wilde stood out to me. Its the first point in the book where you begin to realise that something twisted and cold has taken root in the heart of the titular chracter, gave me shivers reading it for the first time.

A low moan broke from her, and she flung herself at his feet and lay there like a trampled flower. "Dorian, Dorian, don't leave me!" she whispered. "I am so sorry I didn't act well. I was thinking of you all the time. But I will try--indeed, I will try. It came so suddenly across me, my love for you. I think I should never have known it if you had not kissed me-- if we had not kissed each other. Kiss me again, my love. Don't go away from me. I couldn't bear it. Oh! don't go away from me. My brother . . . No; never mind. He didn't mean it. He was in jest. . . . But you, oh! can't you forgive me for to-night? I will work so hard and try to improve. Don't be cruel to me, because I love you better than anything in the world. After all, it is only once that I have not pleased you. But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

"I am going," he said at last in his calm clear voice. "I don't wish to be unkind, but I can't see you again. You have disappointed me."

She wept silently, and made no answer, but crept nearer. Her little hands stretched blindly out, and appeared to be seeking for him. He turned on his heel and left the room. In a few moments he was out of the theatre.

Johannen

Logen winced. In his youth, he would have loved to answer that very question. He could have bragged, and boasted, and listed the actions he'd been in, the Named Men he'd killed. He couldn't say now when the pride had dried up. It had happened slowly. As the wars became bloodier, as the causes became excuses, as the friends went back to the mud, one by one. Logen rubbed at his ear, felt the big notch that Tul Duru's sword had made, long ago. He could have stayed silent. But for some reason, he felt the need to be honest.

"I've fought in three campaigns," he began. "In seven pitched battles. In countless raids and skirmishes and desperate defences, and bloody actions of every kind. I've fought in the driving snow, the blasting wind, the middle of the night. I've been fighting all my life, one enemy or another, one friend or another. I've known little else. I've seen men killed for a word, for a look, for nothing at all. A woman tried to stab me once for killing her husband, and I threw her down a well. And that's far from the worst of it. Life used to be cheap as dirt to me. Cheaper."

"I've fought ten single combats and I won them all, but I fought on the wrong side and for all the wrong reasons. I've been ruthless, and brutal, and a coward. I've stabbed men in the back, burned them, drowned them, crushed them with rocks, killed them asleep, unarmed, or running away. I've run away myself more than once. I've pissed myself with fear. I've begged for my life. I've been wounded, often, and badly, and screamed and cried like a baby whose mother took her tit away. I've no doubt the world would be a better place if I'd been killed years ago, but I haven't been, and I don't know why."

He looked down at his hands, pink and clean on the stone. "There are few men with more blood on their hands than me. None, that I know of. The Bloody-Nine they call me, my enemies, and there's a lot of 'em. Always more enemies, and fewer friends. Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I've earned it. I've deserved it. I've sought it out. Such is my punishment."

Logen Ninefingers (AKA: The Bloody Nine)
in
Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself

Dublo7

nameless wrote: »

Dublo7 wrote: »

When I read Fydor Dostoyevsky, it was a real punch in the gut.

Fixed. Seriously, I've picked up and read Crime and Punishment I think six times now and inevitably I put it down because I'm a student in poverty and a story about a starving, possibly insane student who kills and robs a pawnbroker just is way too close to home.

I've said it before, but I'm pretty positive Dostoevsky secretly killed someone, just so he could write that book.

Cojones

This thread is awesome, I've already jotted down a list of books to buy.

One from Unweaving the Rainbow.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here

Dublo7

Cojones wrote: »

This thread is awesome, I've already jotted down a list of books to buy.

One from Unweaving the Rainbow.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here

I love that one. Unweaving the Rainbow is one of the few Dawkins books I haven't actually read yet.

From The Selfish Gene. This particular chapter (Battle of the Generations) completely blew me away the first time I read it. After I read it, I sat there lying in bed, wide eyed, looking at the roof.
It completely changed the way I now think about Biology and nature as a whole.

Richard Dawkins wrote:

I am simply saying that natural selection will tend to favour children who do act in this way, and that therefore when we look at wild populations we may expect to see cheating and selfishness within families. The phrase 'the child should cheat' means that genes that tend to make children cheat have an advantage in the gene pool. If there is a human moral to be drawn, it is that we must teach our children altruism, for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature.