Fabulous Book Quotes - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

jewels · 09-29-2009, 09:32 AM

Ever find yourself reading something and come upon a great line that you felt was too great not to share?

It can be funny, ironic, ridiculous or brilliant and totally out of context. Doesn't matter. This is your thread. Fiction, non-fiction, blogs. Whatever. Just be sure to credit the author and the work.

My inspiration was Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters. I'm on the final pages and still haven't decided how I feel about the book, but found some great lines in it. There were many great ones, but this just cracked me up:

"I can get us back into the States," she says. "but I'm going to need a condom and a breath mint."

Poppinjay · 09-29-2009, 12:21 PM

Quote:

I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem, and Dill, and Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson, and Atticus. He would be in Jem's room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.

-Scout To Kill A Mocking Bird

levite · 09-29-2009, 12:25 PM

"'Torah! Torah! Torah!' -The cry of the kamikaze rabbis.'"

-From Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

CinnamonGirl · 09-29-2009, 02:50 PM

Ohhh, I love this thread

Two for now, which happen to be two of my favorites that I can recite from memory:

"...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world." (from The Ordinary Princess)

"Caitlin isn't someone to get over. She's someone to come to terms with, the way you have to come to terms with your parents, your siblings. You can't deny they ever happened. You can't deny you ever loved them, love them still, even if loving them causes you pain." (from Summer Sisters)

Plan9 · 09-29-2009, 02:59 PM

Aaah, my favorite quote of all time...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Bachman

Sanity: You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all, sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about it. And what I keep coming back to is Mrs. Underwood's dying declaration: So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.

I really believe that.

I think; therefore I am. There are hairs on my face; therefore I shave. My wife and child have been critically injured in a car crash; therefore I pray. It's all logical, it's all sane. We live in the best of all possible worlds, so hand me a Kent for my left, a Bud for my right, turn on Starsky and Hutch, and listen to that soft, harmonious note that is the universe turning smoothly on it's celestial gyros. Logic and sanity. Like Coca-Cola, it's the real thing.

But as Warner Brothers, John D. MacDonald, and Long Island Dragway know so well, there's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror. The brain behind that face never heard of razors, prayers, or logic of the universe. You turn the mirror sideways and you see your face reflected with a sinister left-hand twist, half mad and half sane. The astronomers call that line between light and dark the terminator.

The other side says that the universe has all the logic of a little kid in a Halloween cowboy suit with his guts and his trick-or-treat candy spread all over a mile of Interstate 95. This is the logic of napalm, paranoia, suitcase bombs carried by happy Arabs, random carcinoma. This logic eats itself. It says life is like a monkey on a stick, it says life spins as hysterically and erratically as the penny you flick to see who buys lunch.

No one looks at that side unless they have to, and I can understand that. You look at it if you hitch a ride of with drunk in a GTO who puts it up to one-ten and starts blubbering about how his wife turned him out; you look at it if some guy decides to drive across Indiana shooting kids on bicycles; you look at it if your sister says, "I'm going down to the store for a minute, big guy" and then gets killed in a stick-up. You look at it when you hear your dad talking about slitting your mom's nose.

It's a roulette wheel, but anybody who says the game is rigged is whining. No matter how many numbers there are, the principle of the little white jittering ball never changes. Don't say it's crazy. It's all so cool and sane.

And all that weirdness isn't just going on outside. It's in you too, right now, growing in the dark like magic mushrooms. Call it the Thing in the Cellar. Call it the Blow Lunch Factor. Call it the Loony Tunes File. I think of it as my private dinosaur, huge, slimy, and mindless, stumbling around in the stinking swamp of my subconscious, never finding a tarpit big enough to hold it.

mixedmedia · 09-29-2009, 03:24 PM

there are so many, I wish I could remember some of them...I don't take the time to mark passages unfortunately

but there's no doubt i could find hundreds in the writings of Alice Munro alone.

pig · 09-29-2009, 04:02 PM

The older I get, the more I enjoy this quote:

"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner." -— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

This next one doesn't sound right from my memory, but google says it's the actual quote:

"People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously." - Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All)

note: Bolding above is my discretion, not in the original text of the quote.

Maybe more later.

SSJTWIZTA · 09-29-2009, 06:31 PM

"When the bars closed at two, five of the outlaws came over to my apartment for an all-night drinking bout. The next day I learned that one was an infamous carrier of vermin, a walking crab farm. I went over my living room carefully for signs of body lice and other small animals, but found nothing. I waited nervously for about ten days, thinking he might have dropped eggs that were still incubating, but no vermin appeared. We played a lot of Bob Dylan music that night, and for a long time afterward I thought about crabs every time I heard his voice. "

noodle · 09-29-2009, 06:58 PM

"'You must make yourself over again,' Ernest wrote to me. 'You must cease to be. You must become another woman—and not merely in the clothes you wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You must make yourself over again so that even I would not know you—your voice, your gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything.'" Jack London, The Iron Heel

"'Everyone misbehaves,' said Eddie. 'That's nature. Everyone gets away with as much as they can get away with. And the more they can get away with, the more they will.'" Robert Rankin, Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

ratbastid · 09-29-2009, 07:09 PM

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?'

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

- Bokonon, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

You could pretty much do this whole thread with quotes from Cat's Cradle

amonkie · 09-29-2009, 07:19 PM

The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. - The Awakening, Kate Chopin

The reality is in this head. Mine. I'm the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, and sometimes other orifices also.
--The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

djtestudo · 09-29-2009, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by levite

"'Torah! Torah! Torah!' -The cry of the kamikaze rabbis.'"

-From Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.

I'm reading that right now. I laughed so hard at that line...

jewels · 09-30-2009, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mixedmedia

there are so many, I wish I could remember some of them...I don't take the time to mark passages unfortunately.

No marking or memory required.

When you read a book and hit one, post it.

powerclown · 10-05-2009, 10:22 AM

"It didn't look. A hugeheaded bald and slobbering primate that inhabited the lower reaches of the house, familiar of the warped floorboards and the holes tacked up with foodtins hammered flat, a consort of roaches and great hairy spiders in their season, perenially benastied and afflicted with a nameless crud."

-Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy

m0rpheus · 10-05-2009, 09:37 PM

Quote:

"There he goes, One of God's Own Prototypes; a High-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live and too rare to die."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

Quote:

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Quote:

They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men.

Dedication for Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Willravel · 10-05-2009, 10:12 PM

Quote:

In a soundless concussion of light, Earth's core gave up its hoarded energies. For a little whole the gravitational waves crossed and re-crossed the Solar System, disturbing ever so slightly the orbits of the planets. Then the Sun's remaining children pursued their ancient paths once more, as corks floating on a placid lake ride out the tiny ripples set in motion by a falling stone.

There was nothing left of the Earth: They had leeched away the last atoms of its substance. It had nourished them, through the fierce moments of their inconceivable metamorphosis, as the food stored in a grain of wheat feeds the infant plant while it climbs toward the sun.

- Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke

CinnamonGirl · 10-19-2009, 09:38 PM

From one of my favorite short stories, "The Cats of San Martino":

Quote:

"You are gentle and respectful with creatures smaller than yourself," the Siamese added. "And though you're hurting, you act with honesty, humor, and resilience. All these things we find beautiful."

Frosstbyte · 10-20-2009, 01:47 AM

Probably the first quotation from a book I ever quoted with any frequency was:

Quote:

All we can know is that we know nothing, and that is the acme of human knowledge.

-Lev Tolsoy, War and Peace

Another favorite that quite literally got me through the bar exam is the fear litany from Frank Herbert's Dune

Quote:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over and through me.
And when it is gone, I shall turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but those are the two off my head.

CinnamonGirl · 11-01-2009, 07:59 PM

From Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean:

Quote:

"Lord," said Janet, "what fools these mortals be. Did I forget to tell you I'd respect you in the morning?"

"Not exactly," said Thomas, sitting down on the end of her bed and winding his long fingers up into knots. "It did occur to me that the effect of good literature may be as dizzying as that of alcohol."

"If it is, I haven't been sober for years."

And from The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, by Melissa Bank:

Quote:

Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself. You imagine him being attracted to them.

You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.

Strange Famous · 11-02-2009, 11:45 AM

this...

roachboy · 11-02-2009, 12:42 PM

Quote:

And this is only the beginning; the walls in the living room will provide nowhere near enough space, particularly since his paper slips must be affixed neither too high nor too low; otherwise, every time Geiser forgets what he so carefully cut out an hour ago, he will have to climb on a chair or crouch on his heels to read his pieces of paper. This is not only laborious, it also prevents an overall review, and once already the chair has nearly capsized. Where, for example, is the information about the conjectural brain of the Neanderthal man? Instead, one finds oneself back with the drawing of the golden section. Where is the information about mutations, chromosomes, etc.? It is all so exasperating: Geiser is quite certain that there is an item somewhere about the quantum theory (as if it were not laborious enough, copying out texts full of scientific words, sometimes even two or three times in order to get them right). What belongs where? Some slips, especially the larger ones, start to curl when they have been on the wall for a while; they refuse to lie flat. That presents another difficulty. To read them, one has to use both hands. Some curl at the bottom, others at the sides. There is nothing one can do about it. Each day they curl more and more (probably because of the humidity), and there is no glue in the house; otherwise he could stick them to the wall, though that would have the added disadvantage of making it impossible for him to substitute an item when a new and more important one was discovered. The golden section, for example, is not all that important, and he can remember how many people are in the canton of Ticino, how high the Matterhorn is (4,505 meters above sea level), or when the Vikings reached Iceland. He is not so decrepit as all that. The paper slips will lie flat only if one uses four thumbtacks on each, but his supply is not large. So they will just have to curl; when one opens a window, creating a draft, the whole wall flutters and rustles.

max frisch--man in the holocene.

what a fine book. i hadn't thought of it for a long time until i stumbled across this thread.
i'm not sure this is my favorite bit from this book, or my favorite bit from amongst a range of books, but i like it lots and so there we are.

seamaiden · 11-02-2009, 05:03 PM

"There are various degrees of death, and time spares us none of them. Yet something endures, for which a word is needed. Soul"

Ursula K. LeGuin - The compass Rose

oliver9184 · 11-05-2009, 08:28 AM

Quote:

"Imagine yourself surrounded by the most horrible cripples and maniacs it is possible to conceive, and you may understand a little of my feelings with these grotesque caricatures of humanity about me."

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H G Wells (1896)

fresnelly · 11-05-2009, 08:55 AM

I can't remember it now but in the Great Gatsby there was a quote about taking the dancefloor and sunlight on their feet that stopped me cold.

oliver9184 · 11-05-2009, 11:04 AM

It's not just one line but...

Quote:

"Patrick you are being a lunatic," she says, shaking her head, now looking over the wine list.
"Goddamnit, Evelyn. What do you mean, being?" I say. "I fucking am one."

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, 1991

levite · 11-05-2009, 11:34 AM

"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

-Moby-Dick

I just finished re-reading it. I always forget how much I love it. There are moments of absolute supremacy in that book...and then there's a twelve-chapter tangent about whale butchery.... Still, skimming over that part, it's one amazing book.

oliver9184 · 11-05-2009, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by levite

...and then there's a twelve-chapter tangent about whale butchery....

Isn't that the best bit?

Salem · 11-18-2009, 01:47 PM

Quote:

You'll always be a slave to the present because the present is more powerful than the past, no matter how long ago the present happened.

Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall On Your Knees.

That quote stuck out to me so, so much, I think about it often. I just love it.

09-29-2009, 09:32 AM	#1 (permalink)
jewels Eponymous Location: The Space Coast Blog Entries: 53	Fabulous Book Quotes Ever find yourself reading something and come upon a great line that you felt was too great not to share? It can be funny, ironic, ridiculous or brilliant and totally out of context. Doesn't matter. This is your thread. Fiction, non-fiction, blogs. Whatever. Just be sure to credit the author and the work. My inspiration was Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters. I'm on the final pages and still haven't decided how I feel about the book, but found some great lines in it. There were many great ones, but this just cracked me up: "I can get us back into the States," she says. "but I'm going to need a condom and a breath mint." __________________ We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess. Mark Twain

09-29-2009, 12:25 PM	#3 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: Venice Beach	"'Torah! Torah! Torah!' -The cry of the kamikaze rabbis.'" -From Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

09-29-2009, 02:50 PM	#4 (permalink)
CinnamonGirl Gypsy in the Palace Location: Central Republic of Where-in-the-Hell Blog Entries: 47	Ohhh, I love this thread Two for now, which happen to be two of my favorites that I can recite from memory: "...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world." (from The Ordinary Princess) "Caitlin isn't someone to get over. She's someone to come to terms with, the way you have to come to terms with your parents, your siblings. You can't deny they ever happened. You can't deny you ever loved them, love them still, even if loving them causes you pain." (from Summer Sisters) __________________ "If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead." "Never trust a woman who loves the blues." Last edited by CinnamonGirl; 09-29-2009 at 02:55 PM..

09-29-2009, 03:24 PM	#6 (permalink)
mixedmedia gives up Location: Florida Blog Entries: 81	there are so many, I wish I could remember some of them...I don't take the time to mark passages unfortunately but there's no doubt i could find hundreds in the writings of Alice Munro alone. __________________ Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

09-29-2009, 04:02 PM	#7 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	The older I get, the more I enjoy this quote: "War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner." -— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West) This next one doesn't sound right from my memory, but google says it's the actual quote: "People tend the take everything too seriously. Especially themselves. Yep. And that's probably what makes 'em scared and hurt so much of the time. Life is too serious to take that seriously." - Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All) note: Bolding above is my discretion, not in the original text of the quote. Maybe more later. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

09-29-2009, 06:31 PM	#8 (permalink)
SSJTWIZTA ...on a journey through time and space. Location: Georgia	"When the bars closed at two, five of the outlaws came over to my apartment for an all-night drinking bout. The next day I learned that one was an infamous carrier of vermin, a walking crab farm. I went over my living room carefully for signs of body lice and other small animals, but found nothing. I waited nervously for about ten days, thinking he might have dropped eggs that were still incubating, but no vermin appeared. We played a lot of Bob Dylan music that night, and for a long time afterward I thought about crabs every time I heard his voice. " __________________ First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for me And there was no one left to speak out for me. -Pastor Martin Niemoller

09-29-2009, 06:58 PM	#9 (permalink)
noodle Way Precious Location: with all your base. Blog Entries: 192	"'You must make yourself over again,' Ernest wrote to me. 'You must cease to be. You must become another woman—and not merely in the clothes you wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You must make yourself over again so that even I would not know you—your voice, your gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage, your walk, everything.'" Jack London, The Iron Heel "'Everyone misbehaves,' said Eddie. 'That's nature. Everyone gets away with as much as they can get away with. And the more they can get away with, the more they will.'" Robert Rankin, Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse __________________ Here's how life works: you either get to ask for an apology or you get to shoot people. Not both. ~ House You don't have to be noisy to be effective. ~~ Philip Crosby

09-29-2009, 07:09 PM	#10 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder Blog Entries: 2	Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land, Man got to tell himself he understand. - Bokonon, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut You could pretty much do this whole thread with quotes from Cat's Cradle

09-29-2009, 07:19 PM	#11 (permalink)
amonkie Drifting Location: Windy City Blog Entries: 46	The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. - The Awakening, Kate Chopin The reality is in this head. Mine. I'm the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, and sometimes other orifices also. --The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon __________________ Calling from deep in the heart, from where the eyes can't see and the ears can't hear, from where the mountain trails end and only love can go... ~~~ Three Rivers Hare Krishna

10-05-2009, 10:22 AM	#14 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	"It didn't look. A hugeheaded bald and slobbering primate that inhabited the lower reaches of the house, familiar of the warped floorboards and the holes tacked up with foodtins hammered flat, a consort of roaches and great hairy spiders in their season, perenially benastied and afflicted with a nameless crud." -Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy

11-02-2009, 05:03 PM	#22 (permalink)
seamaiden Crazy Location: With the man of my dreams in Halifax Nova Scotia Blog Entries: 3	"There are various degrees of death, and time spares us none of them. Yet something endures, for which a word is needed. Soul" Ursula K. LeGuin - The compass Rose

11-05-2009, 08:55 AM	#24 (permalink)
fresnelly Functionally Appropriate Location: Toronto Blog Entries: 38	I can't remember it now but in the Great Gatsby there was a quote about taking the dancefloor and sunlight on their feet that stopped me cold. __________________ ...or as I like to affectionally call it: a "Mouth Hug". - Ron White

11-05-2009, 11:34 AM	#26 (permalink)
levite Minion of Joss Location: Venice Beach	"He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it." -Moby-Dick I just finished re-reading it. I always forget how much I love it. There are moments of absolute supremacy in that book...and then there's a twelve-chapter tangent about whale butchery.... Still, skimming over that part, it's one amazing book. __________________ Dull sublunary lovers love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove That thing which elemented it. (From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)