Passages

[MulletProof]

hmm, I saw this thread on another board a long time ago and faust's siggie inspired me to do this one because it's too long and it's kinda boring to read it as his signature, so here..come and post your favorite passages.

 

[tiffany]

Great idea one of my favourite passages, from Catch 22:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed"

 

[MulletProof]

it just took me a couple minutes to find one online from one my favorite authors, Jack Kerouac
from Desolation Angels

"...as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said "Thank you, shack." Then I added "Blah", with a little grin, because I knew that that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world."

 

[faust]

"Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics"
Albert Camus
________________________
Reporter: "What do you think about western civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."


____________________________________

And of course one in my sig.

 

[jennifer~]

"And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 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----
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

 

[miu_miu]

^Tomorrow we will run faster I love that...

 

[kissmesweet]

Great thread, guys.

Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go. Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day. Maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.

-- The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants

 

[miu_miu]

'How can I stay alone...without her?' he thought with horror, and he took the chalk. 'Wait', he said, sitting down at the table. 'There's one thing I've long wanted to ask you.'
He looked straight into her tender though frightened eyes.
'Please do.'
'Here,' he said, and wrote the initial letters: w, y, a, m: t, c, b, d, i, m, n, o, t? These letters meant: 'When you answered me: "that cannot be", did it mean never or then?' There was no likelihood that she would be able to understand this complex phrase, but he watched her with such a look as if his life depended on her understanding these words.
She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her knitted brow on her hand and began to read. Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance: 'Is this what I think?'
'I understand,' she said, blushing.
'What is this word?' he said, pointing to the first n that signified the word never.
'That means the word never', she said, 'but it's not true!'
He quickly erased what was written, gave her the chalk and got up.
She wrote: t,l,c,g,n,o,a.
Dolly was completely consoled in her grief, caused by her conversation with Alexei Alexandrovich, when she saw these two figures: Kitty, chalk in hand, looking up at Levin with a timid and happy smile, and his handsome figure bent over the table, his burning eyes directed now at the table, now at her. He suddenly beamed: he had understood. It meant: 'Then I could give no other answer'.
He glanced at her questioningly, timidly.
'Only then?'
'Yes,' her smile replied.
'And n...And now?' he asked.
'Well, here, read this. I'll tell you what I would wish. Would wish very much!' She wrote the initial letters: t,y,c,f,a,f,w,h. It meant: 'that you could forgive and forget what happened.'
He seized the chalk with his tense, trembling fingers and, breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following: 'I have nothing to forgive and forget, I have never stopped loving you.'
She glanced at him, the smile staying on her lips.
'I understand,' she said in a whisper.

-Anna Karenina

 

[miu_miu]

"You won't lose me - you'll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be nearer to you than I've ever been. Dear Isabel, life is better; for in life there's love. Death is good, but there's no love."
"I never thanked you - I never spoke - I never was what I should be!" Isabel went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the moment, became single and melted together into this present pain. "What must you have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I only know to-day because there are people less stupid than I."
"Don't mind people," said Ralph. "I think I'm glad to love people."

The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

 

[mcflyandgemmafan]

"I am no one special, just a common man with common thoughts. I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect, I've succeeded as gloriously as anyone who ever lived. I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and for me, that has always been enough."

"Summer romances end for all kinds of reasons. But when all is said and done, they have one thing in common: They are shooting stars-a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, a fleeting glimpse of eternity. And in a flash, they're gone."

-both from The Notebook

 

[snowqueen]

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. - From To Kill A Mockingbird, page 128 -

 

[Diamond Star]

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn,
burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across
the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and
everybody goes “Awww!” -On The Road, Jack Kerouac

 

[city girl]

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man"

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come"

Both from Hamlet

 

[Diamond Star]

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic 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 then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."-The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald

 

[milk_x_honey.]

Excerpts from your favourite novel(s)!.

As much as it pains me to do so, all my novels & magazines are dogeared in hundreds of different spots . . so I might come back to read my favourite passages when I feel like it.

I thought we could (without giving too much of the story away) share excerpts from our favourite novels, short stories, magazine articles et al.

 

[milk_x_honey.]

'Franny and Zooey' [1961]
J.D. Salinger.

She stared avidly into space, as nightmare-recallers do. There were half-circles under her eyes, and other, subtler signs that mark an acutely troubled young girl, but nonetheless no one could have missed seeing that she was a first-class beauty. Her skin was lovely, and her features were delicate and most distinctive. Her eyes were very nearly the same quite astonishing shade of blue as Zooey's, but were set farther apart, as a sister's eyes no doubt should be - and they were not, so to speak, a day's work to look into, as Zooey's were.

*I love the way Salinger describes Franny in this passage. Its vague in some ways, and yet one gets a vry specific sense of her appearance.

 

[ChloeFrancoise]

I feel a little silly picking choices from a book I read as a kid, but I was flipping through the book today and remembered parts of the Anne Of Green Gables book I remembered being my favorite parts.

"Now I'm going to imagine things into this room so that they'll stayed imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it sounds so luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor."

"When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it Oh how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers,-so -and went down-down-down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters."

"I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried."
-Anne Of Green Gables

 

[eternitygoddess]

^ I LOVE Anne of Green Gables. One of the best children's novels.

 

[MulletProof]

I strolled into the dusk. The air was murky and intoxicating. At the corner of the block, a giant, gaunt cat crouched on a croncrete ledge. I got up close to it and stopped and the cat didn’t move. I wished I had a jug of milk. My eyes and ears were open, my consciousness fully alive... the past doesn’t pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time. The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don’t have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there’s a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There’s something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands.
A lazy rhythm looms into the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can’t see it, but you know it’s here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.

There’s a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropiate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.

Chronicles by Bob Dylan [2004]. Chapter 'Oh Mercy'.

 

[adorefaith]

oh what a thread!
mullet and milk..great minds think alike...you two are divine...great idea!.

now i wish i had dog-eared and underlined my books...i did a few times but always felt so guilty that i stopped...which is of course nice for preserving books but horrible for moments like these where you really want to be able to flip through and pull out all your favourite moments without re-reading the entire book..

i'll post a few of my favourites from the book i'm re-reading at the moment...one hundred years of solitude..

In the shadows of her house, the solitary widow who at one time had been the confidante of his repressed loves and who persistence had saved his life was a specter out of the past. Encased in black down to her knuckles, with her heart turned to ash, she scarcely knew anything about the war. Colonel Aureliano Buendia had the impression that the phosphorescence of her bones was showing through her skin and that she moved in an atmosphere of Saint Elmo's fire, in a stagnant air where one could still note a hidden smell of gunpowder. He began by advising her to moderate the rigor of her mourning, the ventilate the house, to forgive the world for the death of Jose Arcadio. But Rebeca was already beyond any vanity. After searching for it uselessly in the taste of earth, in the perfumed letters from Pietro Crespi, in the tempestuous bed of her husband, she had found peace in that house where memories materialized through the strength of implacable evocation and walked like human beings through the cloistered rooms.

'to forgive the world for the death of Jose Arcadio..' i dont know why but that is one of my favourite lines..