Post your favorite excerpt from the book you're currently reading

Post your favorite excerpt from the book you're currently reading.

Often the one most plagued with lust is the one most capable of restraining it. The monk and the philanderer are likely to be the same person.

Stoner, where Lomax is at the housewarming party and talks about growing up with his deformity. "...shame which had no source that he could understand and no defense that he could muster."

there's a lot I like, but that's the shortest excerpt.

He glanced at her and did not answer. Then he said, "I like cigarettes, Miss Taggart. I like to think of fire held in a man's hand. Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind-- and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette at his one expression.

Major major major major had had a difficult time from the start

>Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person’s lack of theology and geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one’s soul.

"My mother is the war", from Gravity's Rainbow.

Wenn sich dies Tag für Tag wiederholte, die gleichen Läden, die gleichen Schilder, der gleiche mit Fuhrwerken und Autos brausende Verkehr, in dem er unbeachtet mitwimmelte - dann fühlte er, dass er jung war, dass er nicht so mitwimmeln durfte, dass er etwas anderes wollte. Manchmal blieb er stehen, als schüttelte es ihn, und er dachte: Nicht so! Nicht so! Nicht so!
Und wenn er dann dachte, dass er im Frühling, im Sommer, heute übers Jahr die gleiche Stube, das gleiche Gas, die gleichen Ärmel, das gleiche Reißbrett seiner wartend finden würde - dann hätte er am liebsten kehrtgemacht, wäre auf die Straße gelaufen und hätte geschrien: Ich will Berlin erobern! Heh, Berlin, hier bin ich! Ich bin kein Stubenhocker und will nie einer werden! Los!

What's this from

That bit in the citadel of the autarch where the pelerine explains people to severian in terms of plant stems/roots.

>D'autre part, même à l'intérieur du domaine qui est désormais le sien, la loi peut être aujourd'hui soumise à des contrôles qui n'existaient pas sous les régimes précédents et qui eussent même paru sacrilèges : avant promulgation, contrôle de conformité à la Constitution exercé par le Conseil constitutionnel ; après promulgation, contrôle de conventionnalité exercé par les juridictions ordinaires et, depuis mars 2010, contrôle de constitutionnalité exercé par le Conseil constitutionnel sur renvoi du Conseil d'État ou de la Cour de cassation (v. infra n° 783).

It's a law textbook

Not him, but it's "A Confederacy of Dunces"

Source: read it in another language 15 years ago, but recognized it at first sight

>Now was the lyrical stage, blood sang and pulsed, a strange love was born that for some was never to die till they lay still on the hillside or in quicklime near a barrack wall

-Ernie O'Malley
He's like the Junger of Ireland

>*Fingers-Mazda, the first thief in the world, stole fire from the gods. But he was unable to fence it. It was too hot.

Sometimes a good pun is all you need

>In the part of the father of the bride, as grossly overplayed by aging exstar Clint Westwood in his first role since A Hatful of Sh*t, the Confederate Major is the archetypal cigar chewing duplicitous Southern planter with a taste for drink and an unsavoury eye for the fatal charms of his own daughter, all of which blossoms in what will undoubtedly be the most widely discussed mass rape scene in screen history.

Holy fuck Gaddis is funny, this isn't my favourite passage from A Frolick of His Own, just a random one I happened to read before seeing this thread. I'm only 50 pages in but haven't stopped laughing. Memes aside, I need to get my hands on a copy of The Recognitions.

There was a man of the Lu State who had been mutilated,—Shu Shan (No-toes). He came walking on his heels to see Confucius; but Confucius said, "You did not take care, and so brought this misfortune upon yourself. What is the use of coming to me now?"

"In my ignorance," replied No-toes, " I made free with my body and lost my toes. But I come with something more precious than toes which I now seek to keep. There is no man, but Heaven covers him: there is no man, but Earth supports him;—and I thought that you, sir, would be as Heaven and Earth. I little expected to hear these words from you."

"I must apologise," said Confucius. "Pray walk in and let us discuss." But No-toes walked out.

But here’s the thing. Both then and now, very few ordinary Americans know anything about all this. Nor much about the deep changes the Service underwent in the mid-1980s, changes that today directly affect the way citizens’ tax obligations are determined and enforced. And the reason for this public ignorance is not secrecy. Despite the IRS’s well-documented paranoia and aversion to publicity,24 secrecy here had nothing to do with it. The real reason why US citizens were/are not aware of these conflicts, changes, and stakes is that the whole subject of tax policy and administration is dull. Massively, spectacularly dull. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this feature. Consider, from the Service’s perspective, the advantages of the dull, the arcane, the mind-numbingly comple...

>>it was ripped in two. Actually in Twain.

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Tyrone say he Wojamba dealer ain treenum rie. Jamal’n he come rowmy hows’n he say: Skeezy, less go shoo summada Wojamba mamayy, dis nigga ain done is due diligence rie. Needa shiff dis, a man gotta hustle nowwamsayin. An I de, nohimsayin, an weez hopt ineez lowtop go cruiz’n dow t’da play’ngraw at da skoo awwe gone ow mad hustlin, n’den sum nogoo honkyass muhfuckaz playbaw on aur turf’n Tyrone goz poken attez noz likit sum fatass juisee watameloww. I tella mang T’n I wenn fukken ape twas sum fooh Woowstaw chimpouw sheei muhfucka, n’we groppin aw dicks like deyz bouta fawda fuck off maa, fo reah. An wez wipe dafloo wi’whitey hea bu’all a sud he fadenta Hyp’sfee, anden sum porkchop cum strutt’l long, say he cawt bisum freenj bizniss. Allo sud w’uner aress jussfo cuz we black, laik, rachael profil’n, man. Jusaint rite. Ani tole da rasee muhfucka t’suh ma uuj blaq coc and firet magatat eem rea fass, lie, bu’ yo ma sheei wuz stuq bulless imma chaymba he drawsa peas, ani entup dedon daflo cuz he shoome f’bean blaq… Din even do nuffin.

>Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!

>Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn. If you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.

I see you're enjoying Infinite Jest

Still my favourite passage of Hypersphere

Could you explain? I'm not too sharp when it comes to proverbs.

Am I racist for laughing uncontrollably at this?

I honestly feel like I haven't understood much so far in my reading, perhaps I should read the Tao Te Ching first.
What I understand from that excerpt is that Shu Shan commited some crime and got his toes chopped off as a result, then realized the error he made. He still has a life which he seeks to treat better than his toes, and in his search for wisdom he goes to Confucius. Confucius carelessly and unwisely judges him, and by the time he realizes he was wrong in doing so, Shu Shan had already realized that Confucius does not hold the wisdom he sought.