Post your favorite line form a novel

Post your favorite line form a novel

>By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp

Thats really pleb tier. Sounds like something a video game character would say

>The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.

Post yours then you dolt

I like this one


> Born of industrious parents for a life of toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as profound as inexplicable and as imperious as the impulse which directs a man’s preference for one particular woman in a given thousand. He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form of ease; or it might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the effectiveness of every human effort. Such a form of indolence requires, implies, a certain amount of intelligence. Mr Verloc was not devoid of intelligence—and at the notion of a menaced social order he would perhaps have winked to himself if there had not been an effort to make in that sign of scepticism. His big, prominent eyes were not well adapted to winking. They were rather of the sort that closes solemnly in slumber with majestic effect.

That one line in All The Pretty Horses or The Crossing about the world being beautiful yet horrible "as a garden of flowers that feast in blood".

You've got to be kidding me... you called the other guy's quote pleb tier but then you post this twee overwritten stuff?

Cont... I mean, I generally like Conrad, and the line probably works in context... but so does the McCarthy quote.

Oh yeah hotshot, lets see yours

"Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks."

“For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”

Do all McCarthy books read the same, with the weird syntax?
I've only read Child of God and I'm thinking of getting Blood Meridian next.

This book unironically triggers me. It's so fucking bad and I hate everyone who likes it with a passion.

Thinking things over more, I realize that most great lines from novels depend on context for their power. For example, I agree that, without context, the quote from The Road is nonsensical. But I think that in context, it is powerful. I don't have favorite lines, I have favorite novels. Oh well.

>If it could just be a hell beyond that: the clean flame the two of us more than dead. Then you will have only me then only me then the two of us amid the pointing and the horror beyond the clean flame.

>not doing the majority of your reading on brainyquotes

Not really. Orchard Keeper / Child Of God / Outer Dark are quite different from Suttree / Blood Meridian, which also are quite different from the Border Trilogy which also are quite different from NCFOM and The Road.

It was only then they recognized with regret that he really had a soul, though he had always been too modest to show it.

Easily the best line in that book. It's beautiful. Didn't think much of the novel overall though.


In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (more than one sentence, sorry):

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband - both gone - obscure friends - dead - obscurer aunts and uncles - lost - ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs - passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once - appalling - but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence - shade drawn, window fastened, door that's locked - for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacekd cards. Thus was I, when I loved you, every man I could be, youth and child - far from enough - and you, so strangely ambiguous a being, met me, heart for spade, play after play, the whole run of our suits

>Won the toss — first innings — seven o'clock A.m. — six natives to look out — went in; kept in — heat intense — natives all fainted — taken away — fresh half-dozen ordered — fainted also — Blazo bowling — supported by two natives — couldn't bowl me out — fainted too — cleared away the colonel — wouldn't give in — faithful attendant — Quanko Samba — last man left — sun so hot, bat in blisters, ball scorched brown — five hundred and seventy runs — rather exhausted — Quanko mustered up last remaining strength — bowled me out — had a bath, and went out to dinner.

Yet how superb, across the tumult braided,
The painted rainbow's changeful life is bending,
Now clearly drawn, dissolving now and faded,
And evermore the showers of dew descending!
Of human striving there's no symbol fuller:
Consider, and 'tis easy comprehending –
Life is not light, but the refracted color.

>Epic poem—ten thousand lines—revolution of July—composed it on the spot—Mars by day, Apollo by night—bang the field-piece, twang the lyre.

>“Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!”