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Post by callipygias on Mar 9, 2009 16:17:36 GMT -5
If you come by a cool line or passage from any ol' kind of book, poem, graphic novel, or whatever, share it!
"Now Raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea."
A Descent Into the Maelstrom -- Poe.
Just a simple line from one of my favorite short stories, but even the simplest things--said by Poe--can evoke dark, or at least... grand images.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Mar 9, 2009 18:15:22 GMT -5
From Ben Jonson's Volpone:
Lady Would-Be: "I pray you lend me your dwarf."
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Post by Weirdo Writer on Mar 9, 2009 18:27:30 GMT -5
From Watchmen:
Rorshach: Never compromise. Not even in face of Armageddon.
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Post by callipygias on Mar 9, 2009 18:40:36 GMT -5
A filthy but funny one from Portnoy's Complaint. When Alex makes his girlfriend (whom he calls The Monkey) feel smart.
Alex: Christ, you are a marvellous girl. Monkey: Am I? Alex: Yes! Monkey: Am I!? Alex: Yes, yes! Now can I **** you? Monkey: Oh, sweetheart, darling, pick a hole.
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Post by solgroupie on Mar 9, 2009 18:49:38 GMT -5
this is kind of long, but it is one of my favorite passages from lake wobegon days by garrison keillor. say what you will about it, but its a great book.
"my dad was from the old regime. he dispensed discipline, some bible instruction, and a good example of industry and manly conduct, but he didn't hang out with us. once he made me a boomerang from a scrap of plywood, cut it on the jigsaw, shaped it on the belt sander, gave it two coats of lacquer and presented it to me for my birthday, but he no more would've taken me out and showed me how to throw it than he would've climbed up in our treehouse and read comics. he drew the line at fatherhood.
i took the boomerang myself to tollerud's cornfield and after thirty, forty throws like throwing an ordinary stick, got off a good one, sidearm, the gift skimming six feet above the ground for a couple hundred feet, then rising and rising and circling back and making an incredible perfect descent to my throwing hand. incredible. i felt i had performed a miracle so impossible as to make me immortal, and, of course, i never threw the boomerang again. you only need to be immortal once.
he wasn't there to see it. that night while he washed up for supper, he asked if the boomerang worked and i said yes. "good," he said.
i wanted to tell him how perfectly it flew, what an amazing little piece of wood he had made, but my dad did not deal in compliments or engage in small talk with children. this sounds harsh, and yet the memory of that perfect flight is a finer memory, i think, for it being mine alone, without him leaning over me in the cornfield, placing my little fingers on the wood, demonstrating, crowding me out of the picture."
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Post by callipygias on Mar 11, 2009 14:29:37 GMT -5
From The Real Cool Killers, by Chester Himes.
A sick man clad in long cotton drawers lay beneath a ragged horse blanket on a filthy pallet with burlap sacks. "You got anything for old Badeye," he said in a whining voice. "We got you a fine black gal," Choo-Choo said. The old man raised up on his elbows, "Whar she at?"
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Post by angilasman on Mar 11, 2009 18:27:10 GMT -5
"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane"
from Kilgore Trout's tombstone in Breakfast of Champions.
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Post by callipygias on Mar 12, 2009 10:45:07 GMT -5
Another pulpy one from The Real Cool Killers. Memorize it. Use it -- narrate your wife getting into your car. She'll appreciate the humor.
"Get in," Gravedigger said. She pulled up the skirt of her evening gown, drew the black coat tight, and eased her jumbo hams onto the seat usually occupied by Coffin Ed.
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Post by silvermorgan on Mar 17, 2009 20:54:50 GMT -5
I personally am a fan of Earth's horoscope (Earth is Libra) from Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman:
LIBRA. September 24-October 23. You may be feeling run down and always in the same old daily round. Home and family matters are highlighted and are hanging fire. Avoid unneccessary risks. A friend is important to you. Shelve major decisions until the way ahead seems clear. You may be vulnerable to a stomach upset today, so avoid salads. Help could come from an unexpected quarter.
This was perfectly correct on every count except for the bit about the salads.
Gets me every time!
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Post by callipygias on Mar 18, 2009 11:46:05 GMT -5
A Walk on the Wild Side, Nelson Algren (thanks, Chuck)
Once she had heard a young father asking forgiveness and seen the young mother make reply simply by giving suck to his only child.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Mar 18, 2009 11:54:39 GMT -5
From Lint, by Steve Aylett. The funniest book ever written:
"Among Lint’s present friends was Jose Alvarez, a highly strung Cuban who had penned a poem called ‘Magnificent Stallion Humiliation’ and felt that this justified his every emotional and financial demand upon society. He never wrote another work but insisted that he was ‘the greatest of poets and worthy of praise.’ Alvarez was irrationally terrified of rainfall and Lint delighted in tormenting him by entering the room shaking an umbrella. He also tormented Alvarez by addressing him as ‘Lenny’ and telling everyone he was a ‘gifted barber.’ People continually approached the erstwhile poet requesting a haircut and, rebuffed, would cajole him with cries of ‘Just a trim, Lenny’ until he exploded with rage. Lint started the rumor that Alvarez would give a haircut in exchange for an umbrella of any quality. The Cuban was by now phobic about umbrellas and tried to strangle Herbert Huncke, who had staged up to him with rheumy eyes and a dead cocktail parasol. Lint continued to favor story series and produced four tales about Jose’s antics: ‘False Hope for Lenny,’ ‘Lenny Turns Violent,’ Lenny Burns His Bridges and Is Not Bailed Out,’ and ‘Lenny Will Never Be More Than a Somewhat Gifted Barber.’”
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Post by Mighty Jack on Mar 25, 2009 6:02:34 GMT -5
Question... In the Wonder Woman movie a character who loves to read, quotes a passage...
"The heart wants what the heart wants, even that which is worse for it"
Googleserach only gets me Woody Allen quotes and Country song lyrics, so I thought I'd try the brainiacs here. I like the line, I wonder if was just something they made up for the film or if comes from an actual book or poem?
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Post by Creepy Girl on Apr 4, 2009 23:05:30 GMT -5
"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane" from Kilgore Trout's tombstone in Breakfast of Champions. "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
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Post by ilmatto on Apr 7, 2009 22:06:58 GMT -5
"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it..." (Mark Twain / 1835-1910 / The War Prayer)
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Post by callipygias on Jun 12, 2009 10:06:37 GMT -5
I just got The Road, by Cormac McCarthy yesterday. I won't read it for a while yet, but I read the first few pages to get a feel for it and was amazed at how Steinbecky it was.
The man was remembering a dream he'd just woken from: "... lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.
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