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Are you reading something and you just read a passage that made you nod your head sagely in appreciation or just go 'ooh that's nice'? Maybe you read something years ago and it resonated with you so hard that you still think of it from time to time or have it tattooed on your back. If so post it in here. You can include a title and author if you want but you don't have to if you want to be mysterious
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Apr 3, 2023 15:17
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 10:36 |
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It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers. “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
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Apr 3, 2023 15:22
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“Isn’t it pretty to think so.”
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Apr 3, 2023 17:31
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'I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief." -Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak, November 1903
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Apr 3, 2023 21:27
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Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.
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Apr 4, 2023 13:06
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quote:“I believe it is… different,” Bigfoot insisted. Strangely, as though speaking to These English had for the first time given him the insight of debate. e: quote:“I’m sorry” was a ritual habit with even less meaning than “old cock.” quote:“For God’s sake, Billy, that’s no religion that – it’s exercise. Stay away from them Baptists.” quote:The record execs say the Whale Music isn’t commercial. I say it’s not my fault if whales don’t have any money. quote:She had found me civil and amusing until I was ten, at which time I was said to have become pert and obstinate. quote:But people need chickens more often than they have sons, so economics have driven me to concentrate on chickens. quote:Manchester itself is a tribute to the Canadian talent for choosing a remarkably fine natural setting for a town, and then proceeding to ruin it as far as possible.
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Apr 4, 2023 13:50
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I'm not going to look for the exact quote, but the other day this silly free book I'm reading described a dude as drinking tea like his brother drank sake. Just slammin' back round after round. EDIT: There's also quote:"And what fighting style is popular in your region?" He asked, curious about what kind of warrior this boy was. Cthulu Carl fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 14:07
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quote:“What would you know of struggle, perfect son? When have you fought against the mutilation of your mind? When have you had to do anything other than tally compliance's and polish your armor? The people of your world named you "Great One". The people of mine called me slave. Which one of us landed on a paradise of civilization to be raised by a foster father, Roboute? Which one of us was given armies to lead after training in the halls of the Macraggian High Riders? Which one of us inherited a strong, cultured kingdom? And which one of us had to rise up against a kingdom with nothing but a horde of starving slaves? Which one of us was a child enslaved on a world of monsters, with his brain cut up by carving knives? Listen to your blue clad wretches yelling courage and honor, courage and honor, courage and honor! Do you even know the meaning of those words? Courage is fighting the kingdom which enslaves you, no matter that their armies outnumber yours by ten-thousand to one. You know nothing of courage! Honor is resisting a tyrant when all others suckle and grow fat on the hypocrisy he feeds them. You know nothing of honor!”
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Apr 4, 2023 14:23
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cheating because it's a playquote:When I was twelve I was obsessed. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at 'meretrix', a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. 'Meretrix'! This was none of your mensa-a-table, this was a flash from a forbidden planet, and it was everywhere. History was sex, French was sex, art was sex, the Bible, poetry, penfriends, games, music, everything was sex except biology which was obviously sex but not really sex, not the one which was secret and ecstatic and wicked and a sacrament and all the things it was supposed to be but couldn't be at one and the same time - I got that in the boiler room and it turned out to be biology after all
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Apr 4, 2023 16:04
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quote:What uncertainty doe we find in printed histories? they either treading too neer on the heeles of trueth that they dare not speake plaine, or els for want of intelligence (things being antiquated) become too obscure and darke! quote:The ascetic is master in the desert, quote:Everything is at its Acme; especially the art of making one's way in the world. There is more required nowadays to make a single wise man than formerly to make Seven Sages, and more is needed nowadays to deal with a single person than was required with a whole people in former times. quote:Troll and Trol by, is he that setteth naught by no man, nor no man by him. This is he that would beare rule in a place, and hath none authority nor thanke, & at last is thrust out of the doore like a knaue. skasion fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 16:26
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Favorite quote from one of my favorite books.The Grapes of Wrath posted:'They's a lot of fellas wanta know what reds is.' He laughed. 'One of our boys from foun' out.' He patted the piled earth gently with his shovel. 'Fella named Hines--got 'bout thirty thousan' acres, peaches and grapes--got a cannery an' a winery. Well, he's all a time talkin' about 'them goddam reds'. 'Goddamn reds is drivin' the country to ruin,' he says, an' 'We got to drive these here red bastards out.'
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Apr 4, 2023 16:32
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quote:I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can't go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places. quote:[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer. quote:You'll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you're very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide. quote:You married me...but you didn't marry what you could make out of me. Enfys fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Apr 4, 2023 |
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Apr 4, 2023 16:41
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From Seneca: You will not die because you are sick; you will die because you are alive.
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Apr 4, 2023 18:56
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sorry 4 long quote i found it transcribed on genius (???) albeit with obvious typoes. cant find my copy the opening paragraph from quentin's section of the sound & the fury quote:When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight o' clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won, he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
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Apr 6, 2023 21:23
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The Shining posted:Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick. probably my favorite opening line in any book
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Apr 8, 2023 06:48
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“I don’t know about these philosophies,” responded Sancho Panza, “all I know is that as soon as I have the countship I’ll know how to govern it; I have as much soul as any other man, and as much body as the biggest of them, and I’ll be as much a king of my estate as any other is of his; and this being true, I’ll do what I want, and doing what I want, I’ll do what I like, and doing what I like, I’ll be happy, and when a man is happy he doesn’t wish for anything else, and not wishing for anything else, that’ll be the end of it, so bring on my estate, and God willing we’ll see, as one blind man said to the other.”
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Apr 9, 2023 07:59
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quote:This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: You hurt it, you keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech from the screams.
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Apr 9, 2023 10:06
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quote:No one buys a chainsaw before dawn with good intentions.
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Apr 9, 2023 10:28
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I wish this thread existed years ago - there have been so many random lines I've read in books that just made me laugh. Damned if I could actually think of any of them right now, though! There's a good/abrupt quote in The Black Company that sums up the company being tasked with capturing an important fortress, but for the life of me I just can't find it online. It's essentially: "[chapter starts] We received orders to take the fortress at Deal. So we did. [chapter ends]"  Anyway, here's another one from TBC, which although it isn't funny in any way, I feel is probably a good way of describing survivors guilt: quote:You're happy because you're alive and he's not. And you're sad because he's dead and you're not. Brave men fight and young men die. Soldiers live and wonder why.
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Apr 11, 2023 08:31
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Although Chiang, as before, praised the Bolsheviks and asserted that the GMD also “would do something on a communist foundation,” one could sense that he was disillusioned. Trotsky simply infuriated him since he not only advised Sun and the Guomindang to desist as quickly as possible from military adventures and concentrate on political work in China, but also noted that in the future “the Guomindang could commence military actions not from Mongolia . . . but from the territory of its own country.” Chiang choked with anger because both he and Sun, like all Chinese, considered Mongolia to be part of China. “After this conversation, Chiang Kai-shek became angry at everyone, saying that Trotsky was betraying them,” Shen Xuanlu, a communist member of the delegation, reported to the CCP CC after their return to China. “If Mongolia wants to be independent, it’s necessary that we recognize this, that we give it independence, not that it do it itself.” Chiang also could not “calm down, knowing that the Red Army was there [in Mongolia].” When, in Shen’s words, he disagreed with Chiang, the latter almost picked a fight with him, so angry was he.
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Apr 11, 2023 14:20
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Jorge Luis Borges posted:No hay sustantivos en la conjetural Ursprache de Tlön, de la que proceden los idiomas “actuales” y los dialectos: hay verbos impersonales, calificados por sufijos (o prefijos) monosilábicos de valor adverbial. Por ejemplo: no hay palabra que corresponda a la palabra luna, pero hay un verbo que sería en español lunecer o lunar. Surgió la luna sobre el río se dice hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö o sea en su orden: hacia arriba (upward) detrás duradero-fluir luneció. (Xul Solar traduce con brevedad: upa tras perfluyue lunó.) "moondle" may be the best word ever invented to satisfy the needs of a translation
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Apr 11, 2023 19:08
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Major Isoor posted:I wish this thread existed years ago - there have been so many random lines I've read in books that just made me laugh. Damned if I could actually think of any of them right now, though! quote:In those days the Black Company did not exist. This I know because there were laws and decrees that told me so. But I did not feel entirely insubstantial. quote:Even Water sleeps, but Enemy never rests.
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Apr 11, 2023 23:02
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"The videos were just stupid little art projects," Jim said. "Dying's not an art project." "Maybe it should be."
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Apr 15, 2023 14:44
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Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
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Apr 15, 2023 15:59
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Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
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Apr 15, 2023 17:42
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quote:"You're the kind of man a man wants when a man wants a man." quote:There is no word in the English language for the feeling someone gets when they suddenly realize they're standing next to an unholy monster impersonating a human. Monstralization, maybe? quote:"If I knew me as somebody else, I would hate me just as much. Why have a double standard?" All the same book (which happens to my favorite), its a context-less quote factory. I managed to get away with using the last one as my high school grad quote by whittling the student council down with stupider ones from the book until that one seemed reasonable by comparison lol.
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Apr 16, 2023 04:40
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There's never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly — most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire — but it's something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. gently caress the war.
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Apr 17, 2023 13:14
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quote:True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:51
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The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire. We finished our lunch in silence.
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Apr 18, 2023 20:37
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lmao actually I found my notes from White Noise and like half the book is highlightedquote:All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. quote:Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. quote:Love helps us develop an identity secure enough to allow itself to be placed in another’s care and protection. quote:The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream. May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan. quote:In a crisis the true facts are whatever other people say they are. No one’s knowledge is less secure than your own. quote:Winnie was barely into her thirties but she had a sane and practiced eye for the half-concealed disasters that constitute a life. quote:“I’m still sad, Winnie, but you’ve given my sadness a richness and depth it has never known before.” She turned away, blushing. I said, “You’re more than a fair-weather friend—you’re a true enemy.” She turned exceedingly red. quote:Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It’s a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”
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Apr 18, 2023 20:44
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quote:In the old days a man was put in prison for debt, but there were subtler things now. They made it a shame not to have money and set everybody to work.
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Apr 18, 2023 20:54
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quote:They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered. Okay ill stop now
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Apr 18, 2023 20:57
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quote:When you think 'placenta,' the last thing you're probably thinking about is cake, but that's essentially what the word means.
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Apr 18, 2023 23:11
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quote:I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being “a general disinclination to work of any kind.”
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Apr 19, 2023 02:34
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the sex ghost posted:The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire. We finished our lunch in silence. Hah! Yeah, I think we've all been there 
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Apr 19, 2023 02:38
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"He always looked like a demolition expert eyeing a deserted building."
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Apr 19, 2023 03:28
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the sex ghost posted:lmao actually I found my notes from White Noise and like half the book is highlighted I know what I'm reading next based on these quotes. Thanks!
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Apr 19, 2023 15:39
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Judgy Fucker posted:I know what I'm reading next based on these quotes. Thanks! I remembered liking it but sort of forgot how much until coming back to those. Might be due a reread tbh
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Apr 19, 2023 15:41
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quote:For weak and scattered are the ways of knowing, and many are the miseries that blunt the edge of thought. Short is the span of deathly life on which men gaze and, swift to meet their fate, they rise and waft away like smoke. Each believing only what he chances on in driven wanderings, and dreaming that this little is the whole.
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Apr 19, 2023 22:34
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 10:36 |
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quote:All alter, nothing finally decayes:
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Apr 21, 2023 23:01
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