Post a line from your favorite novel of all time

[red dog 1]

"I am without valence"......Gnossus Pappadopoulis,

From Richard Farina's 1966 novel, "Been Down So Long It looks Like Up To Me"

[ret5hd]

1. It was a dark and stormy night.

Oh wait.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

21. That actually is the fist line of one of my favorite books.

Any guesses what book that is?

[red dog 1]

48. "A History of New York"?

By Washington Irving?

[red dog 1]

49. The 1830 novel "Paul Clifford"?

It was the opening sentence in that book, (written by British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

70. No. This one won the Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, & Lewis Carroll Shelf Awards.

It is the opening line in the popular 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle:[10]

It was a dark and stormy night.

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.

L'Engle biographer Leonard Marcus notes that "With a wink to the reader, she chose for the opening line of A Wrinkle in Time, her most audaciously original work of fiction, that hoariest of cliches ... L'Engle herself was certainly aware of old warhorse's literary provenance as ... Edward Bulwer-Lytton's much maligned much parodied repository of Victorian purple prose, Paul Clifford.[12] While discussing the importance of establishing the tone of voice at the beginning of fiction, Judy Morris notes that L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time opens with "Snoopy's signature phrase."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night

One of my elementary school teachers read it to us and I fell in love with it. I later read it to my elementary school students, many of whom also loved it.

It's a pretty good story for today, though in many ways the book itself is outdated. They did a tv version which I found disappointing. A movie version is coming in 2018:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time_(2018_film)

I almost never like a film or tv version of a book I've already read, but it could happen.

[3catwoman3]

112. Wrinkle is one of my favorite childhood...

...books, which I have re-read many times, even as an adult.

I, too, was disappointed in the TV version. L'Engle described the appearance of all her characters in considerable and vivid detail, and none of the characters looked right. I fear then same will end up being true of the movie version.

I will go to see it, but with minimal expectations.

[niyad]

150. do you read the entries for the annual bulwer-lytton competition?

[msongs]

2. in the beginning was the word... nt

[red dog 1]

50. The Bible is your favorite novel?

(I saw your "nt&quot

[fNord]

54. Great novel....

Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles.....

[red dog 1]

57. Fencing?

[fNord]

64. Sorry, that was The Princess Bride......

Pretty close though.....

[PJMcK]

151. You forgot a few

Slavery, genocide, incest, fratricide, patricide, rape, murder and idolatry.

(wink)

[ashling]

74. En Archae xhi ho logos

Its Greek to me

[Irish_Dem]

3. "There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened

at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

[roscoeroscoe]

4. "Been down so long..."

Funny, I thought of the same novel. It comes to mind now and then.

[red dog 1]

9. It is my favorite novel of all time

and it's sad that Richard Farina didn't live long enough to see how popular it became.

(The 1971 movie based on the novel was horrible, imo)

[CatMor]

5. Theodore Dreiser...An American Tragedy

"What matter it if a man gaineth the whole world and loseth his own soul?"

[Drahthaardogs]

23. That's actually the Gospel of Mark, Luke, and Mathew

I don't know chapter and verse though

[CatMor]

24. Yes, but was the whole point of the book....

based on a true event.

[Drahthaardogs]

25. I'm not sure what you are asking

?

[CatMor]

26. Sorry, I was acknowledging he used that from the bible..

as that was the whole point of his book. I didn't mean to confuse you.

[Drahthaardogs]

28. Confusing me

Is not a high hill to climb

[CatMor]

29. Same here

[benld74]

6. One fish two fish red fish blue fish

Sushi I have never known

[no_hypocrisy]

7. "Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk."

[Glorfindel]

8. "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques."

from "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens. The message was affixed to the chest of the Marquis St. Evremond by a dagger driven into his heart - a gentler and more painless death than he deserved.

[Guilded Lilly]

10. Spoken by Robert Langdon...

“What really matters is what you believe.”
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

[Botany]

11. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garca Mrquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

opening line
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to
remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

last line

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. –Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

[bench scientist]

12. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip

[SeattleVet]

14. I am an anachronism. People realize this and resent it.

From the same major literary work.

[MaryMagdaline]

13. Marriage is s maneuvering business

[Bantamfancier]

15. That's some catch, that Catch-22.

[Doc_Technical]

16. It's the best there is!

[red dog 1]

20. Yossarian has flies in his eyes!

[Codeine]

17. From Don Quixote;

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?"

I so love that book.

[Sailor65x1]

18. Raphael Sabatini; Captain Blood

“The country is all, sir; the sovereign naught. King James will pass; others will come and pass; England remains, to be honorably served by her sons, whatever rancor they may hold against the man who rules her in their time."

[bagelsforbreakfast]

32. Different Sabatini - He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad -

Last edited Sat Dec 9, 2017, 08:24 PM - Edit history (1)

And that was nis only patrimony. --Saramouche

[Sailor65x1]

68. Very nice

[Ferrets are Cool]

19. Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein

The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever
dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and
Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of
His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes
petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd
fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the
expense of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry
in all history.

The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is
inherently sinful.

[DFW]

40. Heinlein was definitely an enlightened genius

That first quote should be on an introductory page in every bible printed.

[red dog 1]

43. + 1

[SCantiGOP]

97. Another one from Heinlein which we wont like:

“Every society gets the government that they deserve.”

[Irish_Dem]

127. He nailed that one. I love Heinlein but don't always agree with his philology of life.

But this one is correct.

[Ferrets are Cool]

66. I loved reading him as a young adult. I was raised in a very

constricted closed-minded home and finding Heinlein was like discovering, as you say, a fountain of enlightenment.
Many say that Frank Herbert is the greatest science fiction writer of all time, and while he is great, I have to put Heinlein and Asimov ahead of him.
As far as pure entertainment, Ann McCaffery is wonderful, as well as Terry Brooks.

[DFW]

75. I think Heinlein's "Lost Legacy" was my favorite short story ever

If you were raised in a closed-minded home, I will very un-modestly recommend "The Time Cellar" to you (from which I provided two quotes below).

It was intended to provide relief to just such individuals.

[Ferrets are Cool]

82. Thank you

[Irish_Dem]

128. Same here, Heinlein opened new doors for me. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress blew me away.

[lapfog_1]

104. I was just about to add to the thread...

"Hello Man, my only friend."

From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress... by Robert Heinlein.

[fNord]

22. Never whistle wile your pissing.....

Because if you whistle wile your pissing, you’ll have two minds where one is needed, and a divided mind is easily conquered.” —Hagbard Celine, H.M., S.M.

From the novel “The Illuminatus! Trilogy” by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

[red dog 1]

42. Nice one!

[BeyondGeography]

27. Coventry are fuck all. Hitler had the right idea when he flattened the place.

John King, The Football Factory. First two sentences.

[Irish_Dem]

131. Wow, grabs you right away. nt

[marylandblue]

30. "All happy families are like, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

First line of Anna Karenina.

[Irish_Dem]

133. Excellent line..... nt

[nycbos]

31. "All that is gold does not glitter. Not all who wonder are lost"

J.R.R Tolkin Lord of the Rings.

[ClarendonDem]

105. Lord of the Rings

Are the books that got me hooked on reading when I was in middle school, along with the Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper. Been reading almost daily for the past 30+ years.

Currently re-reading The War Hound and the World's Pain, by Michael Moorcock. The opening sentence sets the tone for the book: "It was in that year when the fashion in cruelty demanded not only the crucifixion of peasant children, but a similar fate for their pets, that I first met Lucifer and was transported into Hell; for the Prince of Darkness wished to strike a bargain with me."

And there are numerous quotes/passages from Shakespeare that I think are timeless. One of my favorites is: "Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

[lunatica]

121. The last sentence is one of my favorite quotes

"... It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

I've used that quote more than once on DU. Mostly to describe some Republican idiot's quote.

[questionseverything]

33. but it aint fair atticus

[Siwsan]

34. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes

with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

Of course, from 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. I remember the first time I read the book, in high school, and how blown away I was by Harper Lee's amazingly visually inspiring writing style. I read the book before I saw the movie, and the whole story played out in my mind, as if I was watching the movie.

And the movie didn't disappoint. Not one iota. I still watch it, every time I see it is airing.

[red dog 1]

58. Wasn't Harper Lee best friends with Truman Capote?

[Siwsan]

63. She was

They were friends from childhood.

[SCantiGOP]

100. The kid that was staying there for the summer

Was actually Capote.

[Siwsan]

108. Dill Harris

I think that 'To Kill A Mockingbird' was one of the most perfectly cast films, ever. Absolutely flawless, IMHO.

[CTyankee]

118. That kid had my favorite line: "I'm little but I'm old."

[SCantiGOP]

120. Ha! Reminds me of a line

From 350 pound Chicago Bears defensive lineman William Perry: “I was big even when I was little.”
Makes no sense but you know exactly what he meant.

[Irish_Dem]

136. Yes childhood friends and she later worked for him. She did a lot of the research and

interviews for "In Cold Blood."

[Roland99]

35. The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed

[missingthebigdog]

55. Go then, there are other worlds than these.

[Roland99]

65. Long days and pleasant nights.

[missingthebigdog]

71. And may you have twice the number.

[red dog 1]

62. "the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket."

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

36. From "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara

which is not my favorite book of all time, although I like it. But this has stayed with me:

Tom hummed a few bars of what was still known as Butterfield's Lullaby but which the army would later know as 'Taps' and which now had no connotation of death, which simply meant rest for the night, rest after a long day in the dust and the sun, with the bugles blaring, and Joshua Chamberlain, listening, thought of the sound of Butterfield's Lullaby coming out of the dark, through a tent flap, with the campfires burning warm and red in the night, and Chamberlain thought: you can grow to love it.

[Dart_Thrower]

37. Lizzie Bennet to Darcy

"I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any."

[Irish_Dem]

137. Oh that was a good zinger from Elizabeth. nt

[Va Lefty]

38. From The Stand by Stephen King

"Show me a man or woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call “society”. Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”

[JDC]

39. Flashman and the Mountain of Light

There's a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.


Great series.

[DFW]

41. "Never mind what a girl TELLs you......."

"Never mind what a girl TELLS you. It’s when she proves she’s willing to vaporize her cat for you that you know she’s serious."

Probably my favorite line from The Time Cellar, along with this: "Anne is waiting at the driver’s seat, looking a little shaken up (I guess she doesn’t kill twenty-first century gangsters as a part of her regular Tuesday evening aerobics workout)."
---------------------------------------

There are a TON of great lines from my favorite novel, Shibumi, but I'm on the road for work this weekend (so what else is new?), and don't have a copy with me.

[BendigoJeff]

44. The Catcher in the Rye

"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."

[red dog 1]

47. Good one!

Welcome to DU!

[red dog 1]

56. J. D. Sallnger wrote Catcher in the Rye while serving in the US Army during WW ll

He would stop by the side of a road and write in a small notebook, while his army buddies waited for him...(I heard this in a radio interview with the son of one of his army friends)
He was at Utah Beach on D-Day, and also in the Battle of the Bulge" & the "Battle of Hurtgen Forest"

He fell in love with and dated teenager Oona O'Neil, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neil, in 1942.
He wrote her long letters, even while he served in the Army in Europe.
He didn't hear back from her for a long time, then one day he saw a newspaper article about her marrying Charlie Chaplin, and he was "devastated"

A biopic movie about him came out this year called "Rebel in the Rye"

[NNadir]

45. Listen.

The opening line, appearing as only Kurt Vonnegut could do in the um, second chapter, of Slaughterhouse Five.

Given the time he lived in, and the general belief in the Second World War as being a, um, "Good War," there was no more meaningful line to describe the bombing of Dresden than "Listen."

I wish we, as a race, had.

No one could make tragedy into comedy and comedy into tragedy as well as Vonnegut. He was, I believe, the most under-rated writer of the 20th century.

[fNord]

46. We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert......

When the drugs began to take hold.”

First sentence in Hunter S. Thompson’s tragic search for the American dream: “Fear and loathing in Las Vegas”

[red dog 1]

95. Hunter S. Thompson is one of my heroes

and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is my favorite Hunter S. Thompson novel.

("Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" is also a great read)

[SCantiGOP]

101. As your attorney.....

I advise you to take more mescaline.

[BBG]

135. And...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.

[Heartstrings]

51. "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" Nt

[First Speaker]

52. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent...

...from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy

[sl8]

89. Nice. Thanks for the reminder.

It must be 30 years since I last read this; it's about time to read it again.

[Irish_Dem]

138. I love Asimov.... adored his books as a child and teen. nt

[WheelWalker]

53. Heinlein, "Intermission: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long"

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

[Irish_Dem]

139. Wow, had forgotten this quote. He is spot on... thanks for posting it. nt

[whathehell]

59. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"

Tale of Two Cities....Charles Dickens.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

114. My choice too!

[whathehell]

115. Great minds, and all that..

[mia]

60. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being,

the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

[MuseRider]

61. Not my favorite because my favorite is always

the one I am reading at the time but an interesting quote that amused me for a while.

Neil Gaiman

American Gods

"... wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distaste -- "Someone could slip on that. Break his neck" he muttered interrupting himself. "Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in."

[Wolf Frankula]

67. From a now Recalled novel, "Flames of the Dragon"

"Millions of Biafrans are crying for revenge! And by the splendor of the Gods there will be Revenge! I Akhenaton, King of Atlantis, swear it! Men of Atlantis, are you with me?"

Wolf

[Dalton Mac]

69. "Better to Reign in Hell than Serve in Heaven!"

And yeah, yeah, yeah, it's technically a poem, but I'm on my 13th beer, so cut me some slack.

[egduj]

72. So it goes.

[better]

73. In my day girls jumped when a Wise One said jump and continued jumping until they were told to stop.

As I am still alive, it is still my day. Need I make myself clearer?

[rainy]

76. the key to your happiness is to own your

“The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

[rainy]

77. My favorite from Pat Conroy Prince of Tides

“To describe our growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina,” his narrator, Tom Wingo, wrote in “The Prince of Tides,” “I would have to take you to the marsh on a spring day, flush the great blue heron from its silent occupation. Scatter marsh hens as we sink to our knees in mud, open you an oyster with a pocketknife and feed it to you from the shell and say, ‘There. That taste. That’s the taste of my childhood.’ I would say, ‘Breathe deeply,’ and you would breathe and remember that smell for the rest of your life, the bold, fecund aroma of the tidal marsh, exquisite and sensual, the smell of the South in heat, a smell like new milk, semen, and spilled wine all perfumed with seawater. My soul grazes like a lamb on the beauty of indrawn tides.”

[red dog 1]

96. Pat Conroy...What a great novelist!

The Great Santini is one of my all-time favorites!

Pat Conroy died last year of Pancreatic Cancer..He was 70



"Without music, life is a journey through a desert."

Pat Conroy

[Irish_Dem]

140. I loved the Great Santini, one of my favorite books as well.

I identified with him a great deal, he was a military brat, son of a pilot, we had a lot in common. His books hit home for me.

[nocalflea]

78. Poor doomed Gatsby :

"Can't repeat the past ?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can !"

[cyclonefence]

79. Shut up he explained.

Ring Lardner, The Young Immigrunts (1920)


(in response to: Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.)

[WhiteTara]

80. As cold as Christian charity

a rather bad novel whose name is lost to me

Also,
As slick as Southern sin.
Also a bad novel whose name is not memorable.

[Ohiya]

81. "A screaming comes across the sky."

The opening sentence of Gravity's Rainbow - by Thomas Pynchon

[red dog 1]

98. My favorite novel is "Been Down So Long It looks Like Up To Me" by Richard Farina

Thomas Pynchon and Richard Farina were roommates at Cornell.

In 1963, when Richard Farina married Joan Baez's sister, Mimi, Thomas Pynchon was his Best Man.

[Ohiya]

99. Very interesting!

I'll have to check that out.

[DiverDave]

83. James Michener "Space"

“An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see"

[Shrek]

84. "We don't rent pigs."

N/t

[DiverDave]

85. Great book

Bad mini series.

[SCantiGOP]

103. No!!!

Tremendous mini-series.
But even better novel.

[sl8]

86. "H'aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?"

[UTUSN]

87. "There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed."

from Reflections in a Golden Eye, by Carson McCULLERS

[Tikki]

88. "I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide."

published in 1895...who?

Tikki

[Tikki]

93. The Time Machine....H G Wells

Tikki

[TexasBushwhacker]

90. From "To Kill a Mockingbird"

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

[Irish_Dem]

141. One of the greatest novels of all times.

Doesn't matter who really wrote it.

[TexasBushwhacker]

146. I found this

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5244492

Letter Puts End to Persistent 'Mockingbird' Rumor

[Irish_Dem]

147. Thank you, yes I had just read that last month.

My cousin who has a MA in English Lit and I were discussing the topic.
We cannot decide either way.

[TexasBushwhacker]

148. I think a lot of the doubt is because it was her only published novel

But I can see how publishing such a phenomenally successful book would give a new writer a major case of writer's block. She did try to write at least 2 more books but abandoned them. She just didn't think they were good enough.

[Irish_Dem]

149. Yes, a one hit author, and then would never talk about the book or writing it.

Was quite reclusive.

And Capote perhaps felt he owed her something. She was one of his only friends in childhood. In a small southern town, Capote did not fit in well

Lee also greatly helped him with his book "In Cold Blood." She did a lot of the research, interviewed many in the the small Kansas town where the story takes place. It was said that the people in Holcomb liked and trusted Lee more than the flamboyant Capote. She also did the final edit for "In Cold Blood", and was said to be let down that Capote did not give her more credit for the work. And some people have wondered how much of "In Cold Blood" Lee actually wrote... so the rumors go both ways...

Capote was said to be angry and resentful when Lee won the Pulitzer for Mockingbird and he did not receive the award for "In Cold Blood," though it did get huge popular acclaim.

So it makes for interesting speculation.

Yes I think the psychology of one hit authors is interesting. You can write a true masterpiece, and then nothing ever again. Writer's block, fear of failure, success dries the creative juices....

[jmowreader]

91. "The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash...

...most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers...and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Los Angeles County - from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

The weird thing is, I love Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and I've never done drugs in my life.

[mythology]

92. Here are two from my favorite novel

"But you can be homeless in your heart, too. You can be empty inside yourself because you have no spiritual center. You can wander through life without any real sense of who you are or where you belong. You can exist without purpose or cause."

"He did not want to come between the donors and the cause. Because if that happened, then he risked the possibility he would become more important than the cause he represented. And that, Andrew, would be a sin."

Both of these quotes speak to how I often feel in life.

While it's not a novel, I always loved this opening line from an autobiography

"I can't believe I lost my fucking ear; bang bang!"

Because how many people can start their autobiography with a line about that time he had most of his ear ripped off?

[niyad]

94. "if his IQ were three points higher, he would be lint"

a mystery novel, long forgotten, except for that so-very-useful line.

[Irish_Dem]

142. OMG great line and describes the Orange One. nt

[yallerdawg]

102. Pirsig. "Zen..."

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

[trof]

106. "TOM!"

"TOM!"

No answer.

"TOM!"

No answer.

"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!"

No answer."



guess

[Nac Mac Feegle]

107. "The Witches Abroad" - Terry Pratchett

Bad things don't happen to us.
We happen to bad things.



My job is a technical troubleshooter. That attitude has maintained my sanity (for sufficiently broad definitions thereof) many times.

[Atticus]

109. "He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet---" Opening of "Lord Jim", by Joseph Conrad. nt

[hurl]

110. "'Oh dear,' says God,

'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."

The inimitable Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[Alpeduez21]

111. Nature does not make mistakes.

Right and wrong are human categories. Frank Herbert. Dune

“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

Apropos for this republican administration.

[CanonRay]

113. All Quiet on the Western Front

"We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude, and sorrowful, and superficial-I believe we are lost.

[Dave Starsky]

116. THE EMPIRE NEVER ENDED.

[PassingFair]

117. My favorite is Time out of Joint

But I don’t have any passages memorized...

[Dave Starsky]

119. I forgot about that one!

That is actually my favorite, but I like VALIS, too. Ubik is right up there, as well.

[PassingFair]

124. I loved them all!

But I admit I struggled mightily with the "Exegesis".

[Dave Starsky]

126. I haven't even tried to tackle that one.

I couldn't even make it all the way through Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, but I gave it a good try. I think the Exegesis might even be harder.

[PassingFair]

152. The crazy is strong...

But it explains a lot.

[KatyMan]

122. Maybe not my favorite novel

but one of my favorite lines from a novel is from The Old Man and the Sea: "'When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches in the evening.''

For some reason that 'lions on the beaches in the evening' is so evocative to me of something that even 30 years after first reading it I don't understand. Maybe a past life!

[Irish_Dem]

143. It is indeed a captivating line for some reason.

We usually think of lions in jungles, and in daylight perhaps.
So the lions on a beach and in evening, as the sun sets, is visually stunning.

[KatyMan]

144. Maybe so.

Maybe I have to reread the book and see if I can learn something from that line.
Thanks for the reply

[Irish_Dem]

145. Or could be a past life as you say. :) nt

[lunatica]

123. This is a wonderful thread!

Thanks for starting it.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

125. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; ...

it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Dickens, Tale of Two Cities

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

129. From The Impeachment and Conviction of Donald Trump...

describing the verdict in the Senate: "Guilty."

[bronxiteforever]

130. I am haunted by waters

― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

[Blue1963]

132. Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

[Irish_Dem]

134. Red Dog, thank you for this thread, it has been a real treat reading all the posts. nt

[TuxedoKat]

153. Dandelion Wine

"It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer."

by Ray Bradbury.

Not sure if it is my all time favorite novel but definitely in the top five. The opening lines above, grabbed by interest from the start.