Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

"I didn't say she was dead. I said I killed her."
~ Barnabas Collins (b. 1770). Said to his father Joshua Collins in 1795 after the elder Collins discovered Angelique was alive. (Angelique was killed and sometimes buried more frequently than any other character on that old show.)

[covingtoncat73]

"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
/I was listening to the Simon Callow-narrated audiobook like this and it cracked me like an eggshell.

[Uncle Robin]

This quote notable for being genuinely droll, an interlude from Dickens' bizarre holiday agenda of visiting nothing but prisons, orphanages, insane asylums and legislatures (tautology?)

They are generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat unheard-of quantities of hot corn bread (almost as good for the digestion as a kneaded pin-cushion)

American Notes - Charles Dickens

[Uncle Robin]

This quote is another that is notable for making me laugh, although I doubt that was the author's intent:

Ryan wouldn’t be an irritant. He would be like breathing liquid oxygen. Smooth. Sensual. Electrifying.

(I'd have thought "Indescribably Cold. Instantly Fatal" would have been been a better fit, but I guess that's why I'm not a writer)

[gmw]

“Merde! You’ve changed, Bel. You lost your sense of humor while I was in the reformatory.”

“That’s not kind.”

“It’s better than me telling you that you never had a sense of humor. That would just hurt your feelings.”

Her heart believed him. He had a way of making people believe him, and she didn’t yet know how he did it. But her brain was not her heart, and Occam’s Razor suggested that if Bel was lying to six, he was lying to seven.

-- Derek Künsken, The Quantum Magician (2018)

[gmw]

“Why haven’t you asked me how I do my tricks?” Celia asks, once they have reached the point where she is certain he is not simply being polite about the matter.

Friedrick considers the question thoroughly before he responds.

“Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.”

They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing.

-- Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus (2011)

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

This quote is another that is notable for making me laugh, although I doubt that was the author's intent:



(I'd have thought "Indescribably Cold. Instantly Fatal" would have been been a better fit, but I guess that's why I'm not a writer)

Heh! Cold enough to burn. Neither smooth nor sensual would describe the feeling.

[BenG]

“As Machiavelli observed, Rome showed, tyrant after tyrant, how those reared in palatine luxury, expecting to be master of the world, basely abused the godlike authority that fell to them unearned, while those promoted through merit—Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius—made judicious use of the Imperium of which they considered themselves, not owners, but custodians. It is not power that corrupts, but the belief that it is yours.”
― Ada Palmer, The Will to Battle

[gmw]

When I was in high school I wanted to be a flight attendant because I thought it was the only way I was ever going to get out of town,” the stewardess said blankly from the back of the plane. Sabine and the other woman turned around. The stewardess had bright blond hair and wore her eye makeup like Natalie Wood. “I thought, How else am I ever going to get to go to Europe? Meet a wealthy businessman, get married? Nobody told me that I’d be flying to the same little [bleeping] towns I came from.”

Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world’s unhappiness on the advent of calculators.

-- Ann Patchett, The Magician's Assistant (1997)

[issybird]

[L]iterary criticism is the art of bitter tastes.

[A] bookshop is a last resort, a kind of moral flophouse.

―Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage

[rkomar]

I'm scratching my head over that second quote. Is it from the point of view of a religious fundamentalist (e.g. the only book you need is the Bible)?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by rkomar

I'm scratching my head over that second quote. Is it from the point of view of a religious fundamentalist (e.g. the only book you need is the Bible)?

Similar but the direct opposite. The perspective is the avant-garde and literature is seen as the last resort when all else has failed.

[covingtoncat73]

From Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

"Where does character come into it? Just this: I’ve always been pretty sure I could kill someone if I had to. Myself, or my father—whichever option proved most practical. I wouldn’t kill for hatred’s sake; I’d only do it to solve a problem. And only after other solutions have failed. That kind of bottom line is either in your character or it isn’t, and like I said, it develops early."

[covingtoncat73]

“Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.”
― Heinrich Heine

[astrangerhere]

When you love a thing too much, it is a special kind of pain to show it to others and to see that it is lacking.

When the Tiger Came From the Mountain by Nghi Vo