Quote Something Literary
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- Dr_Sparkleshine
"Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djan karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us."
- Harlan Ellison
- bolus0
"A fourfold smell - tobacco, sweat, rum and bad teeth - emanated from poor old harmless mr. Hubert, it was all very pathetic"
Nabokov, from The original of Laura.
- Horp0
Righto, I'll just make some notes, and then I'l jump in the Sonata and come straight over.
- Horp. Plays well with others.Dr_Sparkleshine
- I have to confess that I utterly mis-read your title. I thought it said 'quote something literally'.Horp
- (apologies for soiling an otherwise logical and worthwhile thread)Horp
- Ah. All forgiven.subcommandante
- bolus0
"We live at the edge of the miraculous."
Henry Miller
- shitehawke0
"take no guff from these swine"
– Hunter S Thompson
- MatDolphin0
We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
– Anais Nin
- kezza_20
Some gems from my favourite book - Catch 22
"that's the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to positions of authority."
"Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action."
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle."
"That's some catch, that catch-22," he observed.
"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.- Got Catch 22 for Xmas, waiting on my book shelf now.Ranger
- Khurram0
Old Man and the Sea, from the Hemingway the writer:
You bought me a beer,” the old man said [to the boy]. “You are already a man.”
The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, “I am sorry.” “Qua Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man must do.”
Now alone, and out of sight of land, he was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.
He jumped almost as though to show me how big he was. I know now, anyway, he thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.
“I’ll kill him though,” he said. “In all his greatness and his glory.” Although it is unjust, he thought. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures.
Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there in the darkness of the sea. “Unless sharks come,” he said aloud. “If sharks come, God pity him and me.”
After he judged that his right hand had been in the water long enough he took it out and looked at it. “It is not bad,” he said. “And pain does not matter to a man.”
Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man.
“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
He spat into the ocean and said, “Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.
- must_dash0
The End