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/lit/ - Literature

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467978 No.467978 [Reply] [Original]

ITT: "Your favorite quotes from books and their significance to you"

>> No.468022

"... and the rest is rust and stardust"
The end of the desperate poem Humbert Humbert writes to Lolita when she rans away.
Sadly, I find myself that desperate about a specific girl often.

>> No.468033

>>468022
Humbert Humbert wasn't good enough for her.

>> No.468047

"He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts."

Stephen King, It. For those who haven't read it the quote is a sort of tongue-twister that the protagonist, a stutterer, repeats to practice speaking correctly. It takes on a sort of talismanic quality to him as he believes in a deep-down unspoken kind of way that if he can just say it without stuttering his parents will stop ignoring him. I was ignored a lot as a kid, and I dunno, that quote just touched me the right way. Stephen King is good as shit at making cheesy stuff believable.

>> No.468060

One of the only quotes that really stuck with me was Death's speech in Reaper Man. The one at the end, you know? The whole "If We do not care, then there is nothing but blind Oblivion" part was actually very uplifting at the time, because I was in this apathetic slump when I was turned down one time too many. I slowly kind of turned around into who I am today. It's really a powerful quote to me, and I'm glad I've been inspired to try harder to achieve what I need. I've gotten farther with a girl than I have ever gotten before. We're not dating, but... the feeling is surprisingly mutual. It's good.

>> No.468061

/I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear./ - Dune (First half of the Litany against Fear)

When I read this at a young age it gave me hope that man could overcome his basic instincts, the most powerful and natural of which is fear. In a weird way it really helped my public speaking.

>> No.468070

The entirety of the poem "Mr. Flood's Party" by E.A. Robinson.

When it gets to the part about Au Lang Syne, I just tear up because I can perfectly imagine the man singing it, drinking to his lost friends and his isolation from everything.

>> No.468067 [DELETED] 

>>468047
It's amazing that I remember this quote myself.

For me... each book gives its own quote that I remember. A classic one is "Get thee to a nunnery!"

>> No.468081

"All art is quite useless." - The Picture of Dorian Gray

I don't know, I always liked it and it grabbed my attention as soon as I read it.

>> No.468084

From The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

>> No.468086

"Man is a bird without wings, and a bird is a man without sorrows"

I found that to be remarkably beautiful, if inane and nonsensical enough to sound so. Can anyone please tell me what this means? Is it that the bird has no sorrows with its freedom of flight, with its ability to escape?

>> No.468091

>>468084
I remember reading Eliot a few years back. I enjoyed it, but had a taste for ee cummings.

>> No.468093

>>468070

There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a-howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as if it were a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was.

>> No.468097

>>468086
To me, it is a redundant statement about mankind's want of escape. I see both statements being made by the man, both his want to have wings to fly/ achieve his dreams and his wish to escape from sorrow.

Just my opinion

>> No.468103

>>468084

FUCK YOU THAT QUOTE WAS MINE GOD DAMNIT

>> No.468105

>>468093

Which is why it's so sad, and one of my favourite quotes. The insanity and desperation of it just gets me.

>> No.468106

>>468086
The first part refers to a famous definition of a human as "a biped without feathers", and a bird has no sorrows, not because it can fly, which is facile, but because it has no memory or knowledge of death.

>> No.468120

>>468033
I think it was the other way around, but of course you don't choose the best but the one you can relate to, and so Dolores sticks with an ignorant poor young man

>> No.468131

You can't really beat the start of One Hundred Years of Solitude

"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."

>> No.468140

>>468106
I'd shake your hand.

>> No.468145

>>468131

I AM LOSING MY MIND.

Can you tell me exactly what prompted you to mention 100 Year of Solitude. I'm being completely serious. I was the 'birds without wings' poster and was thinking about exactly that book when I refreshed and saw your post.

Can you tell me exactly what brought that post up? Please?

>> No.468159

clichéd, but
"delete the adjectives"

>> No.468156

"42"

>> No.468167

The entirety of Pierre Mendard..you could take any sentence out of it, and it will be quotable. One of the best:

>Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.

>> No.468171

Most of the stuff Lewis Carol wrote. Specifically:

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question IS,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master ----- that's all.'

As someone who loves stories and words I find this to be just a beautiful mindset.

Also:
'That's a joke... I wish you had made it'
'Why do you wish I had made it?' Alice asked, 'It's a very bad one'
...
'You shouldn't make jokes,' Alice said 'If it makes you so unhappy.'

I'm used to making terribly corny puns and often use humor to distract myself or others from things we'd rather not face. I take jokes very seriously.

>> No.468187

"One who does not give count of three thousand years lives without a prospective".

Goethe. Not quoted literally, translation by me.

>> No.468197

>>468171

"Have some wine?" asked the March Hair. "I don't see any wine..." said Alice. "There isn't any," replied the March Hare.

>> No.468199

>>468171

Arturo Mendoza was a man who took his jokes very seriously. He likened it to an artform, and by doing so, became a master at humorous delivery; timing his pauses to perfection, producing peals of laughter at exactly the right moments. Overall, he was a very pleasant fellow to be around.

>> No.468209

"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad."

Catcher in the Rye. This one reminds me that you never really know someone as well as you know yourself. Bad gifts are proof that someone's image of you differs vastly from reality.

>> No.468219

>>468209
Or simply that Holden is a bitch who don't realize that gifts not given just because they want to generally are just traditional obligations and that he should just bow his head and be grateful.
But that's just too phony.

>> No.468224

>Ellen Page

>> No.468228

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

>> No.468264

At the end of On the Road, where he leaves Dean in the rain and drives away. I would look it up but it honestly makes me cry, I know it's trendy as fuck but GOD I love that book.

>> No.468271

>>468264
BROFIST.

(I was >>468228)

>> No.468289

>>468264

I love the last paragraph

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

>> No.468313

"It's hard for me to stay in the moment. Without the past, where is the guilt? And without the future, where is the dread? And without guilt and dread, who am I?"

Meaning to me: It's everything I don't want to be anymore.

>> No.468319

I also like this one: "Display some fucking adaptability."

Meaning: It's what I want to be.

>> No.468321

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)


Reminds me to think things through, remember that actions have consequences and be prepared to defend my decisions should things turn afoul.

>> No.468322

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
-Stephen King

>> No.468362

>>468145
Sorry to disapoint but I just thought of it because that quote is one of my favourites from any book. Just a setence dripping with self-contained beauty, seemed an appropreate thing to post, y'know?

>> No.468363

"Mother Died Today. or Maybe Yesterday, I Don't Know."

best opening to a book... ever

>> No.468371

>>468321
Just reading this one sometimes gives me goosebumps. Saying it aloud always does.

>> No.468400

.>>468271

Fuck yeah.

>>468289

Posting this crying a little, thanks a non. ;~;

>> No.468409

>>468363
Its damn powerful. Immediately reading it I'm siezed by that strange nonchalance and confusion that comes with the death of a relative. Not to mention the huge imprint of the narrator's personality you get from just that first line. Camus is damn good at cramming meaning in.

>> No.468433

>>468289
Is there really anybody who can capture the twisted, insane beauty of America like Kerouac?

>> No.468438

While we are on first lines:

"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."

That is the first fucking sentence. And it only gets better from there. Peake conveys more with the richness of the language and sentence construction than most authors could in a series of novels.

>> No.468445

"You can't eat the orange and throw away the peel. A man is not a piece of fruit."

>> No.468469

>>468167
Fucking hell. I need to read that

>> No.468464

>>468086
It's more like the fact that a man is without wings due to his sorrows, and a bird is without them, and is "uplifted" with happiness.

>> No.468473

But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

>> No.468497

The last sentence of 1984. Fucking hell.

>> No.468518

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded."

W. Somerset Maugham "Of Human Bondage"

one of the most meaningful books in my life, and think that I will always find something valuable in it, no matter what my age.

>> No.468532

"I am a sick man... I am a wicked man."

>>468473
An awesome, yet underrated story.

>> No.468543

THIS. IS. SPARTA!


owait...

>> No.468561

It is his extremity that I seem to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not have been a word of careless contempt. Better his cry — much better. It was an affirmation, a moral victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abominable terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was a victory!

- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

because hitler was a good man for killing the jews

>> No.468570

>>468362

you didn't disappoint. In contrast, you confirmed something important to me. I truly thank you.

>> No.468736

Cliché but oh so classic. Easily the best book opening of all time.

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."


also, from the Elder Zosima something that might well be the one of the best description of Dostoevsky's philosophy

"Only in the dignity of the human spirit can there be equality, and this will be understood by our country alone." -David McDuff
"Equality is only in man's spiritual dignity, and only among us will that be understood." -Pevear and Volokhonsky
"Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man, and that will only be understood among us." -Constance Garnett

>> No.468785
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468785

"I think it is better for us to steer clear of the big oblong words like Beauty and Truth and soon. Do you mind? We are all so silly and feeble-witted when it comes to living, but giants when it comes to pronouncing on the universe." - Lawrence Durrell, from Balthazar

>> No.468786

"How did I know that someday--at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere--the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?"

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It describes perfectly how once you've had depression at some point in your life, it's always in the back of your mind. It's never really gone forever. Shame that the bell jar descended again for her and she killed herself.

>> No.468810

>>468786

With regards to Sylvia Plath...

"I wanted to be as thin and cold as a glass cup. Empty, pure as light."

Reading that as a freshman in high school made me a somewhat halfassed anorexic for about two years. Fortunately, I have a skeptical personality and observant friends, but really, for that to have that kind of effect on me was shocking.

I think I wanted to feel pure more than be thin, though.

>> No.468836

>>468084
BROFIST!

>> No.468870

>>468810
What's that from?

>> No.468881

>>468810

Slyvia Plath? Yeah, reading her works was a such a GAS.

DOHOHOHOHOHOOOOO

>> No.468884

There's a page-long sentence in Vineland that describes development and traffic and ends with '... the spilled, the broken world.' I travel a lot, and i think about it whenever I see the same cookie cutter strip mall with the standalone chain restaurants no matter where I happen to be.

>> No.468893
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468893

>>468881

>> No.468890
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468890

>>468884

Was Vineland good? I haven't gotten to it yet.

>> No.468935

>>468890

It's my favorite Pynchon novel, though probably not his best. It's filled with lesbian ninjas, aging hippies, trips to native american hell, asian dewdrops, ghosts of godzilla, BDSM at the FBI... It's the novel I recommend my friends who don't already have an opinion about Pynchon.

>> No.468950

>>468935

I've been meaning to read Against the Day, but it's pretty intimidating, honestly.

>> No.468976

>>468950
It's worth fighting through.

>> No.468981

>>468976

Okay, thanks.

>> No.469010

the tractatus

it's just really badass

>> No.469012

>>468950

That's the only Pynchon novel I haven't finished. It's dense and it leads me to second guess whether he knows what he's doing. It also took me more than a year to get through Mason & Dixon, especially because of the style The whole time I could feel that reading that book for the first time was something I'd later be sad that I could never do again in this lifetime.

Mason & Dixon is incredible. The two main characters are so well developed, but crazy Pynchon shit still litters the book. A girl gets raped by a sentient grandfather clock. Seriously. She was kind of a bitch, though.

Anyway, drop Against the Day for now.

>> No.469081

"The years start coming,
And they don't stop coming,
Back to the rules and I hit the ground running.
Didn't make sense not to live for fun,
Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb."

--The Spell Of the Yukon and Other Verses by Robert W. Service

>> No.469089

>>469012

So far, I've only read The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. I've just been wondering where to go next, although I haven't had the time to read something like Pynchon lately.