Favorite Lines Friday

I quite liked this little philosophical bit from Hyperion by Dan Simmons, a Distraction I finished recently:


It might be argued that the Siamese twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos. (...Yes we weave real-fabric things from the dreamstuff of mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scratch a circle and π peeps out. Enter a new solar system and Tycho Brahe's formulae lie waiting under the black velvet cloak of space/time. But where has the universe hidden a word under its outer layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?)




I hope to have a few more thoughts on this delicious Distraction soon.






A Year of Books that are Older than Me

Favorite Lines Friday

I love this line from Pride and Prejudice. It's spoken by Mr. Bennet, the heroine's father, to his wife:

I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.


A Year of Books that are Older than Me

Favorite Lines Friday

Quoting The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel could go on forever. One would have to re-type the entire volume to share all the good bits. Here's a short quote from that book, however, for my current mood:

       Every reader is either a pausing wanderer or a traveler returned.



Coming soon: thoughts on re-reading The Library at Night and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco



A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Here are some interesting thoughts by Adso, the narrator of The Name of The Rose, about the great labyrinthine library at the center of the novel:


Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.



A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

From Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke:

    "Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange.
     Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."




A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Here are a few lines from my first major Distraction of the year: Cooked by Michael Pollan. These are great thoughts on why anyone would ever bother to cook for herself:

To brew beer, to make cheese, to bake a loaf of bread, to braise a pork shoulder, is to be forcibly reminded that all these things are not just products, in fact are not even really “things.” Most of what presents itself to us in the marketplace as a product is in truth a web of relationships, between people, yes, but also between ourselves and all the other species on which we depend.

A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

I loved this passage from The Two Towers, a conversation between Sam and Frodo regarding the idea of great stories and their place in the one we are reading. I find it universally applicable to the idea of all great stories and their characters.

  

 “I don’t like anything here at all,” said Frodo, “step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”

            “Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them.  I used to think that they were the things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?”
            “I wonder,” said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending, or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to know.”



A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Here's a thought about the "Good vs. Evil" battle for humanity I particularly liked from Adam the Anitchrist in Good Omens:


"It's hard enough bein' people as it is, without other people coming and messin' you around."

Favorite Lines Friday

Here's something I just had to pass along from A Year at the Movies by Kevin Murphy:

The most powerful thing we as an audience could do to Hollywood is to stay away on the opening weekend. They need us in those theaters or they’re sunk. They need us more than we need them. If we don’t go opening weekend for the whole summer, studios will lose millions upon millions, and hundreds of studio executives could lose their jobs.

            Know what will happen then? They wouldn’t stop making movies, but they might stop marketing to us as if we were dull teenage boys. And, hey, maybe they’ll stop letting studio executives make creative decisions and let writers and directors do their work. Maybe they’ll take more risks, and maybe they’ll try getting us into the theaters by showing us good movies.
            Unfortunately, this will only work if the entire nation cooperates. Could you talk to your friends for me? Thanks.



A Year of Books I've Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is an amusing thought from a character in Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, one who happens to be in a position to know...

“Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it and they resent it.”

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is a fabulous excerpt from the essay “On Some Functions of Literature” from On Literature by Umberto Eco"
  

As far as the world is concerned, we find that the laws of universal gravitation are those established by Newton, or that it is true that Napoleon died on Saint Helena on 5 May 1821. And yet, if we keep an open mind, we will always be prepared to revise our convictions the day science formulates the great laws of the cosmos differently, or a historian discovers unpublished documents proving that Napoleon died on a Bonapartist ship as he attempted to escape. On the other hand, as far as the world of books is concerned, propositions like “Sherlock Holmes was a bachelor,” “Little Red Riding-Hood is eaten by the wolf and then freed by the woodcutter,” or “Anna Karenina commits suicide” will remain true for eternity, and no one will ever be able to refute them. There are people who deny that Jesus was the son of God, others who doubt his historical existence, others who claim he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and still others who believe that the Messiah is yet to come, and however we might think about such questions, we treat these opinions with respect. But there is little respect for those who claim that Hamlet married Ophelia, or that Superman is not Clark Kent.

 

 

Favorite Lines Friday

The following is a short but extremely wise line from Butters, the medical examiner and new friend of Harry Dresden in Death Masks (Book 5 of The Dresden Files):

 

"Sleep is god. Go worship."

 

 

Coming next: Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Favorite Lines Friday

Here's a line from Corwin of Amber, narrator of The Hand of Oberon...one of the many reasons reading these books is so much fun.

“It was my turn to be silent while a small family of moments crossed my path, single file, from the left, sticking their tongues out at me.”

Coming next: Death Masks (The Dresden Files, Book 5) by Jim Butcher

Favorite Lines Friday

I've been messing around in the garden at least as much as I've been reading lately. Recently, I found this good piece of advice about gardening and reading in The Ruth Stout No-work Garden Book by Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence:

Read one garden book, if you must, but better not make it two, for they are almost sure to contradict each other, then you're sunk.

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is a wonderful description of a view from the observation room on a ship leaving the earth from The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov:

The Earth was suspended there below, a gigantic and gleaming orange-and-blue-and-white-patched balloon. The hemisphere showing was almost entirely sunlit; the continents between the clouds, a desert orange, with thin, scattered lines of green. The seas were blue, standing out sharply against the black of space where they met the horizon. And all around in the black, undusted sky were the stars.

Very nice. We’ve probably all seen a photo or video of this (I doubt anyone reading this has experienced this view from orbit), and Asimov gives a beautiful, detailed description. There’s just one thing: you see, The Stars Like Dust was published in 1950. Sputnik 1, the first anything to be launched into orbit, didn’t go up until 1957. Asimov was seeing this view in his mind’s eye. His very creative mind’s eye.

Favorite Lines Friday

Here’s an amusing line spoken by Corwin of Amber in Sign of the Unicorn:

“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys,” I said, “I wish I had known this some time ago.”



Coming next: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Favorite Lines Friday

I am cheating for this Favorite Lines post. I simply refer you to this fabulous list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels from American Book Review:

100 Best First Lines From Novels

There are all the old familiar lines, like "Call me Ishmael," "It was a dark and stormy night...", and "Happy families are all alike..." but there are, of course many with which I was not familiar. I particularly like the short, punchy lines that not only make me desire to read what is next, but are also particularly wise. Like:


"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston(1937)

and

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (1953)

And here's one that I'm a little afraid might apply directly to me all too soon:

"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature." from The Debut by Anita Brookner (1981)


Of course, I was a little disappointed that "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." did not make the list, since, concise and wonderful as it is, that line not only launched an epic tale, but also an epic appreciation for well-done fantasy literature.

So far, my favorite first line from the novels I have written about on The Distractible Reader is from Summer Knight by Jim Butcher:

"It rained toads the day the White Council came to town."


How about you? Any favorite first lines from novels that you'd like to share? Please "Comment" below if you do. I'd love to read them.

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is a wise piece of advice that Sparrowhawk received from one of his teachers in A Wizard of Earthsea:

Go to bed; tired is stupid.

Ah, if only I would have understood that just a bit earlier in my own life...

Favorite Lines Friday

One Hundred Years of Solitude is loaded with great lines and perfect turns of phrase. Most of them seem to apply directly and uniquely to the town of Macondo and the Buendia family. There was one, however, that I believe applies well beyond the novel and to us all. Especially if you're someone who tends to lose your car keys.

[T]he search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.


Don't forget to look in the freezer.


Coming next: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin

Favorite Lines Friday

Early in the book Summer Knight by Jim Butcher, it is clear that the book's hero, Harry Dresden is suffering the ill effects of significant personal torment. (If you read Grave Peril, you can understand why.) At one point he is given some advice, a warning, perhaps, by Aurora, the Lady of the Summer Court of Faerie. I found this line particularly interesting since I had just read Wicked by Gregory Maguire where it would be equally at home.


Monsters are born of pain and grief and loss and anger.



Coming soon: my thoughts on A Wrinkle in Time by Madeliene L'Engle