How about sharing a good sentence or paragraph from whatever you're reading?

[fadedrose]

Doesn't have to be funny, witty, sad, or anything...just something, as small or big as you like, that caught your attention and begs to be shared...I'd love to see it..

Thanks..

(PS I shared one from Fowler in DUgosh's list of Oct. 2)

[panader0]

1. I picked up F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'Babylon Revisited' at a swap meet lately

A collection of stories. I haven't read Fitzgerald since I was young and was very impressed with his riffs. The book is not handy so I can't quote, but I remember that the whole thing sparkled with great writing.

[KatyaR]

2. Here's one I kept from a book I finished last week.

"Interpreting the Bible without training is a bit like finding a specific address in a foreign city with neither map nor knowledge of the language. You might stumble across the right answer, but in the meantime you’ve put yourself at the mercy of every ignoramus in town, with no way of telling the savant from the fool. Finding your way through the English Bible, you’re entirely under the tyranny of the translators."

From "A Monstrous Regiment of Women" by Laurie R. King, great series!

[pitohui]

7. she must be a catholic

straight out of their excuses for not wanting people to read the bible, which makes me tired

yes, if you read the bible, you are in danger of finding out it makes no fucking sense, but i wish more people took that risk frankly...letting religious leaders "lead" and interpret has done nothing but increase the percentage of hate in the world

was the quote meant to be ironic? it is surely anti-democratic, we can't even decide what religious ideas to put in our own heads w.out "training," good lord

when i put my quote i had better be sure to mark context, whether it's an irony quote or what have you

[fadedrose]

9. How well I remember...

Trying to make sense out of my "former" faith, Catholic, I went into Bible reading, and couldn't understand why we had so many statues, pictures, etc., when the bible said no graven images...don't pray to anyone other than god, do not be called "father," and a whole ton of other stuff. This was all explained by nuns and the priest that the pope is god on earth, so he is infallible, and if he said to pray to Mary and saints, by golly, you just do it and keep your mouth shut because you know nothing.

Edited to add the word "former."

[Kurovski]

3. I'm sure he'd love the OWS, but check this from Carlin's

When will Jesus Bring the Porkchops? (Oops! I just saw that this is the fiction forum)

[Mac1949]

4. Something lighter- Adolph Hitler: My Part In His Downfall

by Spike Milligan (of Goon Show fame).

On receiving his call-up notice: One day an envelope marked O.H.M.S. fell on the mat..."For Christ's sake don't open it," said Uncle, prodding it with a stick. "Last time I did, I ended up in Mesopotamia, chased by Turks waving pots of Vaseline and shouting 'Lawrence, we love you' in Ottoman."

The dedication page carried a quote from Thucydides concerning the Peloponnesian War:

On the whole, however, the conclusions I have drawn from the proofs quoted may, I believe, safely be relied on. Thucydides.

Followed by:

I've just jazzed mine up a bit. Milligan

If you've never read it, give it a try. Brilliant! :7

[YankeyMCC]

5. From Jack London's "The Iron Heel"

"I stopped the carriage, got out, and, after a few minutes' conversation, persuaded two of the public woman to get into the brougham with me.

"I live in one of the loveliest localities of San Francisco. The house in which I live cost a hundred thousand dollars, and its furnishings, books, and works of art cost as much more. The house is a mansion. No, it is a palace, wherein there are many servants. I never knew what palaces were good for. I had thought they were to live in. But now I know. I took the two women of the street to my palace...

"...I didn't know what broughams were made for, but now I know. They are made to carry the weak, the sick and the aged; they are made to show honor to those who have lost the sense even of shame."

[Jim__]

6. "... where you paid $4.50 for a hamburger."

It's from Americana, Don Delillo's first novel published in 1971. The full sentence is:

We went to the Gut Bucket, a noveau speakeasy with spittoons and sawdust where you paid $4.50 for a hamburger.

The people who went to the Gut Bucket were a group of high-powered TV executives. I believe the point about the $4.50 hamburger is how overpriced the restaurant was. Times change.

[pitohui]

8. what a great voice he has or maybe i should say, what a great ear he has

another clip from americana

"If you don't get clap off her, you'll never get it."

he even makes dating a chick who's social when it comes to disease have a rhythm to it

Only one thing better than no stockings. That's stockings. They get you coming and going. It's a good old world as long as the little baby girls keep growing up.

i hear pervos talk like that all the time...

[Frank Coffin]

10. Here's one..

"Gracie left the table, leaving two monkey turds in the in-box"

That was from Mating Season and I hate to literally laugh out loud.

[JitterbugPerfume]

11. recently I read God Bless You Mr Rosewater

by Kurt Vonnegut


There was a photograph of Trout. He was an old man with a full black beard.He looked like a frightened aging Jesus, whose sentence to crucifiction had been commuted to imprisonment for life

I love Kurt Vonnegut!

[fadedrose]

12. Now a euphemism when I hear...

"love at first sight," after this exchange in Bryant & May on the Loose (p 99).

April: "What's this I hear about you going on a date with Jack Renfield? I thought nobdy liked him."

Janice Longbright: "Nobody did, and I still don't like the way he behaves, but I think working at the PCU is changing him for the better...."

April: "I wouldn't have thought he was your type."

Janice:

"These days my type is any type who still likes my type."

(Janice later responds to a question about her age, "I'm old enough to have to memorise a date before which I'm not supposed to be able to remember anything.")

[DearHeart]

13. From "The Probable Future" by Alice Hoffman

"What was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion."

Just Beautiful!

[fadedrose]

14. From PIGEON BLOOD, by Gary Alexander..

"Not bad for an amateur thespian, Kiet thought, wondering if she was replaying the role of the Blanche DuBois individual. He said, Mr. Ambassador, I must be blunt. Mrs. Dempsey-Mohn has accused a member of your legation of rape."

"Impossible.!" Kalashnikov shouted.

"No disrespect intended, Mr. Ambassador," Kiet said, intending profound disrespect, "but literal interpretation of your denial requires that all of your male personnel are impotent."

[Moe Shinola]

15. "Charmaine Thrale pointed out a photograph above the sideboard...

Three young men in a garden, two of them seated in cane chairs, one standing with hands raised and spread.
The standing figure, in open shirt and white trousers, declaimed to the others, who were conventionally dressed in their clothes of 1913. Heads of pale hair were helmets, were crowns or halos. A larger nimbus arched the garden,
where trees were massed above larkspur and a long lawn was methodically streaked with rolling. It seemed to be near dusk. And the magical youths on the grass were doomed by the coming war, even the survivors."


-from The Transit of Venus, by Shirley Hazzard, a book I started reading but have put down for awhile.
I fully intend to finish it.

[Kablooie]

16. 1Q84

One day, however, in a moment of carelessness, she did exactly that, and the goat died. As her punishment, the girl was put in total isolation for ten days, locked in an old storehouse with the goat’s corpse.

The goat served as a passageway to this world for the Little People. The girl did not know whether the Little People were good or bad (and neither did Tengo). When night came, the Little People would enter this world through the corpse, and they would go back to the other side when dawn broke. The girl could speak to them. They taught her how to make an air chrysalis.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

17. ...also from 1Q84

(and by the way, I loved this book, loved the atmosphere of the whole thing)

One of the two main characters is talking about someone he knew way back when. He sometimes gets a mental image of his old friend sculpting rats out of blocks of wood. Regarding this mental image, he says:

"People need things like that to go on living--mental landscapes that have meaning to them, even if they can't explain them in words".

For whatever quirky reason, I liked that a lot. I often "float" through various scenes--around the corner and up the hill near the house where I lived in third grade. Or I'll hover in my mind over the corner of the playground at my 5th grade elementary school. I do lots of mental flybys like this--it's not some out of body experience, it's just me daydreaming, unbidden by my conscious mind. Most times I don't even acknowledge this; it's just something that happens internally. And usually, unlike the character in 1Q84, there are no people involved in my drifting daydreams. I have memories of people, of course, but those come to the fore during different kinds of reminiscence. Does anyone else do this?

(edited to add: this is one of the features of ebooks that I really love. I can highlight a passage, and I can always go back to it. I'm also learning new words for the first time in a long time. Whereas before, I'd kind of/sort of know the definition of a word, and pick up the rest from contextual clues, now I just double-tap the word on my iPad, and the dictionary pops up and tells me its definition. I always highlight a word after I look it up, which give me a new vocabulary list at the end of each book. I'm doing vocab at age 42! Life is good.)