Places to Chat
Hi Everyone!
Chatterbox: Blab About Books
Book quotes
Hi Everyone! ...
Hi Everyone!
I feel like Blab About Books has been a little underloved recently, so I thought about threads, and I'm not sure if this one has been done before, but I'm doing now, so, AHEM.
Favorite lines/quotes from books! Have you ever felt like an author just pulls you in with the first line of a book? Or like there was an AMAZING quote that you just wanted to remember forever? Or one that you love because it's so true for you? This is the thread for you! Please post your quote, plus the book that it came from and the authors name (If you can remember it.)
'Now for those of you who know anything about blind children, you are aware that they make the very best thieves.'
First line of Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier
'Reader, I married him.'
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
'Call me The Giver.'
The Giver by Lois Lowry.
submitted by Hummingbird, The Backyard Flowers
(November 30, 2019 - 1:32 pm)
(November 30, 2019 - 1:32 pm)
Yes, I finished it just last night actually. It was indeed very good, but also very heavy. It's really well-written, and I would recommend if you like historical fiction (it reminds me, probably just because of it also being about WWII, of The Book Thief and Code Name Verity---but adult fiction, not YA), but only if you're okay with some very dark subject matter at times. Maybe look up content warnings if you're unsure.
(August 29, 2023 - 11:59 am)
Ooh, I have a great answer to all those questions, and it happens to be a book quote itself which I've been wanting to put on here for a while. This is what Puddleglum, a character in The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis, says.
"I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you like. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
It's a little different from the situation Doerr presents, but still - I think Doerr needed to read his CoN before he started writing. I think everyone ought to read them before trying to write anything lol :)
*rereads quote*
*melts in admiration* I mean it's sheer genius, that quote... It's kind of one of my life mottos.
(August 30, 2023 - 9:38 am)
That is a lovely quote... I personally think there's something to be said for realism, though, which necessarily includes some darker themes, if you're writing about WWII.
(September 1, 2023 - 1:16 pm)
And while we're talking about lovely Narnia quotes, this one from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe when Susan and Lucy are riding along on Aslan made me sigh in sheer happiness, especially the second part (though there are spoilers, not anything that shouldn't be expected though (oh, I kinda feel bad the admins have to read all the spoilers, sorry @admins)):
"That ride was probably the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hooves and the jingle of the bits and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or gray or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on, never missing his footing, never hesitating, threading his way with perfect skill between tree trunks, jumping over bush and briar and the smallest streams, wading the larger, swimming the largest of all. And you are riding not on a road nor in a park nor even on the downs, but right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunnny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains, and along giddy ridges and down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers."
woahh...
just a moment of silence for that
* *
Hope you found that as breathtaking and rewarding to read as I did @admins! Sorry if there are any mistakes :)
(September 2, 2023 - 1:03 am)
I've reread the whole LWatW tons of times but that quote is definitely one of my favorite parts of the whole book. I'm glad you posted it! It is so beautiful. I would love to have that ride...
(September 2, 2023 - 1:21 pm)
Eee what lovely Narnia quotes!! I feel Called to contribute some of my own... Here are some of my favorite quotes from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
"She (the Dawn Treader) was so small that, forward of the mast, there was hardly any room between the central hatch and the ship's boat on one side and the hen-coop (Lucy fed the hens) on the other. But she was a beauty of her kind, a "lady" as sailors say, her lines perfect, her colours pure, and every spar and rope and pin lovingly made. Eustace of course would be pleased with nothing, and kept on boasting about liners and motor-boats and aeroplanes and submarines ("As if he knew anything about them," muttered Edmund) but the other two were delighted with the Dawn Treader, and when they turned aft to the cabin and supper, and saw the whole western sky lit up with an immense crimson sunset, and felt the quiver of the ship, and tasted the salt on their lips, and thought of unknown lands on the eastern rim of the world, Lucy felt that she was almost too happy to speak."
"The wind never failed but it grew gentler every day till at length the waves were little more than ripples and the ship glided on hour after hour almost as if they were sailing on a lake. And every night they saw that there rose in the east new constellations which no one had ever seen in Narnia and perhaps, as Lucy thought with a mixture of joy and fear, no living eye had seen at all. Those new stars were big and bright and the nights were warm. Most of them slept on deck and talked far into the night or hung over the ship's side watching the luminous dance of the foam thrown up by their bows."
"After that for many days, without wind in her shrouds or foam at her bows, across a waveless sea, the Dawn Treader sailed smoothly east. Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged each other silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold of them."
And then just a quote I found from Momo:
"'You've given me an idea,' he said, 'but I couldn't put it into practice unaided.' He looked down at the tortoise. 'Cassiopeia, my dear, I'd like your opinion on something. What's the best thing to do when you're under siege?'
'HAVE BREAKFAST,' came the reply.
'Quite so,' said the professor. 'That's another splendid idea.'"
(September 5, 2023 - 8:22 pm)
"...it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart."
(September 10, 2023 - 12:13 pm)
"That sorrow which obsessed me during my youth was not caused by a lack of amusement, for I could have had it; neither from lack of friends, because I could have found them. That sorrow was caused by an inward ailment which made me love solitude. It killed in me an inclination for games and amusement. It removed from my shoulders the wings of youth and made me like a pond of water between mountains which reflects in its calm surface the shadows of ghosts and the colors of clouds and trees, but cannot find an outlet by which to pass singing to the sea." — Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings
(September 15, 2023 - 10:59 am)
ohhh... beautiful...
(September 15, 2023 - 12:37 pm)
it is. I've only read the beginning of the book, but i'm already half convinced it's going to be a new favorite of all time...
(September 15, 2023 - 9:45 pm)
"'How selfless I am,' [Howl] said." --- Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle
(September 27, 2023 - 7:38 pm)
"Mort, do you think something bad has happened to him?"
He gave her a blank look. "Don't be stupid," he said, "he's Death."
---Mort by Terry Pratchett
(October 16, 2023 - 8:34 pm)
My favorite of all time has to be 'Give it here Malfoy' from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
(October 17, 2023 - 4:32 pm)
"It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of rainbows in 'em." Captain Jim
Anne's House of Dreams L. M. Montgomery
(October 18, 2023 - 1:58 pm)
"'This duck tells me nothing!'" — Daniel O'Malley, The Rook
"Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped." — Andy Weir, The Martian
"I CAN DO MAGIC! FEAR ME, LAWS OF PHYSICS, I'M COMING TO VIOLATE YOU!" — Eliezer Yudokowsky, HPMOR
"'Nice comes from the Latin word for "stupid",' said Griffin. 'We do not want to be nice.'" — R. F. Kuang, Babel
"'We are at war,' Kitay said. 'And you are being evacuated because for gods know what reason, you've been deemed important enough to this country's survival. So do your job. Reassure your people. Help us maintain order. Do not pack your [fricking] teapots." — R. F. Kuang, The Poppy War
"'I don't love you. And I can kill anything.'" — R. F. Kuang, The Poppy War
"'Do not second-guess the sack of flour. The sack of flour is wise beyond her years.'" — Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves
(October 21, 2023 - 2:36 pm)