Memorable quotes: Books

[Cheri_N]

“I open at the close”

Brilliant. That line fascinated me. Although the books were full of little pearls of wisdom that was noteworthy. This one stuck though probably because I had days to mill over it before finally understanding its meaning at the end of the book. Have you ever read something that just stuck with you? For whatever reason.

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

"Men are jerks. Women are psychotic."

 

[Pilgrim]

"Duty is heavier than a mountain, Death is lighter than a feather."

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

"So it goes."

 

[tco21]

"So it goes."

Kurt Vonnegut hey?

Mine is: "He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt" about Yossarian from Catch-22.

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

Kurt Vonnegut hey?

The "Men are jerks. Women are psychotic" one is one of his from Timequake.

Yep, another from Slaughterhouse 5.

"In my prison cell I sit,
With my britches full of sh i t
And my balls are bouncing gently on the floor.
And I see the bloody snag
When she bit me in the bag.
Oh I'll never f u ck a Polack any more."

and finally

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. "

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

"You go up to a man, and you say, "How are things going, Joe?" and he says, "Oh fine, fine — couldn't be better." And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much."

 

[Boomstomp]

"It was no use. No f(*ing use at all."

Last line in a short story by Peter F Hamilton

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

"Hello, I am Wanda June. Today was going to be my birthday, but I was hit by an ice-cream truck before I could have my party. I am dead now. I am in Heaven. That is why my parents did not pick up my cake at the bakery. I am not mad at the ice-cream truck driver, even though he was drunk when he hit me. It didn't hurt much. It wasn't even as bad as the sting of a bumblebee. I am really happy here! It's so much fun. I'm glad the driver was drunk. If he hadn't been, I might not have gone to Heaven for years and years and years. I would have had to go to high school first, and then beauty college. I would have had to get married and have babies and everything. Now I can just play and play and play. Any time I want any pink cotton candy I can have some. Everybody up here is happy — the animals and the dead soldiers and people who went to the electric chair and everything. They're all glad for whatever sent them here. Nobody is mad. We're all too busy playing shuffleboard. So if you think of killing somebody, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and do it. Whoever you do it to should kiss you for doing it. The soldiers up here just love the shrapnel and the tanks and the bayonets and the dum dums that let them play shuffleboard all the time — and drink beer. "

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

"Roses are red
And ready for plucking
You're sixteen
And ready for high school."

 

[fastesthamster]

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!

 

[undesign]

"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you."

"All interpretation or observation of reality is necessarily fiction. In this case, the problem is that man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other purpose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species. It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for a human being. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake."

"It is part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means - be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our own lives or the absence of meaning."

"Do you know what religion is, Martin, my friend?
-I can barely remember the Lord's Prayer.
-A beautiful and well-crafted prayer. Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends,myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values , and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society."

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

 

[syntax]

"Duty is heavier than a mountain, Death is lighter than a feather."

WOT, re read TGS last wknd, awesome!!

 

[Ninja'd]

Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide."

Good Omens

Recycling and speed-limits are bull****. They're like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.

Fight Club

 

[Budza]

"Hello, I am Wanda June. Today was going to be my birthday, but I was hit by an ice-cream truck before I could have my party. I am dead now. I am in Heaven. That is why my parents did not pick up my cake at the bakery. I am not mad at the ice-cream truck driver, even though he was drunk when he hit me. It didn't hurt much. It wasn't even as bad as the sting of a bumblebee. I am really happy here! It's so much fun. I'm glad the driver was drunk. If he hadn't been, I might not have gone to Heaven for years and years and years. I would have had to go to high school first, and then beauty college. I would have had to get married and have babies and everything. Now I can just play and play and play. Any time I want any pink cotton candy I can have some. Everybody up here is happy — the animals and the dead soldiers and people who went to the electric chair and everything. They're all glad for whatever sent them here. Nobody is mad. We're all too busy playing shuffleboard. So if you think of killing somebody, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and do it. Whoever you do it to should kiss you for doing it. The soldiers up here just love the shrapnel and the tanks and the bayonets and the dum dums that let them play shuffleboard all the time — and drink beer. "

Crazy. Inspired me to read the whole thing: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Happy_Birthday_Wanda_JUne.html

Saw the Slaughterhouse 5 movie the other day- great stuff.

 

[Pointing1]

. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time
itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one
centre of pain. The paralysing immobility of a life every circumstance
of which is regulated after an unchangeable pattern, so that we eat and
drink and lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, according to
the inflexible laws of an iron formula: this immobile quality, that makes
each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother, seems to
communicate itself to those external forces the very essence of whose
existence is ceaseless change. Of seed-time or harvest, of the reapers
bending over the corn, or the grape gatherers threading through the
vines, of the grass in the orchard made white with broken blossoms or
strewn with fallen fruit: of these we know nothing and can know nothing.

For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.

 

[Mars]

"Mister Vimes is going to go SPARE. Absolutely Liberian poo"

 

[bodhi]

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

 

[Kilgore_Trout_Redux]

Crazy. Inspired me to read the whole thing: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/H...anda_JUne.html

Saw the Slaughterhouse 5 movie the other day- great stuff.

Yep, it is one of the quotes that I think really highlights the absurdity of the concept of a religious heaven.

Vonnegut was just so brilliant in so many ways.

Thanks for the link to the script btw.

 

[tco21]

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

I know the story behind the book - need to get to reading it some time.