January 2011
49 posts
4 tags
“The moon is a flower without a stem,
The sky is luminous;
Eternity was made...”
– Tonight by Sara Teasdale
3 tags
“And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.”
– The Magus by John Fowles
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“[When Raylene came to me, I let her touch my shoulder, let my head tilt to lean...”
– Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
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“I lost track after a while, happy to be home, weeping for my father, and...”
– Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
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“A devilish temper she had,” he would say. “But she was a dem fine...”
– The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis
3 tags
“What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.”
– The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert
4 tags
“The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr’d within...”
– Darkness by Lord Byron
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“[I’m telling you stories.] Trust me.”
– The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
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“Then I added “blah”, with a little grin, because I knew that shack...”
– The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
2 tags
“I see myself
on the underworld side of that water,
the darkness coming in...”
– Eavan Boland, “The Lost Land”
3 tags
“When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to...”
– The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
4 tags
“[And she, with a sad smile—which was already a smile of surrender to the...”
– Eyes of a Blue Dog (short story), by Gabriel García Márquez
3 tags
“The sun had risen above.”
– The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
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“And I couldn’t get it up.”
– Factotum by Charles Bukowski
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“I hardly ever weep any more, now,” she said with a bitter pride.”
– Man’s Fate by André Malraux
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“[They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no...”
– Desert Places by Robert Frost
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“It’s one of the things I liked about her. One of many.”
– The Archivist by Martha Cooley
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“And after Françoise had removed her pins from the mouldings of the window-frame,...”
– Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust
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“[But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply he walked towards the...”
– Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
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“Soon she will have her Wizard of Oz moment, the rods and cones in here eyes...”
– The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn
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“[Colin’s skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that...”
– An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
4 tags
“[He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what...”
– 1984 by George Orwell [redux]
3 tags
“[It goes on, this world, stupid and brutal.
But I do not.]
I do not.”
– Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
3 tags
“But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes...”
– The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
3 tags
“Brue put his arm around her shoulders where he had always wanted to put it, but...”
– A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré
3 tags
“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,...”
– The Day Is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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“I have faith in nights.”
– You, Darkness by Rainer Maria Rilke
2 tags
“And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer...”
– Dylan Thomas, Love in the Asylum
4 tags
“[Spoilt their evening! Spoilt their being alone together!] They would never be...”
– The Stranger (short story), by Katherine Mansfield
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“Only then did she understand that three thousand years had passed since the day...”
– Eva is Inside Her Cat (short story), by Gabriel García Márquez
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“He sat down beside a table; a Bradshaw lay at his elbow, and mechanically,...”
– Souls Belated (short story), by Edith Wharton
3 tags
“I should hope, then, that by the time of my employer’s return, I shall be...”
– The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
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“How lucky to find myself standing on this empty shore, with the indifferent...”
– The Invention of Love (play) by Tom Stoppard
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“And in an act of some kindness, she still doesn’t ask.”
– 48 Shades of Brown by Nick Earls
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“If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would...”
– Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
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“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the...”
– The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
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“[And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world...”
– Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
4 tags
“Mark no longer breathed, Mark had departed - whither, into what other dreams,...”
– Details of a Sunset (short story) by Vladimir Nabokov
3 tags
“I was still only thirteen, but I knew my childhood was already over.”
– The Last Apprentice : Night of the Soul Stealer by Joseph Delaney
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“[I stand up, and a tame blue bird lands on my shoulder and tries to nibble on my...”
– Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland
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“Well, well, let’s get on with it …”
– No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
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“Because life, and maybe death, will always be a gamble after all.”
– Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
4 tags
“[When at last I returned along the narrow shelf of rock to the ridge, I thought...”
– Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall
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“After all, once you know that part of something exists, it stands to reason that...”
– Second Glance by Jodi Picoult
3 tags
“She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had...”
– Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
3 tags
“[The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.]...”
– The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
4 tags
“Of course, I let him go.”
– Cloud, Castle, Lake (short story) by Vladimir Nabokov
3 tags
“Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle...”
– Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye
3 tags
“Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
lessens. …...”
– The Ninth Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke