Favorite quote(s) from a book

[bikinchris]

What quotes from a book stick in your mind?

[Ronsonic]

Carroll Smith's book on race car mechanicking has a foreword:

Remember, it is an inanimate object and therefor must, eventually, respond to reason.

[OtayBW]

My god, ma'am. You're so pretty, I'd walk 10 miles barefooted on a freezing morning just to stand in your schlit.

-- Richard Brautigan, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966'

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by OtayBW

-- Richard Brautigan, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966'

Brautigan was the master of the one-liner as poetry (or is that vice-versa?)

"I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid."

[dustyrider]

“But need alone is not enough to set power free; there must be knowledge.”
Ursula Le Guin- A Wizard of Earthsea

[Louis]

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

[paredown]

Catch 22, read at an impressionable age--here's a couple:

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.”

“They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
And what difference does that make?”

[NHAero]

Also Brautigan:
““My teachers could have easily ridden with Jesse James for all the time they stole from me.”

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

Brautigan was the master of the one-liner as poetry (or is that vice-versa?)

"I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid."

[NHAero]

Some of my favorites are from Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver.

“So you make a deal with the gods. You do these dances and they'll send rain and good crops and the whole works? And nothing bad will ever happen. Right.'…

"'No, it's not like that. It's not making a deal, bad things can still happen, but you want to try not to CAUSE them to happen. It has to do with keeping things in balance…. Really, it's like the spirits have made a deal with US…. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests.'…

"'Like a note you'd send somebody after you stayed in their house?'

"'Exactly like that. "Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one."'…

"It's a good idea,' I said. 'Especially since we're still here sleeping on God's couch. We're permanent houseguests.'

"'Yep, we are. Better remember how to put everything back how we found it.'

It was a new angle on religion, for me. I felt a little embarrassed for my blunt interrogation. And the more I thought about it, even more embarrassed for my bluntly utilitarian culture. 'The way they tell it to us Anglos, God put the earth here for us to use, westward-ho. Like a special little playground.'

"Loyd said, 'Well, that explains a lot.'…

"'But where do you go when you've pissed in every corner of your playground?'...

"To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

[pitonpat]

Still, the last sad memory hovers round, and sometimes drifts across like floating mist, cutting off sunshine and chilling the remembrance of happier times. There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which I have not dared to dwell; and with these in mind I say: Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
― Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps

[grognaak]

Favorite? Impossible. Two nuggets:

“If nothing were substituted for everything, it would still be too much and too little.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster

"Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. / All can know good as good only because there is evil."
--Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

[FlashUNC]

Jackie Brown at twenty-six, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns.

-- George Higgins, Friends of Eddie Coyle

[colker]

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

[AngryScientist]

from a recent read:

One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.

[Alaska Mike]

“Tourists and locals are watching from sidewalk cafés. Non-racers. The emptiness of those lives shocks me.” -The Rider

Tim Krabbe nails it in the first paragraph.