Nov 30 2009
Sony Reader Pocket Edition Giveaway: Help Me Fill My Widget
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ISony has a new social media site for booklovers called Words Move Me. As a way to promote this, Sony has approached a number of bloggers to share their reading experiences with others and have provided them a Sony Reader to the readership. We actually get two of them, one to give away and one to keep. Because I already have a Sony Reader, I’m going to give away both Sony Readers. This is the Sony Reader Pocket Edition.
I was given a tester to try out for a couple of weeks and I was pleasantly surprised by the size. It’s smaller but I liked how portable it is. The screen is nice and clear and I thought the bottom layout of the buttons was very intuitive. We have a pink (rose) one and a silver one to giveaway.
HOW TO ENTER:
- Simply leave a comment with your favorite quote along with the book and author of the book from which the quote comes.
- This contest will close on Sunday, December 5, 2009, 10:00 PM CST.
I will announce the winner on Monday and the device will be mailed Priority Mail to get to you before Christmas.
Shipping note: I’ll send these overseas, but with the following provisions: any shipping in excess of $12.00 has to be paid for by the winner, along with any additional fees.
I’ll be adding your favorite quotes to my widget. Thanks guys!
Related posts:
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:08:57
Ok what the heck! I am in. Would love to try for a pocket reader.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:11:35
From LORD OF SCOUNDRELS by Loretta Chase — Dain (hero) explaining to his friends why he got married:
“She shot me,” said Dain. “She had to be punished…Can’t have every female who feels vexed with me running after me with pistol cocked. Had to make an example of her, didn’t I?”
I adore that part of the book.
P.S. I wasn’t sure if it was required or not, but if you need me to, I’d be happy to review the reader for DA. :) Thanks!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:13:10
Gimme.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:17:58
“. . . you must not come lightly to the blank page.” — Stephen King, ON WRITING
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:18:01
Count me in. A lurker here, delurking. Thanks for the wonderfully varied content of this site.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:20:21
“the first step, the Crone who scried the crystal said, shall be to lose the way.” — Galway Kinnell “The Book of Nightmares”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:22:10
That’s the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to positions of authority.
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:22:26
“I’m at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. Everything is in the future for him.”
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:25:33
““My Lady, your father's messenger has just arrived, and he announces that the banns have been posted and your betrothed will be meeting you here to finalize the handfast ceremony.â€
My what?
“Today. Please, we must make you ready.†All I could do was blink up at her. What was she talking about? My betrothed? I wasn't even dating anyone! I'd fired the last guy I'd gone out with halfway through our blind date (Note to self: never, ever go on another blind date).”
-PC Cast, Divine by Mistake
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:29:22
Okay…mine isn’t quite as literary as some above (but I’m deeply digging “Julia’s” quote from “Catch-22″ and am thinking of posting in the hallway at work)!
Anyhow…mine is from a Susan Andersen book…and quite honestly, I don’t remember what book it was…but I just remember this had me rolling on the floor laughing.
“Men are like floors, once you lay’em, you can walk all over’em”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:30:21
“Am I in love? – Yes, since I am waiting.†The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game: whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.
- A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes
Count me in! :)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:34:59
A longer quote (paragraph) here, but the prose sets up the mood for the novel *perfectly*
“Let the fairy-tale begin on a winter’s morning, then, with one drop of blood new-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as the single spot of claret on a lace cuff. And it therefore follows that evil lurks behind each broken window, scheming malice and enchantment; while behind latched shutters the good are sleeping their just sleeps at this early hour in Riverside. Soon they will arise to go about their business; and one, maybe, will be as lovely as the day, armed, as are the good, for a predestined triumph….”
–Ellen Kushner, “Swordspoint”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:47:01
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
There are so many little moments of magic in this book….
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:48:09
“My Beth,†he whispered, his breath hot on her swollen lips. “Thank you.â€
“For what?†Beth couldn't stop crying, but she smiled, her face aching with it.
“Setting me free.â€
~ The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley
I’m in!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:49:27
The very beginning of a journey that would span over decades (both for the author, and his protagonists).
“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.”
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:49:31
“But who knew what would happen once he got to Canada? Canada with its pacifism and its socialized medicine! Canada with its millions of French speakers! It was like…like…like a foreign country!”
–Jeffery Eugenides, “Middlesex”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:53:14
Jane, this is a fun contest idea.
Below is one of many hilarious exchanges in Loretta Chase’s MR. IMPOSSIBLE. The set-up: Daphne, the heroine, needs help to find her missing brother in Egypt. The consul general is anxious to get rid of a certain problem aristocrat who cannot seem to stay out of trouble. So the consul recommends Rupert Carsington, aka Mr. Impossible, to Daphne. The following exchange takes place in a filthy jail where Rupert is currently cooling his heels after a dustup on the streets of Cairo.
“Mr. Beechey,” she said, her voice not as steady as she could wish, “are you sure this is the man I want?”
An impossibly deep voice, most definitely not Mr. Beechey’s, answered with a laugh. “That would depend, madam, on what what it is you want me for. ”
I love this book!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:53:39
Some Summers refuse to end. from Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury. Thanks for this lovely giveaway.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:58:07
There are so many things that I could put here, but I’ll go with a passage from my favorite book, The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Harry’s fingers closed round the blue hilt and she knew at once that she would handle this sword very well indeed–or it would handle her. For a moment she found herself wishing that she had been carrying Gonturan the day of the trials, and at this a slow sly smile spread across her face. She raised her eyes to Corlath’s face . . . Such was the slow sly smile he offered her in return that she rather thought he knew just what she was thinking.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 10:58:24
I have to.
I've been fighting it all night. I'm going to lose. My battle is as futile as a woman feeling the first pangs of labor and deciding it's an inconvenient time to give birth. Nature wins out. It always does.
-’from Bitten by Kelley Armstrong
These are my favorite opening lines of a book.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:00:52
One of my favorite book quotes comes from Stephen King’s “On Writing.” I used to have this taped to the wall above my desk:
“If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:01:41
I’m going to kiss you until the sun turns into the moon.
“SWOON”
-from Captured by Beverly Jenkins
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:04:16
“It was loaded,” he said coolly.
Georgette Heyer, DEVIL’S CUB
I know it’s short and simple, and I’m like the kid quoting “Jesus wept” at Sunday school, but man, the self-evidentness and understatement gets me every time.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:05:52
“All’s well as ends Better!” The Gaffer, The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkein
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:09:15
One of my favorite quotes from a book I read years ago –
“A long, slow kiss. With mouths open. Teeth knocking. Tongues tangling. The kind my brother Marsh used to call a Saturday Night Special.”
– Merline Lovelace, THE HARDER THEY FALL
There was also one from a Julianna MacLean book, one of her HHs. Can’t remember it completely but the hero asked the heroine to marry him (he’s titled, she’s not) and she replied with “You don’t want to marry me, I’m nobody” and he looked at her and said “You’re not nobody, you’re everything.” *sigh*
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:11:06
“It is far more seemly
to have thy Studie full of Bookes,
than thy Purse full of money. ”
-’ John Lyly (Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit)
This is an old quote and a good one.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:13:22
“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time, allowing us to voyage through time.”
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:16:09
I’ve included most of a paragraph to provide context and emphasized the line that is my favorite of any book I’ve read, the most powerful, and the one that both sustains and brings me to my knees.
“… Of course, if there is one lesson grief teaches, it is that there is no sense in some things. Still, I know if Ruth’s mother were alive, she would handle this, draw from the reserve of sacred strength that women are born with. She would wear clothes whose very smell comforted Ruth, she would put on an apron and make her soup and butter her toast and help her to walk to the bathroom when she needed it; and when things turned the worst, she would not leave. Women do not leave situations like this: we push up our sleeves, lean in closer, and say, “What do you need? Tell me what you need and by God, I will do it.” I believe that the souls of women flatten and anchor themselves in times of adversity, lay in for the stay. I’ve heard that when elephants are attacked they often run, not away, but toward each other. Perhaps it is because they are a matriarchal society.”
Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:22:07
“I will find you,” he whispered in my ear. “I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you—then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest.”
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
“Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”
–From Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
Maybe there is a more romantic quote somewhere in the canon of romantic writings, but if so, I have certainly never found it! This is a terrific contest, not only for the great prizes, but for the fun of reading all the entries. Thanks!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:22:08
I've got two quotes both from Kindred in Death by JD Robb. Love the relationship between Eve and Roarke.
Quote 1:
“I love you.†She kissed his cheeks, a little rough from the night's growth of beard. “Maybe because you're so pretty.â€
He was, she thought as the cat interrupted by wiggling his bulk under her arm and bellying between them. The carved lips, the sorcerer's eyes, and sharp, defined bones all framed in the black silk of his hair. When you added the firm, lanky body, it made a damn perfect package.
Quote 2:
“You're a full Irish.â€
“I was thinking breakfast, but you can have both.â€
Didn't she look happy, he thought, and rested-’and altogether delicious. That shaggy cap of deer-hide hair mussed about her face, those big dark eyes full of fun. The little dent in her chin he adored deepened just a bit when she smiled.
There was something about the moment, he thought, moments like this when they were so much in tune, that struck him as miraculous.
The cop and the criminal-’former-’he qualified, as bloody normal as Peace Day potato salad.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:24:58
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.” – Persuasion (by Jane Austen, of course!)
Sigh. Love this book a little more ever time I read it.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:27:39
“…and I fell in love with him just for that, for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan.”
As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She felt as if she had been handed a key to a great house she hadn’t known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, she felt other doors opening deep in the darkness, and lights coming on. She sat trembling as Mary went on.
Sexual awakening in a nutshell, from Phillip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:31:12
Oh some wonderful quotes.
Mine is much more simple and has been my favorite quote for over 2o years since I read it.
It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
And my second favorite quote from a Tom Robbins short story: Because sometimes fake happiness is just as good as the real stuff.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:35:58
It’s a long one, but my all time favorite. From “Faking It” by Jennifer Crusie:
“According to Grandma, there are two kinds of men in the world, doughnuts and muffins.”
. . .”Doughnuts are the guys that make you drool. . .they’re gorgeous and crispy and covered with chocolate icing and you see one and you have to have it …”
Davy said, “So doughnuts are good.”
“Well, yeah, for one night,” Nadine said. . .You can’t keep a doughnut overnight.”
“Ah,” Davy said. “But a muffin-”
“Is actually better the next day,” Nadine finished. “Muffins are for the long haul and they always taste good. They don’t have that oh-my-God-I-have-to-have-that thing that the doughnuts have going for them, but you still want them the next morning.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:37:15
No one has offered this yet?
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. – Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)
And from the book I’m currently rereading:
It was the day my grandmother exploded. – Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)
Both books live up to those awesome first lines.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:37:50
I went blank on my favorite quote. But I did manage to find this one, which I think is very profound.
From Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden short story – Restoration of Faith
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:40:28
Sometimes you just have to swallow what you can’t spit out. — Nora Roberts, Montana Sky
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:41:15
“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it; and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied; and it is all one.”
M. F. K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
This is an awesome contest – so many great quotes that add to my TBR list!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:41:56
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:44:53
“Be kind to dragons for thou art crunchy when roasted and taste good with ketchup.”
Dragonswan by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:48:03
My favorite is simple and short…
“Lady Madelyne had sealed her own fate. She’d warmed his feet.”
The quote is from Honor’s Spendor by Julie Garwood. One of my favorite Garwood books.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 11:50:28
” I was wrong back in San Diego.” Ken said, his familiar voice sliding around her in the darkness. “I wanted to fall in love with you- a number ten kind of love- and I pretty much convinced myself that I had. But that was stupid, because love doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to be really lucky to get a ten at first sight. But that’s what I wanted with you. I didn’t even know you, though. I mean, I liked what I knew, but I just kind of filled in the blanks the way I wanted you to be, so that you’d be perfect. And of course the sex was incredible, which made it even harder for me to see the truth-which is that whatever we had, it was just starting.”
Suzanne Brockmann ~ Out Of Control
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:05:05
from The Bone People, by Keri Hulme
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:06:03
“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”
-’ Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)
That book has so many beautiful quotes
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:07:48
Here is a quote from one of my favorite authors, who is unfortunately lesser known… but anyone who loves a good Arthurian/fantasy writer, must pick up Stephen R. Lawhead someday. Absolutely phenomenal. Here, he’s describing demon warriors, but put it in the middle of a Jackie Collins novel, and he could just as easily be musing on a pair of enhanced breasts…
“They were exquisite in their perfection. But it was the perfection of empty precision; soulless and insensate, lethal, immaculate in its vanity.”
from Stephen R. Lawhead’s Arthur
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:10:28
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:14:36
Oooh, perfect Christmas present!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:22:17
“You are what you do. Choose again, and change.” — Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers in Arms.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:22:33
“I like knowing where I stand. If you don’t know where you stand, you can’t decide if that’s where you want to be, or which direction you’d like to go from there.”
Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:32:40
I would love to participate (hoping for the pink one :) ).
My favorite quote (one of many actually) would be:
It’s the very first line in Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche. While I wasn’t overly impressed with the book (although it’s not bad either) this first phrase stayed with me for years now.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:35:13
“The greatest happiness,” said Valancy suddenly and distinctly, “is to sneeze when you want to.”
The Blue Castle, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:36:30
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell. Ashley, to Scarlett:
“Isn’t it enough that you’ve gathered every other man’s heart today? You’ve always had mine. You cut your teeth on it.”
Great contest, thanks!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:37:49
This quote is from Magic to the Bone (book 1) in the Allie Beckstrom series by Devon Monk. It’s an urban fantasy series and one of my favorites.
“Using magic meant it used you back. Forget the fairy tale hocus-pocus, wave a wand and bling-o sparkles and pixie dust crap. Magic, like booze, sex, and drugs, gave as good as it got.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:37:52
Not sure where this is from but Mr. Thomas Hardy said it:
“While many things are too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:47:21
“Reader, I married him.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I love this book so much that I have 3 ebook versions and 5 tree copies
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:50:38
“To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.” – Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn
Nov 30, 2009 @ 12:56:55
“Romance turns sex into art.”~Three Fates, Nora Roberts
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:01:30
“A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.”
-’ Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:09:33
“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”
-Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey.
Woo hoo! Great contest!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:12:33
My books are all in boxes, so I’m pulling a quote from the first of my favorites that I can find. Not a romance, but still great fun.
— Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:22:08
“But I’ve always thought – tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.” – Cordelia, Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:26:13
“I commend my soul to any god that can find it.”
Moist van Lipwig ~ Going Postal – Terry Pratchett
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:26:49
This is a quote from one of my fave childhood books. I remember it to this day.
When I stepped into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.
Thanks for the chance to win!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:29:15
“He kissed her again and again, and each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.”
The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:31:14
Quote hanging over my desk:
“The first draft of anything is sh*t.”–Ernest Hemingway.
Ah, inspiring words….. :)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:39:30
Sometimes all I want
is two armfuls of air,
a fistful of sky.
- A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:49:02
Speaking of widgets…
“…She was finally going to say it. Something brave and romantic. Too late, he told himself. They were past where it would do them some good. Still, he listened attentively. He waited, half-hoping, half fearing he might finally hear ‘Kiss me’ or ‘I love you.’ I love you would have been nice.
Instead, her sweet-soft classy voice said, like silk, in her tea-party singsong, ‘I figured out what I want. I want you to be naked as a statue: I want to see you in the rude with your widge hanging out.” …
“You promised. You told me when I could say what I wanted, I could have it.”
The Proposition by Judith Ivory
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:52:28
From The Perilous Gard, by Elizabeth Marie Pope, my favorite proposal scene in a book, ever:
“If you were any other woman, I could tell you I loved you, easily enough, but not you– because you’ve always seemed to me like a part of myself, and it would be like saying I loved my own eyes or my own mind. But have you ever thought of what it would be like to have to live without your mind or your eyes, Kate? To be mad? Or blind?” His voice shook. “I can’t talk about it. That’s the way I feel.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:53:08
Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me — Cal and Min are in the park sharing Krispy Kremes:
“The rush became a whisper-’THIS one-’and he breathed deeper, and before she could open her eyes, he leaned in and kissed her, tasting the chocolate and the heat of her mouth, and she froze for a moment and then kissed him back, sweet and insistent, blanking out all coherent thought.”
I just love the whisper…this one…
Thanks for the chance to win
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:57:07
Oooooh, I’m feeling like a WINNER! Ah, the power of positive thinking . . . Thanks.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 13:58:24
“Anthony looked down at his evil clutches — hands, he reminded himself, hands — and grinned anew.”
Julia Quinn, The Viscount Who Loved Me
Quinn books have so many funny memorable lines, but this is a favorite.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:03:43
“It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.†Celie, The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:16:19
How would you compare a Pocket Sony Reader with a Sony Reader 505? Pros and cons, perhaps?
–
“I told the insurance company I was sleeping when the house blew up.”
– Madame Mirabou's School of Love - Barbara Samuel
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:23:16
One of my favorites…
“Imaginative work… is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners…. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering, human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”
from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:25:10
“Don’t Panic”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- isn’t this the only advice anyone ever really needs?
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:26:43
“He kissed her, and that was the end of it. No more pretending, no
more holding back. Life changed by love, life sparkling now with its own peculiar
magic. He tightened his hold and let the transformation take over. When he lifted his
mouth from hers, he knew, he would be a different man.
He kissed her until the world was changed, and even that was not long enough.”
Sharon Shinn-Mystic and Rider
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:27:18
“All my life I dreamed of having someone think I was beautiful,” she whispered.
Had he ever thought she wasn’t? If so, he didn’t remember it.
Max and Louise (aka Low Down)
Silver Lining by Maggie Osborne
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:36:34
“My hair has turned into a black hole,” she said to the mirror. “Complete absence of light.
Getting Rid of Bradley, Jennifer Crusie
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:42:30
“My eyes are blue, my hair is brown, and my favorite word is cake.”
Stephanie Plum – Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:48:38
“Not miming. People should be allowed — no, they should be required to chase mimes down the street with bats.”
Eve Dallas From ORIGIN IN DEATH by J. D. Robbb
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:48:50
Yeah, so everybody knows this one, but it’s one of my favorites:
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Rings (book and movie)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 14:58:39
You were firing questions at me today, trying to get inside my head.
You asked if I believe in God.
I told you, of course I do–I’ve always had a strong sense of self.
Your house is quiet now, you’re sleeping upstairs and I’m alone with this blasted, idiotic book that purports to tally the sum of my life, and the fact is, maybe I do. But maybe, ka-lyrra, your God doesn’t believe in me.
Adam Black, Immortal Highlander, Karen Marie Moning
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:01:19
From my favorite book, and so true.
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 11, spoken by the character Atticus
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:05:55
“We’re of one mind, Grenville and I, and the mind is hers, on account of my being a man and not having one.”
The Last Hellion, Loretta Chase
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:06:45
“You–complete–arse–Ronald–Weasley!”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling
Hermione to Ron, after Ron returns. (I can’t help it. These two always amused me.)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:16:41
One of my many faves:
He couldn't believe she'd just walked into his place looking hot enough to ramp up the testosterone in the room to record-breaking levels, and cool enough to care less.
Sexy cool from Paradise Rules by Beth Kery.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:27:18
“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”
Severus Snape, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:35:46
From the Bible, Jeremiah 12:5 (RSV)
“If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?”
IOW, put up or shut up, sink or swim.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:46:18
She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was – anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:50:30
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. The friction tends to arise when the two are not the same.”
- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign
This has been one of my favorite quotes for years. Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my favorite authors, and is extremely quotable (I see a few up above!)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 15:52:43
A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It`s not just a woman`s term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don`t think beauty is neat anymore. It is unordered. It is unbrushed hair and a thorn back pocket. It`s bright, strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him I`d use all the warm colours – ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange.
I want him to see me as I saw him then. I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. I want him to stop someone out in the square and say, who`s that? Do you know her? Where is she from?
*****************************************************************
Still, I suppose it comes down to this: just as we love, and can`t help it, so we can`t help it if love`s not there.
“Eve Green” Susan Fletcher
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:04:32
*Sigh* So many good quotes, already used!
Here’s the first sentence from a book I think is a hoot:
“Got up at the crack of dawn to kill the Fatted Breakfast before driving Matt to the airport, only to discover that aliens had stolen my husband during the night and substituted something incomprehensibly vile in his place.”
Trisha Ashley, Every Woman for Herself.
Her earlier books are especially funny. Her heroines tend to be in their late thirties or early forties, not a demographic you often find in humorous romance.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:09:29
“It was a pleasure to burn.” Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:17:18
A quote and the opening line from one of my favorite recent YA titles:
I, Frankie Landau-Banks, hereby confess that I was the sole mastermind behind the mal-doings of the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds.
(From The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart)
Thanks for such an exciting contest!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:21:55
“This is magnificent– and it is true! It never happened; yet it is still true. What magic art is this?”
Puck in “A Midsummer Nights Dream,” Dream Country, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:25:03
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
—Pride and Prejudice (Austen) .
..since someone already mentioned the opening line, which was going to be my pick too!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:26:02
Hi,
My favourite quote is:
“I do not say my life is worth more than another man’s, but I prize it highly.”
– The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:31:02
“Scotland in the Fall. Were there any other words in the Mother Tongue that could possibly conjure up more romantic thoughts and feelings than those?â€
A Garden in the Rain by Lynn Kurland
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:35:49
I can’t get this speech out of my mind: Christian, Duke of Jervaulx in Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale. He’s fighting for his Duchess; that he’s had a stroke makes it all the more poignant.
“Maddy … ‘fornication’?” He was halfway between a laugh and tears. “I called it … love for you. Before God … love … honor … my wife … cherish all my days. I said it. Still truth, Maddy. Still the truth … in me, and always.”
Oh God, the whole speech is so heart-wrenching. I love Christian.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:39:21
Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it. -Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:40:35
My absolute favorite book has this quote that I remember when I write.
The worst sin–perhaps the only sin–passion can commit is to be joyless. spoken by Lord Peter Whimsey to Harriet Vane in “GAUDY NIGHT”.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:42:54
No fair. You picked mine. I love that scene from If His Kiss is Wicked, although you could choose almost any snippet of dialogue from that book and it would be equally wonderful. Jo Goodman at her very best! As for fave lines, I love this from The Great Gatsby, … so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past…
Nov 30, 2009 @ 16:55:06
A lot of lines in this book make me laugh, so it’s hard to choose just one!
How about: “I’m over any problem I had with your career choice” – Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Boby Mayer.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:10:50
From Julie Garwood’s Honor’s Splendour
Madelyne is talking to her sister-in-law about the Spartan ladies…saying first that probably all went to fat by the time they were twelve and that they took more than one man to their bed. Her sister-in-law Adela asked if it was at the same time and Madelyn answered, ” I don’t believe its possible to be flat on your back with more than one man at a time.” p. 166 in the 1987 version. That whole conversation was hilarious!
B
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:11:34
Jamie has just asked Susan to marry him, and she has said no:
“Oh. I only ask because I hate the thought of not having breakfast with you for the rest of my life.”
“My dear,” I said. “Jamie. That’s a different question.”
-Freedom and Necessity, by Emma Bull and Steven Brust. I love that book, an dthis whole scene is wonderful.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:13:18
crap. My comment didn’t post…. here it is…
“The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.”
-Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:16:18
Not as well known as it deserves to be, but still one of the best contemporaries I’ve read is The Sweet Gum Tree by Katherine Allred. I cried buckets of tears when I read this book. One of my many favorite parts is from the beginning of the book..
“A sweet gum is the chameleon of wood, its corky exterior hiding its inner ability to imitate anything from cherry to mahogany. But its real value, one unrealized by most people, is its deep red heart, steady and strong. They see only the pale fibrous wood, easily warped, that surrounds the core. Like the town of Morganville saw Nick Anderson”.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:18:07
very cool! Enter me, please!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:31:46
w00t fun for everyone!
Quote:
Maybe God is a man of perfect, flawless character. Who only watches over everyone equally…
the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor–and never plays favorites or reaches his hand out to any of them.
Oh what a wonderful God.
He can just drop dead.
~Kieli, Chapter 6 ‘How Many More Steps To the Light Marking the Way?’
by Yukako Kabei
Nov 30, 2009 @ 17:51:22
From the book I am reading now, “It’s generally said that a man can be known by the company he keeps, and Tristan Talbot was likely the only fellow in London who went dicing with his manservant.” By Liz Carlyle
Isn’t that the best opening line! I bought the book just because of that line.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:02:43
“I don’t care if I pass your test, I don’t care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won’t let you beat me unfairly-I’ll beat you unfairly first.” Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:14:21
Thanks for the contest.
My current favorite quote is from the new Ilona Andrew’s
novel ON THE EDGE:
“Yes. I’m too mad to punish you right now. We’ll talk about it when we get home. Go brush your teeth, comb your hair, put on dry clothes, and get the guns. We’re going to Wal-Mart.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:25:39
Danse Macabre by Laurell K. Hamilton
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:26:41
One of my fave moments is from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:34:04
Awesome contest!! Neat that they have this new Sony too!
I love so many quotes from books, that one had me giggling with Celeste Bradley’s right when I started this one! She has a wit about her in her writing that pulls you right in. I seem to find this with each book she starts til the end!. This quote is from DESPERATELY SEEKING A DUKE:
This is a sentence from a lovemaking scene that is romantic but so funny too when she says:
” Goodness”, Phoebe panted, “I didn’t know I could bend that way!”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:34:50
“Fern says the animals talk to each other. Dr Dorian, do you believe animals talk?”
“I never heard one say anything,” he replied. “But that proves nothing. It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention. Children pay better attention than grown-ups… Perhaps if people talked less, animals would talk more.”
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:46:04
“‘Whatever comes,’ she said, ‘cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.’”– A Little Princess, Frances Hodges Burnett.
My favorite line from one of my favorite books.
This is a fun contest!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:47:04
Christian to Maddy :
“I called it…love for you. Before God…love…honor…my wife…cherish all my days. I said it. Still truth, Maddy. Still the truth… in me, and always.”
Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:48:07
Awesome contest! Thanks for sharing the e-readers with us!
Here’s my favorite quote……From Sherrilyn Kenyon’s book Bad Moon Rising–”We have three kinds of family. Those we are born to, those who are born to us, and those we let into our hearts.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:49:42
Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
Nov 30, 2009 @ 18:50:27
My favorite quotes are,
From Christine Feehan’s Wild Rain ” Deep inside where it counted,they moved together, blended and merged, becoming one being in one skin”
From Abby Gaines The Groom Came Back “…everything Jack said imprinted itself on her brain, which seemed to have only one purpose these days. To be a storehouse for Jack’s words.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:04:49
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.
Persuasion- Jane Austen
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:17:03
I know it’s not the most creative choice, but these words from Anne Frank always moved me:
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
And this one reminds me of myself as a kid. That strong self independent delusion:
“Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite independent of anyone.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:23:26
Reunion in Death, J.D. Robb — “We made ourselves. Now, I guess, we make each other.”
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:24:39
Already entered, but here’s another gem from Crusie’s Faking It. Tilda Goodnight is expalining why she doesn’t need Davy’s “attentions” as she has used her trusty “personal device” for quite a while and it’s never let her down.
Davy: “You’re in a long tern relationship with an appliance?”
Cracks me up everytime.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:35:05
No, this isn’t literary, but I felt category romance deserved a favourite quote:
“Was his fear of weddings a medical condition? Matrimoniphobia, perhaps?”
From Lucy King’s “Bought: One Damsel in Distress”, the first category to make me laugh (a lot) and cry in a very long time.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:44:03
From Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase (for those of you who haven’t read it yet, this is the begining of the first witty exchange between the Hero and Heroine, although technically, the Heroine is speaking to her brother. It is the Hero’s reaction to her that makes this whole exchange particularly wonderful!)
“That, Bertie, is a consequence of the feminine brain having reached a more
advanced state of development,†said the female without looking up. “She
recognizes that the selection of a gift requires the balancing of a profoundly
complicated moral, psychological, aesthetic, and sentimental equation. I should
not recommend that a mere male attempt to involve himself in the delicate
process of bal-anting it, especially by the primitive method of counting.â€
For one unsettling moment, it seemed to Lord Dain that someone had just
shoved his head into a privy. His heart began to pound, and his skin broke out in
clammy gooseflesh, much as it had on one unforgettable day at Eton five and
twenty years ago.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:44:24
Great contest/thread. I love Roald Dahl’s subversiveness that dares you to think differently. This is wonderful sampling from The Witches:
“She might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment. Look carefully at that teacher. Perhaps she is smiling at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Don’t let that put you off. It could be part of cleverness.
I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But –here comes the big “but”– not impossible.”
One of the best “children’s book not really for children” is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince. This always reminds me not to make the mistake of trying to get to know a person in the wrong way:
“They never say to you, ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?’ Instead, they demand ‘How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much money does his father make?’ Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.“
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:49:23
Ok you know I would pick Megan Whalen Turner. This is from the Queen of Attolia, and one of the most romantic passages:
“…she asked, “Who am I, that you should love me?”
“You are My Queen,” said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.
“Do you believe me?” he asked.
“Yes” she answered.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes”
“I love you.”
And she believed him.
Sigh.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 19:57:58
So many books, so little time.
Please put me in the pot for drawing.
Lydia
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:16:16
“One of life’s certainties is that there is generally a last chocolate hidden in all those empty wrappers.” Terry Pratchett, The Thief of Time
This would push me over the e-book edge, truly.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:16:59
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene II:
“Doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”
This quote is simply brilliant.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:17:29
So many amazing quotes! I love the first line from Silent in the Grace too!
The one that springs to mind for me is something Roarke says to Eve (although apologies because I cannot remember which In Death book [JD Robb] it is from – I hope that is OK Jane?):
*SIGH*
Thank you so much Jane. Am off to read all the quotes :)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:18:33
“Bite me.” -Eve Dallas
_____ In Death, Nora Roberts
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:27:50
So many good quotes, I have a terrible memory, and can’t bring to mind any of my favorite except those parts of the Shakespeare sonnet that Marianne quotes in Sense and Sensibility. I don’t know that I always agree with it, love does change, but the quote always makes me think of the book.
Here it is in its entirety, though I only have the part from “Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds” memorized.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:28:30
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Every single time I begin re-reading this book this one line warms me down to my toes. It makes me smile and reminds me of all the great lines to come…
I’m in, I’d love a Sony reader!
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:46:04
There are so many great quotes out there, but here’s one I felt moved to write on the back of a receipt while finishing the book recently…
“It is not the brightest that succeed. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we have made on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities- and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.” The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 20:53:22
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
-To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Nov 30, 2009 @ 21:08:05
Paraphrased, because I can’t find it right now.
“where have you been?”
“shopping.”
Cordelia Vorkosigan in Barryar. Lois Bujold.
Best Scene Ever.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 21:13:46
My life would be so much easier with this.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 21:19:38
“Freeze. Go ahead, day my make, or, I will shoot you in the dingle-dangle.” Reforming Freddy by Joan-Elliott Pickart
Nov 30, 2009 @ 21:23:15
From Lisa Kleypas’ Tempt Me at Twilight:
“…You know, Marks, if you ever learned to hold your tongue, your chances of attracting a man would rise exponentially.”
Her eyes narrowed . “Why would I want to attract a man? I have yet to see anything they’re good for.”
“If for nothing else,” Leo said, “you need us to produce more women.”
I can’t wait for the fourth book in the Hathaway series. Leo and Marks are a hoot and a half.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 21:25:47
“I am just glad I am not in the point and laugh category.” Mr Perfect by Linda Howard
Nov 30, 2009 @ 21:28:51
I specifically remember we both promised never to drink from any man’s goblet of wine. From the looks of you, Frances Catherine, I’m thinking you broke your word.
Julie Garwood’s The Secret
Nov 30, 2009 @ 22:11:56
It’s cheesy and not my absolute favorite quote ever because I can’t remember which book has the line I thought to offer, but this one is sweet and romantic and if a tortured alpha male saw fit to say this to me, I’d have his babies:
“I was dead until you found me, though I breathed. I was sightless, though I could see. And then you came… and I was awakened.” –Zsadist in JR Ward’s Lover Awakened.
Nov 30, 2009 @ 22:14:12
Fun!
Here’s one of my faves:
“For so many years,” he said, “for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men.” I felt him swallow, and he shifted slightly, the linen of his nightshirt rustling with starch.
“I was ‘Uncle’ to Jenny’s children, and ‘Brother’ to her and Ian. ‘Milord’ to Fergus, and ‘Sir’ to my tenants. ‘Mac Dubh’ to the men of Ardsmuir and ‘MacKenzie’ to the other servants at Helwater. ‘Malcolm the printer,’ then, and ‘Jamie Roy’ at the docks.” The hand stroked my hair, slowly, with a whispering sound like the wind outside. “But here,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him, “here in the dark, with you….I have no name.”
– from Voyager by Diana Gabaldon
Nov 30, 2009 @ 22:16:11
I will have to paraphrase, because I can’t locate the book at the moment, but it’s the opening line to “The Silicon Mage” by Barbara Hambly, and it goes something like this:
“The worst thing about knowing Gary Fairchild had been dead for a month was seeing him every day at work.”
Now… doesn’t THAT make you want to read more??
Nov 30, 2009 @ 22:21:41
“Your job will be to separate the white thumbtacks from the colored ones. Be sure to throw the colored ones away. They must leave the building. If they don’t, then you will. The president, Daniel Rosen, likes only white thumbtacks at The Agency. Also, should you ever serve him a drink, he has just four ice cubes in his Diet Coke. If you put in more, he will throw the surplus ice cubes at you. If you put in three, he’ll throw the entire drink at you.”
From The Second Assistant: A Tale from the Bottom of the Hollywood Ladder by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare
Nov 30, 2009 @ 22:26:01
“Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE.”
Last Words, William S. Burroughs
(edited to add that Last Words is a collection of Burroughs’ journal entries, those were not his last spoken words. sorry)
Nov 30, 2009 @ 22:58:13
From Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer:
Nov 30, 2009 @ 23:18:14
For today, my favorite quote :
Robert Heinlein, as said by Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love
Nov 30, 2009 @ 23:33:59
From Yoda (and George Lucas) to Luke Skywalker:
“Do or do not….There is no try.”
“Size matters not . . . Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?” (obviously Yoda is not an erotic romance hero)
Thanks for the chance for the reader, Jane and Sony.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 00:04:14
It’s old school, but I love Marie de France. My favorite of her poems, Chevrefoil, is about Tristan and Isolde:
For without her he cannot live.
For those two, it’s just like with
The sweet honeysuckle vine
That on the hazel tree will twine:
When it fastens, slips itself right
Around the trunk, ties itself tight,
Then the two survive together.
But should anyone try to sever
Them, the hazel dies right away,
And the honeysuckle, the same day.
“Dear love, that’s our story, too:
Never you without me, me without you!”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 00:14:03
All books are either dreams or swords.
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
from Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, a poem by Amy Lowell
Dec 01, 2009 @ 01:21:36
@Luna: by Luna November 30th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Davy: “You're in a long tern relationship with an appliance?â€
This was one of the best lines EVER! Thanks for the memory . . .
Dec 01, 2009 @ 01:27:14
One that’s stayed with me for years: “Love is the light that casts no shadows”. It’s from one of Elizabeth Lowell’s historical westerns (I think Only You, but it might have been Only His).
Dec 01, 2009 @ 01:51:13
Hmmm. This is a tough one since I have so many favorite quotes (and not all from books). I’ll go with this one:
“The imagination is always the best torturer.†in The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 02:11:41
“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper which were unhappy.”
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
My favourite first page ever!
Dec 01, 2009 @ 02:36:32
Repeats are allowed right? Because My favorite quote from any book ever is the same as 12 and for the same reason. I have never read a starting paragraph that puts one so perfectly in the story as this one:
“Let the fairy-tale begin on a winter's morning, then, with one drop of blood new-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as the single spot of claret on a lace cuff. And it therefore follows that evil lurks behind each broken window, scheming malice and enchantment; while behind latched shutters the good are sleeping their just sleeps at this early hour in Riverside. Soon they will arise to go about their business; and one, maybe, will be as lovely as the day, armed, as are the good, for a predestined triumph….â€
~ “Swordspoint†by Ellen Kushner
Dec 01, 2009 @ 03:06:22
” My mother-in-law would always apologize before serving dinner when I was in attendance, saying, “This must seem pretty ordinary for a chef… ” She had no idea how magical, how reassuring, how pleasurable her simple meatloaf was for me, what a delight even lumpy mashed potatoes were-being, as they were, blessedly devoid of truffles or truffle oil.”
—Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
Love him, and this book is funny as hell.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 03:10:12
“When the day shall come, that we do part,” he said softly and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’ – ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”
Jamie Fraser to Clare in The Fiery Cross (Diana Gabaldon).
Best last line ever! (IMO)
Dec 01, 2009 @ 04:04:01
…”Can she be saved?” Did he not owe it to her to try?
Michael studied him with obsidian eyes. “I can not save her.”
Hugh nodded. If a place like Caelum could exist, then it surely possible to save a demon. “Then I will.” Demon Angel, Meljean Brook
“Then I will.” I love that.
I posted this on my blog in January of 2007–and I still love that :)
Dec 01, 2009 @ 04:07:21
I can understand why people cut this quotation down the most romantic bit, but I prefer it in its entirety:
Dec 01, 2009 @ 04:45:42
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
Word cannot express my affection for “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith. Probably my favourite opening line ever.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 05:22:09
“‘If a man has to say trust me it’s a sure sign you cannot. Trust him, that is. Trust is a thing you do without words. ”
-’ Juliet Marillier (Wildwood Dancing)
Yay!
Dec 01, 2009 @ 06:16:22
What a fab giveaway!
I don’t know what book this is from, nor whether it’s from a book at all, but I came across it this week and loved it. I thought it especially applies to the work you guys do at DA.
It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:03:58
“Blood. Horrible, red, sticky blood. Dripping down my throat. Gagging me. Oh the taste. Weak, stale. I hate it, hate it–
Oh yeah, the guy had a bad blood issue.”
From Hotter After Midnight by Cynthia Eden.
Those lines crack me up.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:08:38
Yay! Love this since it’s on my DD’s Christmas list and now searching for this quote has made me want to re-read this fav book of mine. Here goes:
“Darling, do shag Mark Darcy over the turkey curry, won’t you? He’s very rich.”
and because it’s funny too:
“Emotional fuckwittage,” which is spreading like wildfire among men over thirty. As women glide from their twenties to thirties, Shazzer argues, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian. Stereotypical notions of shelves, spinning wheels and sexual scrapheaps conspire to make you feel stupid, no matter how much time you spend thinking about Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon.
From Helen Feilding’s Diary of Bridget Jones
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:15:06
A favorite quote….(not romance genre…but one that makes me think). Plus…I will use this as ‘food’ for my writings. Thanks Jane…for the opportunity to win the Sony eReader.
‘It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him into evil ways.’~Buddha.
BUKKYO DENDO KYOKAI – One hundred & twenty-eighth revised edition, 1986
I wanted to quote ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ by Madeleine L’Engle….about the Happy Medium. But could not find the exact quote. :)
Be well and Enjoy…
ps love your blog…I read it always.
Debra
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:18:34
“No angel she had ever read about had willingly taken it in the ass.”
-from CURSE OF CUPID by Christine McKay
Some awesome quotes going on here :-)
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:21:05
“The Freer went then to his books to see what should be done. For a long while he read in silence but for his breathing, while Alveric and Lirazel stood before him. And at last he found in his book a form of service for the wedding of a mermaid that had forsaken the sea, though the good book told not of Elfland. And this he said would suffice, for that the mermaids dwelt equally with the elf-folk beyond thought of salvation. So he sent for his bell and such tapers as are necessary. Then, turning to Lirazel, he bade her forsake and forswear and solemnly to renounce all things pertaining to Elfland, reading slowly out of a book the words to be used on this wholesome occasion. ….Then Alveric implored her and she said the say in the book, “though my father could blast this spell,” she added, “if it ever crossed one of his runes.” And the bell being now brought and the tapers, the good man wedded them in his little house with the rites that are proper for the wedding of a mermaid that hath forsaken the sea.” ——— Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:42:29
I always liked this one from Mansfield Park because it makes me laugh: “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:47:47
My favorite opening line (but I don’t remember the book…sorry)
“Oh? But he was alive a moment ago!”
Now please…I really need that e reader!
Dec 01, 2009 @ 07:52:56
comment!
(I’d leave a quote but I’m blanking out)
Dec 01, 2009 @ 08:23:45
“I can’t think. I’m too busy worrying.” — A Loyal Companion by Barbara Metzger.
First time poster!
Dec 01, 2009 @ 08:32:02
Connie Brockway’s As You Desire:
He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. “You are my country, Desdemona.” Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. “My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdent Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.”
I <3 Harry.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 08:47:13
I’d adore to win a Sony Reader – I have one myself, love it, but would like my daughter who’s teaching abroad to have one. A favourite passage from Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase:
While he tied her petticoat, she swallowed and said, “I daresay proper ladies do not unbutton gentlemen’s trousers.”
“They do not do that, ” he said as he tugged her frock straight, “nearly so often as one could wish.”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 09:24:01
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels:
“Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.”
“Bishops move diagonally. That’s why they often turn up where the kings don’t expect them to be.”
Come to think of it, it’s that season again when it’s time to re-read “Hogfather” and listen for the jingles…
Dec 01, 2009 @ 09:27:12
“Sex is interesting, but it’s not totally important. I mean it’s not even as important, physically, as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.”
~ Charles Bukowski
“The fact of the matter is, I’ll never own an e-reader unless I win one.”
~ impoverished writer
Dec 01, 2009 @ 09:29:55
@K. Z. Snow:
That’s the BEST quote so far! LOL!
and too true…
Dec 01, 2009 @ 09:32:28
“Never give aversion therapy to a masochist. The results are unpredictable.” — Lois McMaster Bujold, _Mirror Dance_
Dec 01, 2009 @ 09:44:52
“Get off the cross someone else needs the wood.” – Sherrilyn Kenyon, Acheron
Dec 01, 2009 @ 09:52:03
“Where I am always thou art, thy image lives within my heart.” Sherrilyn Kenyon, Bad Moon Rising.
“erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s (Philosopher’s) Stone.
“We could have saved it. But we were too doggone cheap. Only he didn’t say “doggone”.” Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 10:27:46
I have a fave line from a NY Times article on how the brain tries to create order out of patterns.
“Disorientation begets creative thinking.”
Having a doctor say this makes me feel a whole lot better about my frequent moments of dinginess.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 10:33:21
“Hell is not a place, it’s a state of mind and body; hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name.” from Phantom by Susan Kay.
“We choose not where we love.” from Phantom by Susan Kay
Dec 01, 2009 @ 11:01:10
“The Godfather” by Mario Puzo
The novel starts off with a quote from Balzac – “Behind every great fortune, there is a crime.”
Oh, my god, I love this novel so much! I am one with “Fredo the Weak One.”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 11:23:20
Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.
-On Writing by Steven King
Dec 01, 2009 @ 11:32:09
“I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
Last line of Ulysses by James Joyce…sooo beautiful.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 11:59:48
This one has stuck with me for years –
“Life happens one day at a time, like water dripping on a stone. You don't notice the change except over the years…no one deserves all the good or the bad that comes their way. You just take it the way it comes, one day at a time. ” – Pearl Cove – Elizabeth Lowell
Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:11:37
These frame the book beautifully…
First sentence, first chapter:
There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.
First sentence, last chapter:
There were golden chrysanthemums on the judge’s bench; they looked like burning banners.
Dorothy L. Sayers, in Strong Poison
Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:19:13
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (preface)
Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:44:33
Another Jane Eyre fan here: “Reader, I married him.”
It gives me goose bumps every time I read it.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 12:59:27
And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The Day Dream
Dec 01, 2009 @ 13:49:22
My favorite quote from my favorite book and quite uncoincidentally, some of my favorite words to live by. :)
“On the day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
- Betty Smith “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 13:57:12
So many quotes, all half remembered.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
–Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft
Dec 01, 2009 @ 13:57:35
“Evil is always possible, while good is eternally difficult.”
Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire
Dec 01, 2009 @ 13:58:53
Here are a couple from one of my favorites, the Thursday Next Series:
“I was on HPD–Heathcliff Protection Duty–in Wuthering Heights for two years, and believe me, the ProCaths tried everything. I personally saved him from assassination eight times.”
– Miss Havisham, Lost in a Good Book
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing his temples. “I don’t know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything.”
– Hamlet, Something Rotten in Denmark
Dec 01, 2009 @ 14:07:15
I want one of these so desperately, you wouldn’t believe it, but can’t begin to afford it. So, here is my entry:
The human heart can see what is hidden to the eyes, and the heart knows things that the mind does not begin to understand.”
scroll over the final scene in the movie “They Might Be Giants”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 14:27:40
One of my favorite quotes is from Judith McNaught’s Paradise. From the character of Matt Farrell – “I’ll give you paradise on a gold platter. Anything you want – everything you want. I come with it, of course. It’s a package deal.”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 15:01:11
Can we enter more than once? Here is another one I like:
“You do not like them.
So you say.
Try them! Try them!
And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.”
~Green Eggs and Ham ~ Dr. Seuss
Dec 01, 2009 @ 15:16:10
Claudia Dain’s The Courtesan’s Secret, Sophia speaking:
“Men are so easy to lead around, and they provide their own little leash.”
Please enter me.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 15:26:34
I’m interested in trying the Sony reader. The following is the opening line of Deanna Raybourn’s first book in the Julia Grey mystery series, Silent In the Grave:
To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 15:47:00
Thanks Jane for another great contest!
Here is one of mine:
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
-’ Jack Kerouac –The Dharma Bums
Dec 01, 2009 @ 16:09:00
lol well I meant to post before 2/3 of the comments now… and I wanted to do something brilliant and high brow… but – decided instead on an obscure book I love very much. Especially as I was discussing the author was “RRRJessica” and MÃ ili. Anyway, this is one of the best opening lines ever. Who *wouldn’t* want to read this book? :P
“My mother was the village whore and I loved her very much.”
-Pigs Don’t Fly… but Dragons Do by Mary Brown
Dec 01, 2009 @ 16:37:14
“When a writer is born into a family, that family is finished.” Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz
Dec 01, 2009 @ 17:20:05
I love the H/H “meet cute” from Georgette Heyer’s Black Sheep. Abby doesn’t realize the man she has just met is Miles, not Stacy Calverleigh (Miles is Stacy’s uncle). The younger man has been romancing her niece, Fanny, and she tries to warn him away.
“You must know very well that I am Fanny’s aunt.”
“Yes, you’ve just told me so,” he agreed.
“You knew it as soon as I made myself known to you!” She checked herself, determined not to lose her temper, and said, as pleasantly as she could. “Come, Mr. Calverleigh! let us be frank. I imagine you also know why I did make myself known to you. You certainly contrived to ingratiate yourself with my sister, but you can hardly have supposed that you would find all Fanny’s relations so complaisant!”
“He was watching her rather intently, but with an expression of enjoyment which she found infuriating. He said: “No, I couldn’t, could I? Still, if your sister likes me . . .”
“My sister, Mr. Calverleigh, was not aware, until I enlightened her, that you are not, as she had supposed, a man of character, but one of — of an unsavoury reputation!” she snapped.
“Well, what an unhandsome thing to have done!” he said reproachfully. “Doesn’t she like me any more?”
Abby now made the discovery that it was possible, at one and the same time, to be furiously angry and to have the greatest difficulty in suppressing an almost irresistible desire to burst out laughing.
Also loved these quotes from Eva Ibbotson’s A Company of Swans:
[b]ut she was so intelligent she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence. . .they don’t talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good . . .
and
“I am ruined’ said Harriet, waking in the great white-netted bed. The word seemed to her so beautiful that she spoke it again to herself, very softly: “Ruined. I am a fallen woman.” She turned her head on the pillow. Rom’s dark head was half-buried in the sheet, with one arm thrown out in sleep. The problem now was what to do with so much happiness; how to contain it and not let it spill out and disturb him. . . .A new world lay before her — a world whose existence she had not even guessed. The mystics knew it, and perhaps God Himself (and possibly Johann Sebastian Bach in places) . . . But none of them had been ruined by Rom, so they could not know it as she knew it. . . .
Dec 01, 2009 @ 17:29:38
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it by George Santayana
Dec 01, 2009 @ 18:08:12
When I re-read Barrayar again recently, I was struck by this passage and how much I loved Lois McMaster Bujold’s writing and how much more I loved the relationship between Cordelia and Aral. (it contains spoilers though)
Count Piotr’s hand slapped down hard upon the table. “Good God, woman, where
have you been?” he cried furiously.
A morbid lunacy overtook her. She smiled fiercely at him, and held up the bag.
“Shopping.”
For a second, the old man nearly believed her; conflicting expressions whiplashed
over his face, astonishment, disbelief, then anger as it penetrated he was being
mocked.
“Want to see what I bought?” Cordelia continued, still floating. She yanked the
bag’s top open, and rolled Vordarian’s head out across the table. Fortunately, it
had ceased leaking some hours back. It stopped faceup before him, lips grinning,
drying eyes staring.
Piotr’s mouth fell open. Kanzian jumped, the staffers swore, and one of Vordarian’s
traitors actually fell out of his chair, recoiling. Vortala pursed his lips and raised his
brows. Koudelka, grimly proud of his key role in stage-managing this historic
moment in one-upsmanship, laid the swordstick on the table as further evidence.
Illyan puffed, and grinned triumphantly through his shock.
Aral was perfect. His eyes widened only briefly, then he rested his chin on his
hands and gazed over his father’s shoulder with an expression of cool interest.
“But of course,” he breathed. “Every Vor lady goes to the capital to shop.”
“I paid too much for it,” Cordelia confessed.
“That, too, is traditional.” A sardonic smile quirked his lips.
“Kareen is dead. Shot in the melee. I couldn’t save her.”
He Opened his hand, as if to let the nascent black humor fall through his fingers. “I
see.” He raised his eyes again to hers, as if asking Are you all right?, and
apparently finding the answer, No.
“Gentlemen. If you will be pleased to excuse yourselves for a few minutes. I wish to
be alone with my wife.”
In the shuffle of the men rising to their feet, Cordelia caught a mutter, “Brave man
…”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 18:21:13
This book still haunts me and cant’ wait for the movie…From The Lovely Bones,
My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen
when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 18:23:33
I think Pride and Prejudice has some of the best lines of all times, certainly some of the best quotes. This whole scene is fabulous, but I love this quote because has such an impact on Mr. Darcy.
“You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 19:05:25
He was still caressing her cheeks. “Your so soft, Daniela. Softer than I ever imagined-and I imagined constantly.” He tipped her face up. “I’ve got to kiss you.”
Untouchable, by Kresley Cole.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 19:06:22
“Hello, Thomas.”
Said by the heroine Alpha just as she is about to kidnap the hero. From Catherine Asaro’s ALPHA.
Thanks for running this contest!
Dec 01, 2009 @ 20:21:14
There are so many good line to choose from but this one is freshest in my memory :)
“I’m so sorry, Vane. I swear didn’t mean to get us killed like this.”
–Night Play by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Now I’ll just keep my fingers crossed
Dec 01, 2009 @ 20:24:37
From Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics…
A pair is described as “one of those tan, hair-tossing ‘Blue Lagoon' couples (one per every high school) who threatened to destroy the bedrock of the chaste educational community simply by the muggy way they looked at each other in the halls.â€
Jade (a high school mean girl) is “blessed with the enviable properties of a mink coat -’ graceful, unreasonable and impractical no matter what she was draped over, whether it be couches or people.â€
“When it comes to certain human miseries, the only eyewitnesses should be the pavement and maybe the trees.â€
Dec 01, 2009 @ 20:34:54
Count me in..
“It’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.â€
~Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Dec 01, 2009 @ 20:41:36
This is from Julie Garwood’s The Gift.
I have come to rely on your love. It became my anchor. It was the one certainty I had, and it took me a long while to realize it.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 20:47:17
Robert Parker, The Godwulf Manuscript
Spenser is leaving the scene of an unsatisfactory interview.
On the way to my car, I looked for a puppy to kick.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 20:52:44
“All my life has been a hunt,”…”I have hunted for you over half the earth, and hell too. Bentinck Street is not nearly far enough to run.”
- Lord Winter from Laura Kinsale’s, THE DREAM HUNTER
Dec 01, 2009 @ 21:01:10
Somehow, this line from Dorothy Dunnett's Queen’s Play is one that I really liked and sums up Lymond well:
Meanwhile, the ollave (Lymond), of course, was still missing (by virtue of being asleep). “It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake.â€
Dec 01, 2009 @ 21:02:47
“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”
Madeleine L’Engle, “A Wrinkle in Time”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 21:13:46
Lone Star Santa by Heather MacAllister:
“She’d be a brunette for one thing. Brunettes had depth. Brunettes had dark secrets and a sensual confidence. Brunettes toyed with lesser mortals.”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 21:41:07
Lois Bujold has so many quotable lines, some which stand alone and some that don’t. This one doesn’t, but I love it…along with the way she turned my romance-reader-tuned instincts upside down earlier in the same book:
“Lord Arhys, how long have you been dead?”
_Paladin of Souls_, Lois McMaster Bujold
Dec 01, 2009 @ 21:47:57
From the Faery Bride by Lisa Ann Verge. Published in 1996, it remains one of my favorite romances:
“Who better than a demon,” she said, turning the silver of her eyes upon him, “to lay down with a witch?”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 22:03:20
-Neil Gaiman “American Gods”
Dec 01, 2009 @ 22:32:55
–Fools Die by Mario Puzo
Dec 01, 2009 @ 22:42:06
“Those who dwell…among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.” -Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Love that quote, though I think I have too many favorites to say it’s my all-time fave! Great giveaway, thanks for doing it.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 23:22:17
“No, I’m not really–I’m just a–I’m just a whole lot of different simple people”
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dec 01, 2009 @ 23:38:52
A crust and a corner that love made precious
and the smile to warm and the tears to refresh us.
And joy seems sweeter when cares come after.
And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter.
And that is life!
Life, Paul Laurence Dunbar
*hope it’s okay that I entered some of the same quotes in at SBTB :)
This one is so wonderful, it bears repeating.
Dec 01, 2009 @ 23:43:49
DON’T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
– (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)
Dec 01, 2009 @ 23:47:26
Ooh, count me in!
“Is it any wonder then that I became what I did? Delaunay maintains that it was ever my destiny, and perhaps he is right. But this, I know, is true: When love cast me out, it was cruelty who took pity upon me.”
Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Dart
or
“Mother, I am in love with a robot.”
Tanith Lee, The Silver Metal Lover
Dec 02, 2009 @ 01:12:16
‘Love as thou wilt”
Jaqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Dart
It’s such a simple, beautiful line.
Dec 02, 2009 @ 03:03:08
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Dec 02, 2009 @ 03:09:21
Gah, choosing’s so hard! Okay, two polar opposites, both of which I adore:
From Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Muslim man, regardless of his fortune, must be in want of a nine-year-old virgin wife.”
From Mary Balogh’s Then Comes Seduction:
“Love is not a game! …It is not even a feeling,” she said, “though feelings are involved in it. It is certainly not all happiness and light. It is not s-sex either, though I know you must be about to suggest that. Love is a connection with another person, either through birth or through something else that I cannot even explain. It is often just an attraction at first. But it goes far deeper than that. It is a determination to care for the other person no matter what and to allow oneself to be cared for in return. It is a commitment to make the other happy and to be happy oneself. It is not possessive, but neither is it a victim. And it does not always bring happiness. Often it brings a great deal of pain, especially when the beloved is suffering and one feels impotent to comfrot. It is what life is all about.”
Dec 02, 2009 @ 08:51:02
One of my favorite:
“I would Have been yours. I wish you’d been mine. I would have stood between you and this and thought myself lucky to die in your place. ePistols at dawn ZA Maxfield
Dec 02, 2009 @ 09:25:57
“She’s been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake than what Mrs Spencer made-if it was luck. I don’t believe it was any such thing. It was providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon. ” Matthew from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.
This was the book that started my lifelong love of reading.
Dec 02, 2009 @ 10:11:48
I love this quote from Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows’ delightful The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
“I don’t believe that after reading such a fine writer as Emily Bronte, I will be happy to read again Miss Amanda Gillyflower’s Ill-Used by Candlelight. Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
Dec 02, 2009 @ 10:36:21
“If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain”
Emily Dickinson from the poem, If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking
Dec 02, 2009 @ 11:28:39
This is from Kresley Cole’s Untouchable in Deep Kiss of Winter.
“Come, puppies. Come meet Destiny.” Out of the corner of her mouth, Nïx stage-whispered, “Destiny is my fist’s name.”
Dec 02, 2009 @ 11:34:58
I believe this is a wonderful quote. It is from An Infamous Army by Georgetter Heyer:
Barbara: “It seems as though every joy that comes to one must have a grief to spoil it.”
Mary: “It is so, but think instead, dearest, that every grief has joy to lighten it. Nothing in the world is quite perfect, nor quiet unbearable.”
My life has gone through many ups and downs and this quote helps me remember “there is always light in life.” (from a french saying).
Thank you!
Dec 02, 2009 @ 12:14:36
“Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
~Albus Dumblefore
[J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire]
Dec 02, 2009 @ 12:17:06
My favorite quote is “There is no charm equal to tenderness of Heart” from Emma by Jane Austen. I don’t think you can ever go wrong with a little bit of Jane :)
Dec 02, 2009 @ 12:33:39
“And best of all, buried in the heart of passion, was the joyful knowledge that he had found his home in her, as she had in him.”
The Rake and the Reformer, Mary Jo Putney
Dec 02, 2009 @ 12:41:44
I just submitted another quote to the Sony site and finally figured out what the weird $#@% is for. They are censoring! The quote I posted had the word ‘sex’ in it… go figure. How idiotic!
Dec 02, 2009 @ 15:10:23
I’ll chime in with what is, quite possibly, the best character description in English literature. It’s also quite apropos for the season:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Dec 02, 2009 @ 15:33:15
“Sex is a complicated thing,” I said.
Susan widened her eyes. “Wow, ” she said.
“It enhances love,” I said, “But not as much as love enhances it.”
Robert B. Parker – The Professional
Dec 02, 2009 @ 15:48:57
The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber
Dec 02, 2009 @ 15:59:32
Well, I’m in: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” From 1984 by George Orwell. Love that book!
Thanks for the opportunity!
Dec 02, 2009 @ 16:28:51
This is hard…I have a lot of favorite books, but it’s the overall story that captures me. I almost chose the opening paragraph to “The Red Hot Empress” by Meredith Blevins because you know right where you are–how it smells, feels, the humidity.
But in the end, I liked this entire book better–and New Tricks by John Levitt also had a great opening paragraph:
On the corner of Market and Castro, half hidden in the shadow of a doorway, stood a vampire. Not just any vampire, mind you: one with a dark cape and four inch protruding fangs. And tons of hair gel. A few doorways down, a werewolf chatted amiably with a sickly green-hued zombie. All around them, demons and divas swirled giddily together. It was, of course, Halloween in the Castro.
Maria
Dec 02, 2009 @ 17:36:36
One of my all time favorites was written by Suzanne Simmons in her Goodnight Sweetheart novel.
“Wisdom comes from making mistakes.” After a brief pause, Minerva tempered that statement with “Well, at least it does if we learn from our mistakes.”
I am a guru on the hamster wheel of mistakes. ; – )
Dec 02, 2009 @ 17:52:01
“Falling in love with a Catholic priest was not my smartest move.”
-CATCH OF THE DAY by Kristan Higgins.
This is not my favorite quote; your contest put me on the spot and there was so. much. pressure! :> But this is the last book I read. This book has sat on my TBR pile for quite awhile and I’d put off reading it because I was not feeling the back cover blurb. But last weekend, after Thanksgiving, I wanted to escape. I picked it up, turned to the first page, read this first line… and finished the book in one day.
So it may not be my favorite but it did what any good first line should do: it drew me into a great book and led me to order the author’s backlist.
Maybe I can read them on my new Sony Reader? :>
If I don’t win, please give it to Lynette #22. That Beverly Jenkins quote is a killer!
Dec 02, 2009 @ 18:05:09
“Give me a glance at the end of your proclamation of love to someone else. Give me one word in your letter of love for someone else. That would have been enough for me.”
-The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
Dec 02, 2009 @ 18:13:49
A shorter quote, and a lighter one than some. It comes from Robin Hobb’s, ‘A Golden Fool’ (Book 2 of the Tawny Man series). When I read it, I couldn’t help but to laugh. (Paraphrased slightly perhaps, because I don’t have the book on hand, but as accurately as I can recall it:)
“If it was raining soup outside, you’d be out there with a fork.” – Jek
Dec 02, 2009 @ 18:44:35
“I don't understand the wish -’ let alone the need -’ to be dominated, controlled. Not presuming to judge, just not something I wanted for myself.”
Adrien English Mysteries by Josh Lanyon
Dec 02, 2009 @ 19:01:32
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
by Mark Twain, Following the Equator
Dec 02, 2009 @ 19:41:34
“Can’t make an omelette without killing a few people.”
Neil Gaiman from Neverwhere.
Dec 02, 2009 @ 19:46:30
“It doesn’t come with a guarantee. Why Should it? It’s not a car or computer. It’s life and it’s messy, and it breaks down. It’s a promise to try. I want to promise to try, Carter.
Vision in White by Nora Roberts
Dec 02, 2009 @ 20:12:15
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.
-Henry David Thoreau
Dec 02, 2009 @ 20:22:17
“Reformed rakes make the best husbands.”
- Judith McNaught, Something Wonderful
Dec 02, 2009 @ 20:38:59
A slow, lazy, carnivorous smile touched Curran’s lips. “Not only will you sleep with me, but you will say ‘please’.”
I stared at him, shocked.
The smile widened. “You will say ‘please’ before and ‘thank you’ after.”
-Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews
This has gotta be one of the best quotes from Curran throughout this whole series!
Dec 02, 2009 @ 20:48:40
Ah, I like philosophical quotes. I can’t decide between two that have made me ponder quite a bit:
“He pulled the boy closer. Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, don’t you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
-The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.
“…for dignity has no price, that when someone starts making small concessions, in the end, life loses all meaning.”
-Blindness, by Jose Saramago
Dec 02, 2009 @ 20:57:48
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
-Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Dec 02, 2009 @ 21:02:27
Appropriately for a book review site, a review written May 27th, 1843 by diarist George Templeton Strong:
“Looking into a desk at the office this afternoon in pursuit of certain stray papers, what should I find there but a ‘novel’ of Paul de Kock’s–I forget its name–one of the shilling publications that by their unexampled cheapness are going to give a new impulse to the present age, spread light and intellect and knowledge over the world, and so on…
Well, I had the curiosity to look through it and came to the conclusion that Dr. Johnson was perfectly right when he described the people among whom Paul is not only tolerated but popular as ‘possessing the manners (and the mind) of a dancing master and the morals of a whore’: for the book is just as shallow and contemptible in point of all that constitutes literary merit as it is execrable and profligate in sentiment. And in that it exceeds any production that I ever met with yet. It’s the first French novel I ever read and it shall be the last.”
Dec 02, 2009 @ 21:16:16
The only quote that’s coming to me at the moment is from a favorite book, though if I took more time to consider, wouldn’t be my Favoritest Quote Ever. But it’s a good one imo.
“I want to lay my kill at your feet.” – Gabriel to Vivian, BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE by Annette Kurtis Klaus
Dec 02, 2009 @ 21:40:55
Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase
Dec 02, 2009 @ 21:45:18
Man, so many good quotes and I’m blanking. Although sometimes without the lead up the quote isnt’ as funny (The symphonies and music concertos in Sherry Thomas’s Delicious for example, not that I can find it)
That’s why I like this quote despite it being sappy and first love dovey, I liked the overall short story it came from. 100% perfect by Haruki Murakami.
I would quote the entire thing as it’s not that long, but it’s long for a commen .^_^;
Dec 02, 2009 @ 22:51:14
“Hello! Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” from the book and the movie The Princess Bride by William Goldman
My favorite part.
Dec 02, 2009 @ 23:33:16
I love these two quotes my favorite couple, Dain and Jessica, in Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase:
Dain says this to Bertie when he saw Jessica, Berite’s sister, standing by a jewelry case:
I love these two characters! ^^
Dec 03, 2009 @ 00:16:22
I have a Sony reader, but my dad would love one, so:
“At that time I thought a man should never tell women what he does with his money. (Those days were the days, of course, before I was married and had this issued placed in true perspective by my wife.)”
The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis
Dec 03, 2009 @ 00:30:21
I love this one.
” * “Do you love me, Wesley? Is that it?”
He couldn’t believe it. “Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches! If your love were -”
“I don’t understand that first one yet,” Buttercup interrupted. She was starting to get very excited now. “Let me get this straight. Are you saying my love is a grain of sand and yours is this other thing? Images confuse me so – is this universal business of yours bigger than my sand? Help me, Westley. I have the feeling we’re on the verge of something just terribly important.”
* “I’ve been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn’t listen. Every time you said ‘Farm Boy do this’ you thought I was answering ‘As you wish’ but that’s only because you were hearing wrong. ‘I love you’ was what it was, but you never heard.”
* There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C. … (before then couples hooked thumbs.) And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy…Well, this one left them all behind.
From The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Dec 03, 2009 @ 03:12:56
“I had crushes on you and Alan Greenspan both at the same time. I can’t imagine what I was thinking of. Although the crush I had on Greenspan was a lot worse. Thank God I didn’t run into him with that sexy briefcase.”
- Molly to Kevin in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ This Heart of Mine
Dec 03, 2009 @ 04:20:28
The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
I can read with my eyes shut by Dr. Seuss
Dec 03, 2009 @ 07:36:25
I do research on Aristotle, who every now and again says something wonderfully elegant: “For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.” Nicomachean Ethics I.7, 1098a17-19
Dec 03, 2009 @ 08:57:40
This is from A room with a view by E.M. Forster:
“I’m only thinking of my pet theory about Miss Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down, and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good, heroically bad–too heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad.”
Dec 03, 2009 @ 10:02:33
Geez, the only quote I can remember is the first line from Pride & Prejudice. Not because it was written by Jane Austen, but because it is quoted and parodied so often.
Dec 03, 2009 @ 11:14:01
“Oh angel, I would take you with me if I could” Sam to Grace.
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. It’s been stuck in my head for days! It’s a YA romance book about werewolves. Love it!
Dec 03, 2009 @ 12:37:31
“The Pontiac isn’t mine. It belongs to the city.”
She felt weak with relief. Thank God. It would have been a serious blow to her self-esteem if she’d slept with the owner of that wreck.
Mr. Perfect by Linda Howard. One of my favs only partly because it takes place in my home territory.
Dec 03, 2009 @ 13:55:21
“…he has never given up his conviction that if you just try all the doors one of them is bound to be the Door Into Summer.
“You know, I think he is right.”
Robert A. Heinlein, The Door Into Summer
Dec 03, 2009 @ 15:35:03
“For the better part of my childhood, my professional aspirations were simple — I wanted to be an intergalactic princess. I didn’t care much about ruling hordes of space people. Mostly I wanted to wear the cape and sexy boots and carry a cool weapon.”
Janet Evanovich, Seven Up.
I mean, who doesn’t want this at some point in their life.
Dec 03, 2009 @ 16:48:41
Maddy and Gregor getting it on in Mr. Patel’s cab in Bound by Blood by Evie Byrne
Dec 03, 2009 @ 16:53:31
“The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you’re fussing that he’s tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.”
Robin McKinley, Sunshine
Dec 03, 2009 @ 17:43:10
From Pg 232, Silver Lining by Maggie Osborne
“Louise?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking…this might be a good night for you not to wear that damn nightgown.”
Dec 03, 2009 @ 17:57:34
Yet another one from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Cordelia’s Honor. I just love that book to pieces. (Or, books, since I actually have Shards of Honor and Barrayar on my shelf rather than the omnibus that’s actually in print. This is from Shards of Honor originally, to be overly specific.)
Dec 03, 2009 @ 18:20:06
I’m going to cheat and submit two because I can’t pick just one:
Brandon to Heather on how his vow not to touch her backfired:
Nicholaa’s sentiment after the King rewards her bravery by letting her choose her husband, instead of having the knights choose whether to compete to win her hand:
Dec 03, 2009 @ 18:34:47
From Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati. To set it up: After much drama and many people and circumstances trying to keep them apart Nathaniel is speaking to Elizabeth as he makes love to her for the first time:
“Richard Todd can’t have you, not ever. You have to leave your father’s home and come to me. Because once this is done, you are mine to keep and protect, and I am yours. Do you understand?”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered, her hands flitting over his shoulders.
“When I’m dying,” he said. “When I close my eyes at the last, it’ll be your face I see, right at this moment.”
Dec 03, 2009 @ 19:21:44
“Men are investments,” she said. “One must choose carefully, and think of the future.”
Francesca Bonnard, the heroine, a courtesan
Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase
Dec 03, 2009 @ 19:24:38
My mother is a fish.
As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
This quote is what made me become an English major. ^^
Dec 03, 2009 @ 20:48:35
“Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own and not expect it back. The true witches know that.”
- “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S Beagle.
(It was so hard to pick just one!~)
Dec 03, 2009 @ 22:06:07
I had to come add this today, when I read it it moved me, which made me think of this contest.
“to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”
Ellen Bass
Dec 03, 2009 @ 22:20:51
“It is not true that women cannot keep secrets.
Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all
sense and reason.
It is their weakness, and their great strength.”
– The Hollow Hills, Mary Stewart
Dec 03, 2009 @ 22:46:50
SAMANTHA KANE-THE COURAGE TO LOVE
“Yes, Kate. We found you, finally free.â€
Pain slashed across Kate's face before she could hide it. She looked at both men accusingly. “Oh, but haven't you listened to the talk, Jason?†she returned in a voice made husky with unshed tears. “I'm not free. I cost a great deal.â€
Jason's face suffused with anger, and he took a step toward her. She involuntarily stepped back, her hands going protectively up before she could stop them. Jason's advance was halted immediately by her reaction.
“We don't want to buy you, Kate.â€
“Well, then, you can't have me.†She'd recovered sufficiently to calmly step back to the settee and sit down.
Dec 03, 2009 @ 22:49:35
“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi encantrate.”–Dante, Infierno
“Reapers and rippers and older than time–living murder wrapped in cold flesh.”–Rob Thurman, Deathwish
Not trying to double enter, just couldn’t decide between the two quotes!
Dec 03, 2009 @ 23:42:49
“Girl, if you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer’s always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”
-’ Nora Roberts (Tears of the Moon)
Dec 04, 2009 @ 00:59:48
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” – Ernest Hemingway ‘A Farewell to Arms’
I wish I could find my copy of Borges’ “Pink House” because there are two lines in there that I love, but I don’t know where it is.
There are so many great lines from romances, but a lot of them lose power when taken out of context, and I can’t think of one that hasn’t already been mentioned. My favorite of those is from “Magic Strikes” by Ilona Andrews: “That was worth the ten dollars.”
Dec 04, 2009 @ 01:28:13
“Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,
And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen.
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content,
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margin of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him, only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and ’tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory
That in golden clasps locks in the story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him making yourself no less.”
Lady Capulet talking to Juliet, compares the young lover’s face
to a most captivating book and invites her to read in it with delight.”
From the book (and play) “Romeo and Juliet” – William Shakespeare
Dec 04, 2009 @ 07:49:08
“How well we pull together, don’t we?” said Amy, who objected to
silence just then.
“So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you,
Amy?” very tenderly.
“Yes, Laurie,” very low.
From Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
I’ve always loved this proposal!
Dec 04, 2009 @ 07:51:44
I love this passage from To Desire A Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt.
“I was lost and broken, and you saved me.” He bent and whispered against her lips, “You have redeemed me.”
Dec 04, 2009 @ 10:47:01
“Yeah, because I’m that sensitive about not getting to the glory inside your pants, Quinn.”
Spoken by the heroine, Lori, in Start Me Up by Victoria Dahl.
Dec 04, 2009 @ 10:57:38
This is from Alphabet of Thorn, written by Patricia McKillip, my favorite author. Vevay, a very old woman, is with her longtime lover, Gavin. I love this image of a woman’s age.
She sat up in their bed among linens and furs, clothed for the night in pearl-grey silk, her hair, a paler shade of pearl, falling around her like a cloak. Her blue-grey eyes, hooded with age, had once inspired poetry; her hands had inspired epics. Her deeds had inspired a great many different passions; she had managed to survive them all. Now, at home, at rest within the mighty palace of the rulers of Raine, she occasionally wondered, with amazement and rue, how she had survived her younger self.
Vevay has been telling Gavin an ancient legend and he asks how it ends.
She folded her arms, rested them on her upraised knees, and dropped her chin upon them, watching the embers, lying open like broken hears, pulsing and dying at once. “I don’t remember,” she said absently, losing interest in her own tale. She felt his fingers drifting down her backbone.
Dec 04, 2009 @ 11:05:27
This is from And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke when the heroine sees a young girl in a shop buying a fan she has been wanting to buy for a long time but has put off as too extravagent. It’s a very moving scene in the book.
“It’s the springtime of that girl’s life, Emma reminded herself. A time when a peacock fan was of some use to a young lady, a time of parties and dancing and romance, a time of hopes and dreams and plans for the future–a future that was exciting and fun and full of possibilities.
Her own springtime had passed by years ago, if it had ever existed at all.”
Dec 04, 2009 @ 11:29:51
“I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees.”
-Pablo Neruda
Dec 04, 2009 @ 11:54:54
I rarely remember quotes from any book but this line from Sherry Thomas’ Not Quite a Husband was memorable:
“The space between the stars is filled with your silence.”
Dec 04, 2009 @ 12:02:15
“I am sister to the rain;
Fey and sudden and unholy,
Petulant at the windowpane,
Quickly lost, remembered slowly.”
– Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
Dec 04, 2009 @ 13:03:49
Dance by Judy Cuevas
Dec 04, 2009 @ 14:27:50
“Nefret had always had an uncanny ability to read his thoughts. ‘Did she cry?’ she asked sweetly. ‘And then you kissed her? You shouldn’t have done that. I’m sure you meant well, but kissing someone out of pity is always a mistake.’ ”
~The Falcon at the Portal by Elizabeth Peters
And, also, just because:
“Life is an awful, ugly place not to have a best friend.”
~ Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen
Dec 04, 2009 @ 14:29:00
“I am no sentimentalist. I will tell you that you are hardly the most beautiful woman I have ever known, Jane, nor the most enchanting. Your witchery is of a different order than others’ – and springs, I believe, from the extraordinary self-possession you command. It is unique in my experience of women. You have my unqualified esteem and respect; you have my trust and my heart; and if I love you, my dear, it is as one loves the familiar room to which one returns after desperate wandering. In this room I might draw the shades upon the world and live in comfort forever.”
Jane and His Lordship’s Legacy by Stephanie Barron
Dec 04, 2009 @ 14:36:27
“Forget about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.”
- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Dec 04, 2009 @ 15:31:23
“Ah, Messire, my wife, if only I had one, was twenty times in danger of being a widow! But happily, Messire, I’m not married…”
- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Dec 04, 2009 @ 15:45:06
I wanted to quote the whole thing, but I’m not sure if that’s allowed. So I’ll quote this lovely part:
From “somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond” by E.E. Cummings. The whole poem makes me happy.
And then there is this piece:
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt-’marvelous error!-’
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
From “Last night, as I was sleeping” by Antonio Machado (translated from the Spanish).
Such lovely poems, such powerful imagery.
Dec 04, 2009 @ 15:48:26
“Where you're concerned, I am in charge.â€
“Are you happy in your land of delusions? Are you king there?â€
Pack Challenge by Shelly Laurenston
Dec 04, 2009 @ 16:12:00
“MY PRECIOUS!”
Gollum from JRR Tolkien’s LOTR. I always think it when I see a good book.
Dec 04, 2009 @ 16:19:17
“And hullo yourself, Cinderella” he murmured. “You never told me she was a flirt”
“Oh, she’s an awful tart, that one. Messieurs Grimms almost exhausted their household’s supply of washing soda scouring her story clean.” – Delicious by Sherry Thomas
Dec 04, 2009 @ 17:35:17
“…we need to discuss page thirteen.”
“Page thirteen?”
“You’ve accused me of being arrogant. I’ve always thought of myself as confident, but I’m here to tell you, no more. After studying these pictures…Honey, if this is what you’re looking for in a man, I don’t think any of us are going to measure up.”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Match Me if You Can
Dec 04, 2009 @ 20:14:44
“No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”
Steven Brust, Jhereg
Dec 04, 2009 @ 20:17:47
@Kim Winklhofer:
I’m in total agreement! What a great series…
Dec 04, 2009 @ 22:53:06
“I have no name, no fortune, nor even much value as a man. All I’ve ever had that was of any worth is this house and my cat. If you’ll have me, Lady Jane Pennington, then all I have is yours”- from The Rogue by Celeste Bradley. I’m not sure if it’s my favorite, but I love this little speech so much! I don’t remember moments/quotes very well, but this is one of the few that stood out to me.
Dec 05, 2009 @ 00:56:22
“If you sit down and think about [God] sensibly, you come up with some very funny ideas. Like: why make people inquisitive, and then put some forbidden fruit where they can see it with a big neon finger flashing on and off saying ‘THIS IS IT!’?”
-Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Dec 05, 2009 @ 01:00:14
I love this one, and as my husband makes puns about this all the time it makes me laugh and is perfect for the characters of Gideon and Prudence. It is from Anne Gracie’s The Perfect Rake
“But you are a rake,” she whispered.
He gazed into her eyes for a long, long moment. “Yes. And when a rake finally falls, he falls forever.” He let her digest that for a moment and then added solemnly, “Besides you should not scorn my rakishness. Having a rake about the place will come in extremely useful.”
She frowned in puzzlement. “Useful?” It was an odd word to use. “What do you mean? What possible use would I have for a rake?”
“I could tidy up all your fallen leaves each autumn.”
It took her a moment to perceive the jest. Laughter and tears trembled on her lips at the same time. Oh, what do to do with him? How could anyone love such a wicked, funny, foolish man?
How could they not?
Prudence left the room.
Dec 05, 2009 @ 02:09:34
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
–Ernest Hemingway
This just chills me whenever I read it. (I also like that I’m quoting the whole story, because it’s so wonderfully efficient that way!)
I don’t know if I’m eligible to win the prize (I live in the faraway land of Asia!), but I wanted to put this one forward because I don’t think I’ve ever been so affected by a mere six words.
Dec 05, 2009 @ 03:31:18
Agnes and The Hitman, Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer
Dec 05, 2009 @ 07:45:28
“Not all those who wander are lost.â€
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring
Dec 05, 2009 @ 15:02:00
Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe”
Dec 05, 2009 @ 15:40:19
It was like climbing a quite, green hill and having it turn into a volcano. That was inside of him,she realized. The dangerous surprise under the injured calm. She’d wanted him, Those sad eyes, that quiet manner. But she hadn’t known what he would give her when the mask was yanked away.
Norther lights – Nora Roberts
Dec 05, 2009 @ 16:57:03
I love the delicious irony of this line from the play, “Le Malade imaginaire” (The Imaginary Illness) by Moliere:
Louison: “Attendez: je suis morte.” (Wait: I am dead.)
[Act II, scene 8, line 657]
Dec 05, 2009 @ 18:32:19
Claire and Jamie Fraiser’s wedding vows from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon have always been one of my faves.
ye are blood of my blood, and bone of my bone.
I give ye my body, that we two might be one.
I give ye my spirit. ’til our life shall be done.
as Jamie continues to say “about the same as the regular wedding vows, just a bit more …..ah, primitive.”
Dec 05, 2009 @ 18:50:15
“You are exactly my brand of heroin.”
~Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Dec 05, 2009 @ 19:58:54
Love all the quotes! Here’s mine, from Gone Too Far by Suzanne Brockmann:
“I love you,” he [Sam] said. “You have to marry me. Tell that f***** to keep his hands off of you. You’re mine.”
The look she [Alyssa] gave him probably would have terrified him without the medication flowing into his veins. “I’m yours?”
“Yes. F*** it if it’s not politically correct,” he said, laboring to get the words out. The top of his head was floating way above his mouth. “You are mine. You are my heart and my soul and the …. the very breath from my lungs. And I’m yours. I’m totally yours. You own me. Tell me what you want, Lys, and I’ll do it.”
She was laughing. Or maybe she was crying. He couldn’t tell.
“I want you to lie down.” She looked at the EMT. “What did you give him?”
Dec 05, 2009 @ 20:19:29
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis- “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
Dec 05, 2009 @ 20:30:43
“After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure”
Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Dec 05, 2009 @ 20:43:55
The beginning of Karen Marie Moning’s book Darkfever, since it drew me into this fantastic series:
My philosophy is pretty simple any day nobody’s trying to kill me is a good day in my book.
I haven’t had many good days lately.
Not since the walls between Man and Faery came down.
But then, there’s not a sidhe-seer alive who’s had a good day since then.
Dec 05, 2009 @ 20:51:21
“He’d broken her heart open like an egg, but inside was…the whole world. And as she looked back at him, she felt the serrated edges of her heart in her chest. But also a sort of dizzying vastness; she could face anything now. Loving and being loved had given her that kind of strength, and a sort of permanent safety she could carry with her forever.
So she would not be spending her life with him. Life was not fair; that’s what made it interesting.”
Like No Other Lover–Julie Anne Long
Dec 05, 2009 @ 21:50:09
“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
Edgar Allan Poe’s Eleonora
Dec 06, 2009 @ 00:06:45
“Yes, the Beast changed.
He spoke more now, and did not gaze at Beauty in the same intense, almost pained way, as if he were feeling every emotion she felt. He did not sigh in his sleep when she sighed and his stomach didn’t growl when hers hurt. He could not read her thoughts anymore, and she could not read his. He seemed a bit more clumsy and guarded and distant, too. They no longer ran through the wood together, although they still walked there sometimes. They quarreled and raised their voices to each other every once in a while. Each time, after they quarreled, Beauty bathed, combed the tangles from her hair, and began to wear shoes again for a few days.
Beauty loved him more than anything, her Beast boy, but, secretly, sometimes, she wished that he would have remained a beast.”
Beauty, from The Rose and the Beast Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block
Dec 06, 2009 @ 11:30:41
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.”
Mark Twain
Dec 06, 2009 @ 11:59:41
I’m hoping you meant Sunday December 6th and not the 5th.
Dec 06, 2009 @ 13:46:58
“I love you.”
He leaned closer. “What was that?”
“I said…I don’t remember.”
“Coward. I love you too. Go to sleep.” He enclosed my hand tenderly in his long, strong fingers.
The Laughter of Dead Kings, Elizabeth Peters
Dec 06, 2009 @ 14:05:30
“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
from The History of Love by Nicole Kraus
“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.” from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Dec 06, 2009 @ 15:30:36
Royce to Minerva
Stephanie Laurens’s Mastered by Love
Dec 06, 2009 @ 17:11:01
The reason why romances are my choice of addiction:
The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
Dec 06, 2009 @ 17:32:08
Jack in Lisa Kleypas’s Smooth Talking Stranger:
You know what he should have said?…’Hell, yes, Ella, I’ll stand by you no matter what you do. Shit happens. We’ll make it work. Come home now and get in bed.’
Dec 06, 2009 @ 21:07:09
You are the keeper of my heatt, the love of my life- Johanna Lindsey Keeper of my Heart So simple yet so intense
Dec 06, 2009 @ 21:19:40
ack, got an error the first time I hit submit. Hopefully this isn’t posting for the second time!
PETRUCHIO Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.
KATHARINA If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
PETRUCHIO My remedy is then, to pluck it out.
KATHARINA Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.
PETRUCHIO Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?
In his tail.
KATHARINA In his tongue.
PETRUCHIO Whose tongue?
KATHARINA Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
PETRUCHIO What, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again. Good Kate; I am a gentleman.
Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew (2. 1. 209-219)
I love Shakespeare, and a theatre friend of mine and I are constantly quoting this passage back and forth to each other.