She Made Me Do It
Jan. 12th, 2005 11:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebness
Because ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
saffronlie is a complete wench and has to be inventive, she didn’t do the movie quote meme. What she did is this: she took it and made it into a favourite-lines-from-your-favourite-books meme. Which, dammit, I didn’t come up with first.
Curses!
But at least now I can steal it from her and present the same meme, but with fabulous books. Same rules—twelve quotes from twelve books close to the reader’s heart, and, upon someone guessing the quote, waxing lyrical about why it’s so fabulous/speshul.
1 ”I carry a lot of scars. I like that. I carry a lot of scars.”
2 “No-one was with her when she died.”
I read Charlotte’s Web, by EB White, as a child. I spent the duration of the novel worrying about the pig, but this sad little line always gets me. It saddens me even more now, and I can’t read it out aloud without my voice trembling.
3 “My love for […] is like the eternal rocks beneath; a source of little obvious delight, but necessary.”
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. Yep, Cathy regarding Heathcliff. jaffacakequeen sent me a postcard from Yorkshire with this quote on. Beautiful, Gothic, atmospheric novel. Everything about it is the Yorkshire moors to me. Everything about it is my house, my England.
4 “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Every single one of his books have held a powerful message for me that I carry deep within me. This particular quote could not be more pertinent to New Labour if it tried.
5 “If my thoughts about our marriage had been turned into a film, the critics would say that it was all padding, no plot, and that it could be summarised thus: two people meet, fall in love, have kids, start arguing, get fat and grumpy (him) and bored, desperate and grumpy (her), and split up. I wouldn't argue with the synopsis. We're nothing special.”
How to Be Good. Nick Hornby fans will know this was his first book with a woman narrator. I liked the way he wrote Kate, the main character. She wasn't silly and fluffy; nor was she perfect. I think he wrote her better than a lot of chicklit authors write their women. I read this in Greece a couple of years ago. The dark tone of the book surprised me somewhat, but it was a very satisfying read.
6 “Bending now to kiss her, he saw me through the crack in the door. And his eyes just stared at me for a moment, and then he went on talking with the ladies.”
Interview With the Vampire, by That Woman. I absolutely love this book, the atmosphere a mere quote like this brings to me. Through my love of this book, I've met some brilliant people, been to America, appreciated history more, got a very good mark on my coursework and...ah, I love it. This is where Lestat is seducing the two prostitutes in the hotel, and it's so telling, the way he watches Louis with that gaze while doing it. Probably the first moment in the book when I thought, dude! There is so much more going on here than meets the eye!"
7 "If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it."
A Perfect Day for Bananafish, by JD Salinger. This is taken from his collection of short stories released in the UK as For Esme, With Love and Squalor. It’s one part of the jigsaw that is pieced together on Seymour Glass, his life and death, through short stories. Real dialogue, and an ending that jolts the reader.
8 “Once he came at the moment when she was caressing Djali. He stood pensively for several minutes before this graceful group of the goat and the gypsy; at last he said, shaking his heavy and ill-formed head,--
"My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I should like to be wholly a beast like that goat."
She gazed at him in amazement.
He replied to the glance-- "Oh! I well know why," and he went away.”
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo. I adore the writing in this book. A lot of French novels are too…sparse for me, for want of a better word. But this novel is so strong in narrative, so evocative of early Paris and so very, very clever in thought and execution (pun not intended) that it just makes me want to hop across the channel and admire Notre-Dame some more. The publication of this novel saved the magnificent cathedral from destruction, and it’s something Paris-lovers should always be grateful for.This is one of the first times the mostly silent, hideous hunchback speaks, and it made tears spring to my eyes.
9 “But on December 6, 1973, it was snowing, and I took a shortcut through the cornfield back from the junior high. It was dark out because the days were shorter in winter, and I remember how the broken cornstalks made my walk more difficult. The snow was falling lightly, like a flurry of small hands, and I was breathing through my nose until it was running so much that I had to open my mouth.”
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold. I don’t think this is a classic in the Wuthering Heights vein, but the dark, muted sorrow of the book is one of the closest, most accurate descriptions of grief and recovering from grief I have ever read.
10 ”But these things don’t matter… once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. Once you are real, you can’t become unreal again. It last for always.”
The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. The line quoted above here breaks my heart. It makes me think of so many things, of the preciousness, the fleeting moments of life—but also the amazing and thankful chance we all have to experience life in this world. I love this tender little quote.
11 "This is fish number six hundred and forty-one in a lifetime of goldfish. My parents bought me the first one to teach me about loving and caring for another living breathing creature of God. Six hundred and forty fish later, the only thing I know is everything you love will die. The first time you meet that someone special, you can count on them one day being dead and in the ground."
Survivor, by Chuck Palahniuk. An extremely dark book, often disgusting, but very well-written. This is probably my favourite of his books. It reminds me of travelling on the Preston train whilst at university, and on the train to Yorkshire. It also inextricably reminds me of both kyuuketsukirui and squishypeanut. Hell, I did a lot of train travel a couple of years ago.
12 "And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older and you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened."
*Possibly a lie.
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Date: 2005-01-12 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 11:49 am (UTC)(Embarrassingly, I had to Google for it myself to remember it.)
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Date: 2005-01-12 11:56 am (UTC)It was an odd book, definitely. Not at all what I was expecting, but I did like it. I actually read that before High Fidelity (since the library had many copies of it, but High Fidelity, being more well-known, was harder to get ahold of), and after About a Boy.
I liked that it was present tense, too. :D I have a deep, abiding fondness for present tense, and hate when it gets slammed by fic authors as having no place in fiction. Now I can be like, look! Here's a whole book, you asses! :p
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Date: 2005-01-12 12:06 pm (UTC)It seemed to me to be almost "Nick Hornby grows up"-- less laddish fun (which, don't get me wrong, I do like) and more 'mid-life realisation of darkness' narrative.
I read About a Boy first, then this, then High Fidelity. The latter was a very good read, but I think this stands out as my favourite. I think the criticism for this book wasn't as favourable as the other two, but stuff the critics. We know what we like. ;)
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Date: 2005-01-12 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 12:11 pm (UTC)I heard that the Farrelly brothers are doing a remake of Fever Pitch. Have never got around to reading that because of aversion to football -- but I'll definitely see it just because it's Hornby.
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Date: 2005-01-12 01:31 pm (UTC)3 is Wuthering Heights , I think. Cathy re Heathcliff.
4 is Animal Farm - great choices, I think.
7 is A Perfect Day for Bananafish which set me loving the eternal Seymour.
9 is The Lovely Bones I do believe.
10 is The Velveteen Rabbit, another children's /adults' heartbreaker.
I feel as if I know 12
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Date: 2005-01-12 01:37 pm (UTC)Charlotte's Web and The Velveteen Rabbit-- I love both of them on the strength of those couple of lines. I read Rabbit when I was younger, but didn't grasp the sadness and the poignancy of that line until adulthood.
I can't read either of those lines out loud without my voice catching.
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Date: 2005-01-12 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 01:47 pm (UTC)I deliberately left the name Djali in, in the hope someone would recognise it. Glad it worked. Hee.
Ugh....
Date: 2005-01-12 01:53 pm (UTC)is #6 Interview with the Vampire?
Re: Ugh....
Date: 2005-01-12 02:04 pm (UTC)Re: Ugh....
Date: 2005-01-12 02:09 pm (UTC)I figured since there were all these VC fans on your F list, they woulda guessed it. Especially since unlike most of them, I've only read IWTV once or twice, as it was never my favorite (although I do think it's quite a worthy book).
Re: Ugh....
Date: 2005-01-12 02:16 pm (UTC)I know you don't really like IWTV, so it's even more ironic. Ha!
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Date: 2005-01-12 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:05 pm (UTC)Number 1 is a more modern novel, and number twelve is a postmodern novel written by a Canadian. That eees all.
Out of interest, which ones did you already know?
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Date: 2005-01-12 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-12 02:33 pm (UTC)You're always off out seeing new people, making new friends! We don't spend any time together anymore, man!
*Melodramatic a-weepin' and a-wailin'*
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Date: 2005-01-13 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-01-13 10:35 pm (UTC)May as well lay this to rest-- the last quote is from Life After God, by Douglas Coupland, though similar ideas run through his other books.