Macbeth is the scariest play I've ever read. "It harrows me with fear and wonder," to quote Hamlet. Shivers down my spine, literally. While not my favorite Shakespeare play, this one grabs me in its icy clutches.
Book Quotes: King And Beyond.
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Macbeth is the scariest play I've ever read. "It harrows me with fear and wonder," to quote Hamlet. Shivers down my spine, literally. While not my favorite Shakespeare play, this one grabs me in its icy clutches.
" 'When did I ever want to be anything except your friend? Tell me that. When?'
"And of course Miles knew that in the twisted, grotesque way of many true things, Jimmy Minty was speaking straight from the heart. It was what he wanted. And he was genuinely mystified as to why he couldn't seem to have it. Which did not- Miles had to admit as he got out of the car and crossed Empire Avenue- make him stupid. After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their hearts' impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble?"
-Richard Russo, Empire Falls
"And of course Miles knew that in the twisted, grotesque way of many true things, Jimmy Minty was speaking straight from the heart. It was what he wanted. And he was genuinely mystified as to why he couldn't seem to have it. Which did not- Miles had to admit as he got out of the car and crossed Empire Avenue- make him stupid. After all, what was the whole wide world but a place for people to yearn for their hearts' impossible desires, for those desires to become entrenched in defiance of logic, plausibility, and even the passage of time, as eternal as polished marble?"
-Richard Russo, Empire Falls
"After class, I wandered downstairs in a dream, my head spinning, but acutely, achingly conscious that I was alive and young on a beautiful day; the sky a deep deep painful blue, wind scattering the red and yellow leaves in a whirlwind of confetti.
Beauty is a terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
That night I wrote in my journal: 'Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colors. Someone-was it van Gogh?-said that orange is the color of insanity. Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.' "
-Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Beauty is a terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
That night I wrote in my journal: 'Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colors. Someone-was it van Gogh?-said that orange is the color of insanity. Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.' "
-Donna Tartt, The Secret History
"The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor- thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there- it can't be helped- who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over them."
-Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
-Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
“Just when normal life felt almost possible - when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing would go awry and the veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed. They learned, somehow, to wait those times out. There was no cure, no answer, no reparation.”
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
― David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Sometimes, I think we hold the truth in too high an esteem. The truth is a tool, like a kitchen knife. You can use it for its purpose or you can use it—No, that’s not quite right. The truth is inert. It has no intrinsic power. Lies have all the power. Would you lie to save your child’s life? I would, in a heartbeat, no matter what object I was touching. Besides, what is the whole truth and nothing but the truth? The truth is not a finite commodity that can be contained within identifiable borders. The truth is messy, riotous, overrunning everything. You can never know the whole truth of anything. And if you could, you would wish you didn’t.
~Laura Lippman, Wilde Lake
~Laura Lippman, Wilde Lake
"The bed, the headboard dark and ungiving as an old mirror on the wall, to her as a child a vast King Arthur shield that might have concealed a motto, cast its afternoon shadow down dark as muscadines, to her mother's waist. The old shadow, familiar as sleep the life long, always ran down over the bolster this time of year, the warm and knotty medallions of the familiar counterpane- the overworked, inherited, and personal pattern- from which her mother's black shoes now pointed up.
"Behind the bed the window was full of cloudy, pressing flowers and leaves in heavy light, like a jar of figs in syrup held up. A humming bird darted, fed, darted. Every day he came. He had a ruby throat. The clock jangled faintly as cymbals struck under water, but it did not strike; it couldn't. Yet a torrent of riches seemed to flow over the room, submerging it, loading it with what was over-sweet."
-Eudora Welty, "The Wanderers" from The Golden Apples
"Behind the bed the window was full of cloudy, pressing flowers and leaves in heavy light, like a jar of figs in syrup held up. A humming bird darted, fed, darted. Every day he came. He had a ruby throat. The clock jangled faintly as cymbals struck under water, but it did not strike; it couldn't. Yet a torrent of riches seemed to flow over the room, submerging it, loading it with what was over-sweet."
-Eudora Welty, "The Wanderers" from The Golden Apples
"She held the handle, and suddenly a panicky certainty stole into her mind. It was as cold and numbing as a doctor's verdict of inoperable cancer. She had gotten the door open but it wouldn't close again. The dog was going to leap in and kill them both. Tad would have perhaps one confused moment of waking, one last merciful instant in which to believe it was a dream, before Cujo's teeth ripped his throat open.
"Her breath rattled in and out, quick and quick. It felt like hot straw. It seemed that she could see each and every piece of gravel in the driveway, but it was hard to think. Her thoughts tumbled wildly."
-Stephen King, Cujo
"Her breath rattled in and out, quick and quick. It felt like hot straw. It seemed that she could see each and every piece of gravel in the driveway, but it was hard to think. Her thoughts tumbled wildly."
-Stephen King, Cujo
This scene takes place at night, not in day time hours like the movie version. I like this scene in the book because of the part where Donna notices every detail about the gravel...something someone does in a heightened state of awareness or panic. Excellent writing. There is another scene that happens the following day where Bannerman drives up behing the Pinto and eventually sees Donna's head/bloody hair against the cracked driver's side window. She'd been sleeping (not shot in the head as he first thinks) and he notices her head move slightly just before he's attacked by the dog. King gives us wonderful details like this throughout the novel. The ending is absolutely gut-wrenching.
I remember being really small; too small to see over the edge of a table. There was a snow globe, and I remember the penguin who lived inside the globe. He was all alone in there, and I worried for him.
~ Alice Seabold, The Lovely Bones
~ Alice Seabold, The Lovely Bones
Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents—the rest you let float by.
~David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
~David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
DUNCANThis castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
BANQUOThis guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.
I'm reading Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow and one of the characters quotes some of these lines from Macbeth. "Heaven's breath smells wooingly here..."
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
BANQUOThis guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate.
I'm reading Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow and one of the characters quotes some of these lines from Macbeth. "Heaven's breath smells wooingly here..."
"When it was done, he put the pen aside. He regarded his work for a moment. He felt as he always did when he finished a book- queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity.
"It was always the same, always the same-
"...Still, it was good to be done- always good to be done. Good to have produced, to have caused a thing to be. In a numb sort of way he understood and appreciated the bravery of the act, of making little lives that weren't, creating the appearance of motion and the illusion of warmth. He understood- now, finally- that he was a bit of a dullard at doing this trick, but it was the only one he knew, and if he always ended up doing it ineptly, he at least never failed to do it with love."
-Stephen King, Misery
"It was always the same, always the same-
"...Still, it was good to be done- always good to be done. Good to have produced, to have caused a thing to be. In a numb sort of way he understood and appreciated the bravery of the act, of making little lives that weren't, creating the appearance of motion and the illusion of warmth. He understood- now, finally- that he was a bit of a dullard at doing this trick, but it was the only one he knew, and if he always ended up doing it ineptly, he at least never failed to do it with love."
-Stephen King, Misery
"And now he recognized the feeling that had crept among them for what it almost certainly was: not worry or weariness but ka-shume. There was no real translation for that rue-laden term, but it meant to sense an approaching break in one's ka-tet."
-Stephen King, The Dark Tower
-Stephen King, The Dark Tower
“I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories. This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. That mystery is troubling to us. How could it be otherwise? Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?
So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament.
So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”
― Clive Barker, Sacrament.
"Sigyn took her bowl and went to her husband. She said nothing—what was there to say?—but she stood beside Loki’s head, with tears in her eyes, and caught each drop of poison as it fell from the snake’s fangs into her bowl.
This all happened long, long ago, in time out of mind, in the days when the gods still walked the earth. So long ago that the mountains of those days have worn away and the deepest lakes have become dry land.
Sigyn still waits beside Loki’s head as she did then, staring at his beautiful, twisted face.
The bowl she holds fills slowly, one drop at a time, but eventually the poison fills the bowl to the brim. It is then and only then that Sigyn turns away from Loki. She takes the bowl and pours the venom away, and while she is gone, the snake’s poison falls onto Loki’s face and into his eyes. He convulses then, jerks and judders, jolts and twists and writhes, so much that the whole earth shakes.
When that happens, we here in Midgard call it an earthquake.
They say that Loki will be bound there in the darkness beneath the earth, and Sigyn will be with him, holding the bowl to catch the poison above his face and whispering that she loves him, until Ragnarok comes and brings the end of days."
This all happened long, long ago, in time out of mind, in the days when the gods still walked the earth. So long ago that the mountains of those days have worn away and the deepest lakes have become dry land.
Sigyn still waits beside Loki’s head as she did then, staring at his beautiful, twisted face.
The bowl she holds fills slowly, one drop at a time, but eventually the poison fills the bowl to the brim. It is then and only then that Sigyn turns away from Loki. She takes the bowl and pours the venom away, and while she is gone, the snake’s poison falls onto Loki’s face and into his eyes. He convulses then, jerks and judders, jolts and twists and writhes, so much that the whole earth shakes.
When that happens, we here in Midgard call it an earthquake.
They say that Loki will be bound there in the darkness beneath the earth, and Sigyn will be with him, holding the bowl to catch the poison above his face and whispering that she loves him, until Ragnarok comes and brings the end of days."
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“Beautiful!” she would murmur, nudging Septimus, that he might see. But beauty was behind a pane of glass. Even taste (Rezia liked ices, chocolates, sweet things) had no relish to him. He put down his cup on the little marble table. He looked at people outside; happy they seemed, collecting in the middle of the street, shouting, laughing, squabbling over nothing. But he could not feel.”
“So he was deserted. The whole world was clamoring: kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, -by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.”
-Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
“So he was deserted. The whole world was clamoring: kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, -by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.”
-Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
Uglily - that is the first time I have ever heard that word used.
Nice passage - I have never read this book - thanks!
Neesy
#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
How are you doing? I have been watching Breaking Bad (recording it) - It's even good the second time around!