Book Quotes: King And Beyond.

[skimom2]

Thanks for sharing that quote. I have never read Gaiman but have been dying to read his work. Yes, then I guess I'm a fellow weirdo. When a new King book comes out I turn straight to the Introduction to see what salient and witty nuggets he has to offer. One always feels like he is speaking expressly to them...and in a way, he is.

Exactly. It was the foreword to Night Shift that captured me initially, and I've never been disappointed by his front or end notes since.

 

[Doc Creed]

"I looked again at the honey jars, at the amber lights swimming inside them, and made myself breathe slowly. I realized it for the
first time in my life: there is nothing but mystery in the world, how it hides behind the fabric of our poor, browbeat days, shining
brightly, and we don't even know it."

-The Secret Life Of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

 

[danie]

Some of the most true things Mr. King has ever written can be found in these bits of ephemera that so many skip.

Some people don't read these? I can't imagine.

 

[mjs9153]

"The mother of our particular hobbit ... what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards.


There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). "
JRR Tolkien

 

[Tery]

“Books, I think, are a different kind of time machine. Instead of reminding you of a lost world, they create one for you. More personal, more intimate-unlike movies, say, the world you experience while reading a book has been lived and envisioned entirely from the INSIDE, and its contours are yours alone.” ― Neil Peart, Far and Away: A Prize Every Time

 

[champ1966]

'If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through that shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass?'

SK - The Gunslinger

 

[adamjah]

“Don’t call me Lord Snow.”
The dwarf lifted an eyebrow. “Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name take it make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.”

GRRM, A Game of Thrones.

Well, there are so many nice quotes, that i can`t really choose my favorite. especially from Tyrion

 

[Owenk]

Without a doubt my favourite opening line is from Eartly Powers by Anthony Burgess:

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.

although I also love P. G. Woodehouse

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

So true.

But the quote which has stuck with me since I was around 17 and read On The Road, still makes me feel so sad and wistful, and reminds me of the strength of emotional feelings you feel as a young adult which seem, sadly, to dull with the years:

I had bought my ticket and was waiting for the LA bus when all of a sudden I saw the cutest little Mexican girl in slacks come cutting across my sight. She was in one of the buses that had just pulled in with a big sigh of airbrakes; it was discharging passengers for a rest stop. Her breasts stuck out straight and true; her little flanks looked delicious; her hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with timidities inside. I wished I was on her bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world. The announcer called the LA bus. I picked up my bag and got on, and who should be sitting there alone but the Mexican girl. I dropped right opposite her and began scheming right off. I was so lonely, so sad, so tired, so quivering, so broken, so beat, that I got up my courage, the courage necessary to approach a strange girl, and acted. Even then I spent five minutes beating my thighs in the dark as the bus rolled down the road.

 

[muskrat]

"Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average person can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

[Owenk]

"Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average person can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Oh great choice. You could pick almost any line by Chandler. What a writer. I love almost everything of his and he can crash from the funny:

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.

to the plaintive like noone else:

The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.

I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.

 

[muskrat]

Oh great choice. You could pick almost any line by Chandler.

Indeed. Just pick any Chandler off the shelf, open it at any page, close yer eyes and point--I guarantee you'll find a great line.

 

[ghost19]

"MAY YOU FIND YOUR TOWER, ROLAND, AND BREACH IT, AND MAY YOU CLIMB TO THE TOP!”

Pere Donald Callahan

 

[80sFan]

There are so many SK ones, but the first one I thought of is not from a book.

 

[80sFan]

 

[80sFan]

This one is from "the Light Between the Oceans" by M.L. Stedman.

 

[skimom2]

There are so many SK ones, but the first one I thought of is not from a book.
View attachment 15302

THAT is the exact quote that made me a King Believer! He got it! He understood me! (keep in mind, I was about 13--lol)

 

[80sFan]

THAT is the exact quote that made me a King Believer! He got it! He understood me! (keep in mind, I was about 13--lol)

He just "gets" his readers.
His foreword make me feel like he and I are having a conversation and I'm just nodding my head in total agreement

 

[Doc Creed]

“The modern age knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air."

Angle of Repose- Wallace Stegner

 

[MadamMack]

(May not be exact but I am quoting from memory . . .)

Scott from Lisey's Story:
Stephen King

"I always was one of your whiter, white men --but since I've lost all of that blood I'm in the top ten!"

 

[GNTLGNT]

“Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.”
― Dean Koontz, From the Corner of His Eye