Book Quotes: King And Beyond.

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Doc Creed

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"Nel alone noticed the peculiar quality of the May that followed the leaving of the birds. It had a sheen, a glimmering as of green, rain-soaked Saturday nights (lit by the excitement of newly installed street lights); of lemon-yellow afternoons bright with iced drinks and splashes of daffodils. It showed in the damp faces of her children and the river-smoothness of their voices. Even her own body was not immune to the magic."

-Sula, Toni Morrison
 

Doc Creed

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"I put them in my pocket yesterday," he said, "before we went shopping. Mommy, is the monster going to eat us?"

"It's not a monster, Tad, it's just a dog, and no, it isn't going to eat us!" She spoke more sharply than she intended. "I told you, when the mailman comes, we can go home."

Cujo, Stephen King
 

Mocos

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Mar 6, 2016
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“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”


Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Back when incredible wisdom could be found in children's books.
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
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Apr 11, 2006
53,634
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The High Seas
“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”


Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Back when incredible wisdom could be found in children's books.
beautiful
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
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USA
“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”


Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Back when incredible wisdom could be found in children's books.
My all time favorite book ever. Thank you.
 

muskrat

Dis-Member
Nov 8, 2010
4,518
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Under your bed
“Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier. Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn’t; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway’s warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise. Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk. Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word."

Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
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“When you're really cute that's all you have to be, you make a career out of it. Someone asks you what you do, you say, 'Nothing. I'm cute.” Elmore Leonard, Killshot

"It's grown people who always believe the worst." Harper Lee, Go Set A Watchman

"We each devise our means of escape from the intolerable." William Styron, A Tidewater Morning

"The enemy you flee is not exterior to yourself." John Barth, The Floating Opera

“...our own barbaric civilization, in awe of the act of creation, does not respect creation at all.” Péter Nádas, A Book of Memories

"The dirty Romans are forming up for Calvary." John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

"I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy." Joseph Heller, Something Happened


"Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good." Cervantes, Don Quixote

"Fate is the ultimate preexisting condition." Mark Leyner, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

“Inside the coop where he'll stay until he's killed, the rooster sings anthems to liberty because he was given two roosts.” Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Do you want me to shoot thee, Ingles?...quieres? It is nothing.” Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

"MADE FOR TELEVISION." John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
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"So what was it then exactly, this truth telling? They would always want even the explanation explained! And any writer worth her salt would lead them on, tease them, lead them up the garden path. Wasn't it bloody obvious? It was about being true to the very stuff of life, it was about trying to capture, though you never could, the very feel of being alive. It was about finding a language. And it was about being true to the fact, the one thing only followed from the other, that many things in life--oh so many more than we think--can never be explained at all."

--Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday: A Romance

This quote reminded me of the gritching about some of Mr. King's endings: "...that many things in life--oh so many more than we think--can never be explained at all." :) P.S., Swift is using the classical meaning of 'romance' in his title: an act of chivalry. I've read some reviews where the reviewer obviously did not get what they were expecting (contemporary romance) at all--lol.
 

kingricefan

All-being, keeper of Space, Time & Dimension.
Jul 11, 2006
30,011
127,446
Spokane, WA
'Learning the other ways into Nodd's Ridge, the back roads, takes a lifetime of living there. Since she was from away, Pearl Dickenson arrived by way of Route Five. The first thing she saw was the view for which the Ridge was famous. One comes upon the skyward folding of the land into the White Mountains as a sudden revelation: all at once the woods open up around the individual houses of the village, standing apart from each other in a community of privacy, their backs to the ancient splendid hills. The lake is a wedge of sapphire in the middle ground between, a blue tear in all that rooted rock and green hallelujah of trees. Pearl forgot what she was looking for this very place. Swinging into the scenic turnout, she gawked like a thousand other passer-through.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," she said aloud, "I've died and gone to heaven." '

Pearl by Tabitha King
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
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"In fiction it's never benign."

"This was my favorite kind of sex, sex based on being impressed. We kissed like we'd been kissing for days, like it was important, like something bad would happen if we stopped."

-Rebecca Schiff, The Bed Moved
 

danie

I am whatever you say I am.
Feb 26, 2008
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“Sugar leans her chin against the knuckles of the hand that holds the pen. Glistening on the page between her silk-shrouded elbows lies an unfinished sentence. The heroine of her novel has just slashed the throat of a man. The problem is how, precisely, the blood will flow. Flow is too gentle a word; spill implies carelessness; spurt is out of the question because she has used the word already, in another context, a few lines earlier. Pour out implies that the man has some control over the matter, which he most emphatically doesn’t; leak is too feeble for the savagery of the injury she has inflicted upon him. Sugar closes her eyes and watches, in the lurid theatre of her mind, the blood issue from the slit neck. When Mrs Castaway’s warning bell sounds, she jerks in surprise. Hastily, she scrutinises her bedroom. Everything is neat and tidy. All her papers are hidden away, except for this single sheet on her writing-desk. Spew, she writes, having finally been given, by tardy Providence, the needful word."

Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White
One of my very favorite books. Thanks for reminding me why. :)
 

Doc Creed

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Nov 18, 2015
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"So what was it then exactly, this truth telling? They would always want even the explanation explained! And any writer worth her salt would lead them on, tease them, lead them up the garden path. Wasn't it bloody obvious? It was about being true to the very stuff of life, it was about trying to capture, though you never could, the very feel of being alive. It was about finding a language. And it was about being true to the fact, the one thing only followed from the other, that many things in life--oh so many more than we think--can never be explained at all."

--Graham Swift, Mothering Sunday: A Romance

This quote reminded me of the gritching about some of Mr. King's endings: "...that many things in life--oh so many more than we think--can never be explained at all." :) P.S., Swift is using the classical meaning of 'romance' in his title: an act of chivalry. I've read some reviews where the reviewer obviously did not get what they were expecting (contemporary romance) at all--lol.
I really liked Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (can't recall precise title). This quote reminded me of it. I'll have to look for Graham Swift. Also, I've used the romance word before in the classical sense to describe something and I could tell the listener didn't quite follow. Even if you explain it or bring up the Romantic Period of music (e.g., Beethoven) or other examples, the word is almost never connected to its original connotation.
 

skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
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I really liked Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (can't recall precise title). This quote reminded me of it. I'll have to look for Graham Swift. Also, I've used the romance word before in the classical sense to describe something and I could tell the listener didn't quite follow. Even if you explain it or bring up the Romantic Period of music (e.g., Beethoven) or other examples, the word is almost never connected to its original connotation.
I sincerely loved this book, and I think you would as well. I intend on looking up other books by Swift now.
 

Spideyman

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Jul 10, 2006
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Just north of Duma Key

Doc Creed

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Nov 18, 2015
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"There was something about me that usually kept me from dreaming, or maybe kept me from remembering what I had dreamed; I was either awake or dead, and I always came back slowly. I had the feeling that if it were perfectly quiet, if I could hear nothing, I would never wake up. Something in the world had to pull me back, for every night I went down deep, and if I had any sensation during sleep, it was of going deeper and deeper, trying to reach a point, a line or border."

-Deliverance, James Dickey

One of my favorite novels.
 

muskrat

Dis-Member
Nov 8, 2010
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Under your bed
“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time...”

--Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
 

Andy1963

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May 2, 2016
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2 King quotes that mean a lot to me:

"How we danced".
Sadie's last words to Jake before she died.
I think we all should dance well as dance can be read as live.

The second I may be paraphrasing because I don't have the book any more and read it about 30 years ago, from The Dead Zone, " We all do what we can and it has to be good enough, if it isn't good enough it has to do".

I think both of these quotes have the same meaning.