IMHO: "Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery." The Road by Cormac Mccarthy that shit is POWERFUL. i wish i could write half as well as cormac mccarthy what do you guys think are the best paragraphs or sentences ever written?
"I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluable by the annihilation of one of us" "Be calm! I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself...but I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss from which I am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous." This is probably the most powerful literature I've ever read. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
I really love "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary" And (after seeing a nude painting hanging in a drawing room) "Archer enjoyed such challenges to convention, he questioned conformity in private, but in public he upheld family and tradition, this was a world balanced so precariously that it's harmony could be shattered by a whisper." This is from The Age of Innocence, the movie version, and even though it isn't written by Edith Wharton, it embodies her style and the overall point of the story so perfectly. But typically I don't like when certain paragraphs really stick out of a work; I am one to prefer the work overall to be masterful, and the sentences to blur together and make the meaning stand out.
And as we wind on down the road our shadows taller than our soul there walks a lady we all know who shines white light and wants to show how everything still turns to gold and if you listen very hard the truth will come to you at last when all are one and one is all to be a rock and not roll... And she's buying the stairway to heaven -Robert plant
i see what you're saying. I think thats why I like that paragraph from The Road so much. Its the last paragraph in the book and it elevates the book from being a generic post apolyptic story to being a cautionary tale that really makes the reader examine their footprint on this earth. It elevates it to a work that is overall masterful. Led Zepplin lyrics are amazing; they're very literary. They draw a lot from Lord of the Rings, which is my favorite book of all time.
Keep your fingers out of my eye. While I write I like to glance at the butterflies in glass that are all around the walls. The people in memory are pinned to events I can't recall too well, but I'm putting one down to watch him break up, decompose and feed another sort of life. The one in question is all fully biodegradable material and categorized as 'Rael'. Rael hates me, I like Rael, -- yes, even ostriches have feelings, but our relationship is something both of us are learning to live with. Rael likes a good time, I like a good rhyme, but you won't see me directly anymore -- he hates my being around. So if his story doesn't stand, I might lend a hand, you understand? (ie. the rhyme is planned, dummies). The flickering needle jumps into red. New York crawls out of its bed. The weary guests are asked to leave the warmth of the all-night theater, having slept on pictures others only dream on. The un-paid extras disturb the Sleeping Broadway. WALK to the left DON'T WALK to the right: on Broadway, directions don't look so bright. Autoghosts keep the pace for the cabman's early mobile race. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Peter Gabriel Read more: http://www.genesisfan.net/genesis-articles/the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway-story#ixzz113zlH18G
Open "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche to almost any page. Some of his other work is also noteworthy: From "The Gay Science": 125. The madman.— Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"— As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?— Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried. "I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?—Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives,—who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed,—and whoever is born after us, for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto!"— Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners: they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves!"— It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
I really love when the end of a book completely changes your perception and the meaning of what you've just been reading; the best example I can think of is Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. When I finally got to the chapter that explains what the whole thing is about, I was just floored by it. It was like a caterpillar popping out of the cocoon as a butterfly, or more apt a butterfly popping out of a cocoon as something even more beautiful =P But the ending that does that that I would want to post in this thread is I Am Legend's, but I just couldn't possibly spoil it.
I've been wanting to read I Am Legend, I saw the movie and found it surprisingly good. I heard the ending in the book is completely different
The whole book is completely different. The movie looks like Care Bears next to the book. The dog sideplot is really sad in the movie, in the book, it's downright devastating.
