/lit/ - Literature

In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.

A screaming comes across the sky.

>>11610403
this one is pretty nice

I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

>>11610425
awful nonsense

Shadow had done three years in prison.

>>11610433
How is it nonesense? Perfectly understandable

See the kid.

>>11610446
Explain.

"Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time."

>>11610459
it's just describing the course of the river in dublin

Eve and Adams is a church

>>11610425
Sean Penn?

M O O C O W

>>11610403
boring
>>11610410
bad
>>11610422
really good
>>11610425
best
>>11610437
shit
>>11610469
meh

>>11610518
>shit taste

>>11610425
this

>>11610403
Biblical. A classic.
>>11610410
Cool af.
>>11610422
Nice.
>>11610425
Terrible.
>>11610437
Meh.
>>11610451
Nice.
>>11610469
Meh.

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

It was a pleasure to burn.

"By the gods, I've transformed into an anthropomorphic skunk!" yelled Kenjiru as he smashed his fist (paw) into his bathroom mirror.

"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."

>>11610542
Where is this from?

I like this one very much:

'I'll tell you about yet another adventure of mine, probably one of the most disastrous'

>>11610425
>Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's
The prosody/meter is crap
>from swerve of shore to bend of bay
Meh
>brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Into the trash it goes!

>>11610573
Kafka on the Shore

>>11610399
Reads true as well.

Call me Ishmael.

>>11610591
>brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
That bit is Sean Penn-tier.

>>11610518
>really shit taste

It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him.

>Vreme trece, vreme vine,
>Toate-s vechi şi nouă toate;
>Ce e rău şi ce e bine
>Tu te-ntreabă şi socoate;
>Nu spera şi nu ai teamă,
>Ce e val ca valul trece;
>De te-ndeamnă, de te cheamă,
>Tu rămâi la toate rece.

>>11610608
>>11610591
>Being this much of a fucking idiot

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...

>>11610399
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita

A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

>>11610981
is this american psycho?

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

>>11610518
>>11610532

Not useful.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way

>>11611010
Lol. The non fiction edition

>>11611010

yugemerican

>>11610538
This grabbed my attention. Where is it from?

Sorry it's a whole paragraph:

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtain, muscadine, spine-cabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.

Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a culvert. Rusted wire and tilted posts more a symbol of restraint than a fence per se. NO HUNTING. The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak. The pasture's crows standing at angles, turning up patties to get at the worms underneath, the shapes of the worms incised in the overturned dung and baked by the sun all day until hardened, there to stay, tiny vacant lines in rows and inset curls that do not close because head never quite touches tail. Read these.

>>11611010
I think it’s “The Art of the Deal” by Donald J. Trump

>>11611026
Are you the faggot from the poetry thread?

>>11611097
>by Donald J. Trump

>>11611097
it's Art of the Deal about Donald Trump
he didn't write a word of it

>>11611104

> The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

>>11611107
See
>>11611113

>>11611113
>>11611118

>>11610399
Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

>>11611173
Sounds some shit pseudo-profound Gandalf quote

>>11611075
Fahrenheit 451

>>11611125
Fake News

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus

>>11611179
I find it coincidentally fitting that you ascribed it to a heavily mythologically inspired novel when it is from a theologically inspired novel.

>>11611208
LotR was ultimately Catholic though - what's it from?

>>11611114
Nice

>>11611217

Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

>>11611236
Ah interesting because I really loved The Magic Mountain and am planning to read his Doctor Faustus next

>>11610422
that's from my diary desu

>>11610425
>opening

>>11610403
Based

>>11611083
Is this from your unpublished novel?

>>11611329
Yeah what do you think?

Sent from my Telentertainment Interlace Videophone[1]

[1]932/1864 R.I.S.C. power-TPs w/console,
Pink2, post-Primestar D.S.S. dissemination, menus and icons, pixel-free Internet Fax, tri- and quad-modems w/ adjustable baud

Un espectro se cierne sobre Europa.

CRASH, my golden retriever must have made pancakes.

The Man In Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.

Seriously, it's Finnegans Wake. It's a mind virus, ever since I first read it I've obsessively played those opening paragraphs in my head from time to time. There's something so perfect about it

>>11611383
I agree, the anon above is right in a sense, there is something that seems slightly off or awkward about its construction, from the flowing alliteration to anomalous 'commodius vicus', but it is like an earworm because it gets stuck in your head. Like a song with a weird chord change that is jarring when you first hear it but then means the song is lodged in your head

>>11610537
disgusting

>>11611407
I've unintentionally memorized the entire first page (sans most of the thunderword) just by going over it in my head so often

>and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.
Nearly brings me to tears and I don't even know why

>>11610537
What translation

"The Holocaust didn't happen, but I wish it did."

Call me Ishmael.
>>11611376
Holy... I need more!

>>11610537
Dante's comedy . Nice anon !

Johnny took out the black crayons whenever he brought a new box into his household. He wouldn't have a nigger color on his kid's drawings.

>>11611448
Yeah man I try explaining the pure power of the language and the imagery in Wake to people but they all assume you only pretend to like in a show of intellect, but at times it is truly devastating and always gorgeous. It does something to me in a way no other book does:

'The augustan peacebetothem oaks, the monolith rising stark from the moonlit pinebarren.'

'Before he fell hill he filled heaven: a stream, alplapping streamlet, coyly coiled um, cool of her curls'

'The unforgettable treeshade looms before the jostling judgements of those, as all should owe, malrecapturable days.'

>>11611125
>according to schwartz in july 2016

zzzzzzZZZzz

>>11610549
I still don't know how to feel about Earthly Powers

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

>>11610399
It was a dark and stormy night.

>>11611621
This is probably his greatest work but this line makes me cringe

he night before the Oklahoma rally I met with my campaign manger, Robby Mook. Robby was in charge of the campaign computers, but he was so smart that in many was he was like a computer. He had bad news. "Oklahomans see you as an aloof New York intellectual," he explained. "They'll never vote for someone like that. You need an image they can understand and respect."

"What if I ate a big hunk of beef on stage?" I helpfully suggested. "We need to think bigger," said Robby. "I've consulted the Algorithm. It told me that Oklahoma voters love cowboys." I liked where this was going. "It also told me that what they hate most is ... cattle rustlers."

>>11610425
>opening line

>>11611668
>>11611310
Sorry, this is the line I meant to post:
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/joyce/james/j8f/

>>11610981
"The Art of the Deal" by our God Emperor, I presume? Shit...it's actually quite good!

Call me Ishmael.

>>11611689
Oh no no no

>>11610606
this one

>>11611591
>Before he fell hill he filled heaven
God fucking dammit joyce knew what he was doing

>>11610403
*In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth...

>>11611745
No, this one
>>11611713

>Dear diary, today a girl smiled at me.

from my diary, by me

>>11610399
Ça a débuté comme ça.

>>11610399
>>11610403
>>11610422
>>11610425
All of these are complete dogshit. Remind me why we like literature again?

>>11610537
nice

>>11611420
t. Italian

>>11611376
ultra based

>>11611204
This is definitely an strong opening, though I've read more impressive translations of it.

>>11611023
this

>>11610399
>Who’s there?

>>11611994
>I am [seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies]

Very clever Mr Wallace

i came to kill the bad thread

>>11611047
This is what I was going to say.

>>11612021
Do you really think I'm going to read any of this?

>>11610591
>>11610608
Anon, I'm going to have to request that you leave. I mean you no ill will and wish no harm upon you, but I am having a very hard time keeping calm while knowing that these posts are currently up on this board. Please do me a big favor and don't make another post like that again. I can't be held completely responsible for what I might do in the mental state I'd enter if such a post were to be made. I hope you understand.

I wish you the best and want to thank you for your time
- Isaac

>>11612021
hmmmmm
>>11611799

>>11612054
This. Whoever this Joyce hater is obviously has some issues - perhaps he has a fart fetish and is envious that Joyce was able to satisfy his desires in that department, so he things that spouting these asinine opinions will shield his envy, while in fact all they do is magnify it thousandfold. You will never have a such a dirty little fuckbird as Joyce had in Nora and I know that must tear you up inside, anon, but don't take it out on Joyce

>>11610630
i like that one, too.

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice which I've been turning over in my mind ever since. He said, "Whenever you feel like criticizing someone, just remember that they haven't had all of the advantages that you've had." And I considered this to be good advice...until I met Jay Gatsby.

>>11612050
Don't give a shit if you do. Why would you even ask, lmao. The absolute state of brainlit

>>11612158
>Posts something
>I don't give a shit if you read it or not!
Sure.

>>11612166
Happy if some people read it Don't care that the poster didn't.

>>11610399
It began as a mistake

>>11612054
Did that hurt your fee-fees? :(

>>11610403
fpbp

Waking up to a loud crash rarely means something good is happening. It’s never “CRASH! Mom made pancakes!” or “CRASH! We decided to adopt a Golden Retriever!”

>>11612514
based and redpilled

>>11612514
Holy..... I want more.....

>>11612085
I don't envy him I just think that's a bad opening line, also I have my own fuckbird :D

>>11610403
In the beginning, God farted (lol)

>>11612727
ha ha!

"FUCK YOU AND YOUR GOAT-LOVING ANALSAUSAGE FUCK FACTORY!" Lucifer Niggerbastard screamed, giving the shape in the window a double-handed flip-off.

>>11611204
>first word in the Greek is Μῆνιν
>durr sing

Anger be now your song, immortal one, Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous, that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss and crowded brave souls into the undergloom, leaving so many dead men--carrion for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done. Begin it when the two men first contending broke with one another--
the Lord Marshal Agamémnon, Atreus' son, and Prince Akhilleus.

>>11611204
>first word in the Greek is Μῆνιν
>durrr sing

Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men--carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another--
the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus' son, and Prince Akhilleus.

>>11612185
Why even post it then?

>>11612615
>>11612654

>americans

>>11610425
goat

>>11612654
I didn't know this response was a meme until now that I've seen it for maybe the third time in a year.

>>11610399
I sing of arms and the man who of old from the coasts of Troy came, an exile of fate, to Italy and the shore of Lavinium; hard driven on land and on the deep by the violence of heaven, for cruel Juno's unforgetful anger, and hard bestead in war also, ere he might found a city and carry his gods into Latium; from whom is the Latin race, the lords of Alba, and the stately city Rome.

>>11610399
I never thought this was good at all. It's cringe-core as far as opening lines go.

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

>>11610399
“The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed trough the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with coversation and laughter, the clatter and clamour one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of the night. If there had been music…but no, of curse there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained.

Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. they drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing these they added a small, sullen silenceto the lager, hollow one. it made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint.

The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone heart that held the heat of a long-dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. and it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a strech of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

The man had true-red hair, red as flame. his eyes was dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things.

The Waystone was is, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wapping the other inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

>>11612809
Which translation is that from?

>Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

>>11614043
Robert Fitzgerald

Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.

>I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me

An den Ufern der Havel lebte, um die Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, ein Roßhändler, namens Michael Kohlhaas, Sohn eines Schulmeisters, einer der rechtschaffensten zugleich und entsetzlichsten Menschen seiner Zeit. – Dieser außerordentliche Mann würde, bis in sein dreißigstes Jahr für das Muster eines guten Staatsbürgers haben gelten können. Er besaß in einem Dorfe, das noch von ihm den Namen führt, einen Meierhof, auf welchem er sich durch sein Gewerbe ruhig ernährte; die Kinder, die ihm sein Weib schenkte, erzog er, in der Furcht Gottes, zur Arbeitsamkeit und Treue; nicht einer war unter seinen Nachbarn, der sich nicht seiner Wohltätigkeit, oder seiner Gerechtigkeit erfreut hätte; kurz, die Welt würde sein Andenken haben segnen müssen, wenn er in einer Tugend nicht ausgeschweift hätte. Das Rechtgefühl aber machte ihn zum Räuber und Mörder.

>>11612809
I like you. Everyone sucks Lattimore's cock, he doesn't deserve it.

>>11614444
checked

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

>>11610399
>What is the greatest opening line of all time?
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Only one enemy remained, two if you counted God.

>>11613919
So you just realize now that people had been laughing at you in those critique thread?

>>11614431
>Mother
>not Maman
At least read a good translation anon.

>>11614545
Woah..... feels like i've just taken the reddest of all the pills.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

>>11611376
laughed out loud

>>11614441
On the banks where Havel lived, in the middle of the 16th Century...

I gave up right there and that probably explains why, though I've passed the CEFR B2, I'm not very competent in German. It's just too God-damned boring.

"We will all die, and we will leave the world no poorer when we do."

It's from a very obscure and really not-that-great novel published in the Nineties, whose title and author I forget, but the opening line always stuck with me because I am absolutely certain he cribbed it from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

Justice? – You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law

>>11614801
This is a great one

>>11611591
tfw streamlet

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

>>11610399
My father is a son-of-a-bitch from eastern Europe.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

>>11610403
*In the beginning God was making the heavens and the Earth

>>11614938
I'm not american though so the joke's on DeLillo

"En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme..."

>>11610399
Hitler did nothing wrong

>>11611633
Name THREE (3) books that do this

>>11612158
*do you really think anyone will read all that shit

>>11614646
Maman is fucking stupid, I want my translation in English.
"Today, my mom died. Or maybe it was yesterday, I can't be sure."

>>11610399
“They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

>>11614966
As a non-American, I can't take the word 'mom' seriously.

>>11615068
As a non-American I can.

>>11610591
>capitalizing Riverrun
fucking idiot

"Grandpa pissed his pants again He don't give a damn"

>>11615734
This

>>11611075
>At sunrise on a first of April, there appeared, suddenly as Manco Capac at the lake Titicaca, a man in cream-colors, at the water-side in the city of St. Louis.

>>11615914
So overrated

>>11615957
Did not mean to quote >>11611075

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times

Mine has been a life of much shame.

>>11610399
the curious incident of the dog in the nightime

>>11610399
He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion.

>>11612727
rofl!

"One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary."

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.

>>11611373
lol estudias en la UNAM verdad?

>>11615914
this but in spanish

>>11617378
of course in spanish... this guy gets it

>>11612837
I don't care if anyone in particular reads it, how is the distinction so hard for you brainlets to get

>>11614545
Holy...I want more
Instantly I'm thinking why is god an enemy?

>>11610605
lrn 2 autofocus

Hwæt!

>>11617438
leave reddit

>>11610399
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown

>>11617730
>Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown
That's a film
And the last line
Great film though

>>11617538
>

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

>>11618182
Damn Daniel!

>>11610451
it's "See the child."

>>11610981
This is actually great, though.

>>11610648
pleak de aici ca literatura romana inca imi da coșmaruri.

Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I.

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.

>>11611097
>by Donald J. Trump

That's President Donald J. Trump.

>He sat at his desk, wearily watching the children file out of the room, reflecting that, this term at least, it was reasonable to assume that none of the girls was pregnant.

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy sat out of it, as though he were free, in a mew in West Brompton.”

>>11610399
Physicist Leonardo Vetra smelled burning flesh, and he knew it was his own.

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;——Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,——I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world from that in which the reader is likely to see me.

>>11611263
Came to this

>>11610985
Underrated.

>>11619185
>consider’d

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

>>11610537
No
>>11611002
Yes

>>11617230
>>11614060
hadn't read these before, nice

>>11610981
>I do it to do it
>I Am that I Am
God-Emperor

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, "If on a winter's night a Colonel Aureliano Buendia". All this happened, more or less. It is the saddest story I have ever heard. You don't know about Colonel Aureliano Buendia without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where Colonel Aureliano Buendia was born, and what his lousy childhood was like, and how his parents were occupied and all before they had him, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. If you really want to know, however, he is an invisible man, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and goes at things as he has taught himself, free-style, and will make the record in his own way. He is a sick man ... he is a spiteful man. He was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Buendia. In his younger and more vulnerable years, his father gave him some advice that he'd been turning over in his mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told him, "just remember that happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way".

Many years later (or maybe it was yesterday, I don't know), as he faced the firing squad (someone must have slandered him, for, without having done anything truly wrong, he woke up in bed from uneasy dreams to find himself arrested), Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when a screaming came across the sky, the screaming of Lolita, light of his life, fire of his loins. It was the afternoon of his eighty-first birthday, and he was in bed with his catamite when Ali announced that a nymphet had come to see him. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good catamite, must also be in want of a nymphet. "Call me Ishmael," the nymphet said, on that bright cold day in April as the clocks were striking thirteen, stately coming from the staircase, bearing a bowl of fondue in which the hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch.

It was a queer, sultry April, the April they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, with the sun shining, having no alternative, on the nothing new, and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills, and Colonel Aureliano Buendia didn't know what he was doing in New York. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. "Now is the spring of our discontent," he said.

"You better not tell nobody but God," the nymphet went on. Colonel Aureliano Buendia remembered that time that he was seated in an office surrounded by heads and bodies, and through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, he could see them hitting Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

>>11612727
dude!

>>11619029
More like Donald GAY Trump lol get fucked incels

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Als Zarathustra dreißig Jahre alt war, verließ er seine Heimat und den See seiner Heimat und ging in das Gebirge. Hier genoß er seines Geistes und seiner Einsamkeit und wurde dessen zehn Jahre nicht müde.

>>11610399
My favorites include Charles Dickens classic:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Also from the Marquise of O--- by Heinrich Von Kleist:

In M—, an important town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O—, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought-up children, inserted thefollowing announcement in the newspapers: that she had, without knowledge of thecause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she would like the father of thechild she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; and that she was resolved, out of consideration for her family, to marry him.

>>11610399
One fine morning in May, a slim young horsewoman might have been seen riding a glossy sorrel mare along the avenues of the Bois, among the flowers.

>>11620332
Highly impressive

>>11610399
>So there I was, chilling out in the Hypersphere.

>>11620833
Actually good.

>>11620833
>The Hypersphere is a big fucking place, kid.

>"I am an invisible man, written by Ralph Ellison" - Invisible Man, written by Ralph Ellison

>>11610399
Garbage

>>11610399
>loli, muh waifu
fuck off

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race

Once upon a time

>>11610399
O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
ever waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
playing with mental clarity;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

>>11619131
greatest

>>11610603
hmmm

RULES? MORE RULES? REALLY? Isn’t life complicated enough, restricting enough, without abstract rules that don’t take our unique, individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic, and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that a few rules might be helpful to us all?

>Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa – das Gespenst des Kommunismus.

>>11610403
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

>>11622222
Nice digits senpai

>>11610537
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.
Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

>>11610981
legit good lol

>>11611047
Yes. Good answer. The first time I read Anna Karenina this opening sentence really made me put the book down and reflect for a minute or two.

>>11610422
thanks for the new tinder bio

>>11611208
*tips fedora*

>>11610606
>>11611713
>>11611553

>>11614885
I can't tell if I like this one. But it did draw attention, which I suppose is a good thing

>>11611591

>The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish

The intro to the excerpt of John Greene’s new book

It wasn't titled Moby Dick until after it was written, it was titled: The Whale. Stupid fucking comic, retard

>>11623031
OWNED

>>11610433
I fear that non-Irish readers will never truly be able to appreciate the genius of Joyce's writing. It speaks to something inherently Irish within us, a direct conversation with our culture, mannerisms and way of life that foreigners will never be able to begin to understand. When I read Joyce, I can picture one of the lads telling me a drunken story in the corner of a pub in the back arse of Galway. I can feel the passion for the Irish identity, that unique brand of personality that seems to pervade our island and nowhere else. Other people can't empathise with our experience as a culture attempting to pull ourselves out from a wreck of stolen belonging. I think it is this entirely singular national experience that leads to Ireland producing so many great artists.

>>11611329
>>11611367
Underrated

>>11622766
>he/she hasn't read Neuromancer

A SPECTRE is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

>>11623141
TL;DR: Paddy faggot jerking himself off because he's of a race of drunkards and gypsies

>>11614955
This one.
>>11620411
Also great.
And Ishmael of course.

>>11623141
You mean the part 'bout farts?

>>11611114
>the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
So, bright blue?

>>11611114
came here to post this one
>>11623348
funny thing is what people envision changes based on when/where they grew up

>>11618991
I don’t think that’s the opening line

>>11614658
fantastic

>>11612117
Came to post this. Absolute.

>>11622141
Based

>>11622222
The Quints of Destiny

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

>>11612021
Where is this from?

>>11625101
It's Journey to the End of the Night

>>11610981
Sincerely good.

>>11624994
Which book?

>>11625223
Quran

Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.

>>11614441
>>11614773
>Havel

>>11620332
If this isn't pasta then congrats

>>11611114
this

The police had taken my pistol the day before, but I wasn’t without heavy arms.