/lit/ - Literature

"And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

>>20036326
No joke, I nearly cried when I read that when I was 13.

I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

>>20036338
Oh, and here's mine:
"What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past."
- Graham Swift, Waterland

>>20036338
Kek. LOTF has a lot of great sentences.
"The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on."

>Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.

"You won't let me drop this time?"
"No," Roland said. "Not this time, not ever again." But in the deepest darkness of his heart, he thought of the Tower and wondered.

TELL ME
WHAT DO YOU SEE
TELL ME
WHAT AM I

>>20036360
I never understood why this book gets so much hate, I loved it.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink.

My favorite Lovecrafty sentences:

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

A fine example of classical literary autism.

…I am thinking that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph

>And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.
The GOAT

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.

>>20036630
This is great

We shook hands and I started away. Just before I reached the hedge I remembered something and turned around.
"They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."

It was five hours later and almost dark before they took him down.

>>20036316

>>20036316
"Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. But most of all, he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."

I love Joyce's prose.

>>20036316
"When the gargoyle spics, stink beetles, fancy chimps, ghetto-dwellers, secular mudslimes, sharia derka derkas, bible-trash, liberal kikes, kapo-kikes, straightly queer protestants, nigger-jews, tomahawk niggers, atheist basement virgins, handicapped lesbians, neckbearded dykes, ching-chong ladyboys, gook half-breeds, transsexual retirees, stoner garbage gnomes and Constitutionalist sex offenders started marching together, I knew it wouldn’t be very long before the curtain went up."

>>20036316
The gunshot echoed like a ghost with nobody to haunt.

>>20036316

"He laughed - having farted." F. Gardner, Call of the Bicycle

>>20037324
The Alec Baldwin Chronicles

Mange, tu n'sais pas qui t'mangera.

>>20036316
>I don't know what places trod the likes of Da Vinci or Einstein but I was doing circuits around Jefferson middle school again.

>I may have alzheimer's.... But at least I don't have alzheimer's

>>20036604
Is this henry james? Fucking kek

>>20036626
That's pretty neat, what's it from?

One of my favorites portions (there are dozens of lines in this book tho)
>The years, doubtless, went round then as now, but in my memory it seems to have been all springs and summers. I think the almonds and the cherries blossomed earlier in those years and the blossoms lasted longer; how they hung on in such winds I don’t know, for I see the boughs always rocking and dancing against blue-and-white skies, and their shadows flowing water-like over all the hills and valleys of Psyche’s body. I wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother. I wanted to be a boy so that she could be in love with me. I wanted her to be my full sister instead of my half sister. I wanted her to be a slave so that I could set her free and make her rich.

>>20036316
"In her heart she carried an instinct like that of a migrant species."

>>20037279
>Straightly queer protestants
kek

If William Burroughs was born in 1993 this would be an excerpt from the 21st century Naked Lunch.

>>20037391
>what's it from?
Ulysses of course

>>20036316

“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”

A nifty aphorism, even if it isn’t true

>>20037363

it just gets creepier every time I read it, and that comparison of himself to da vinci and einstein lol

>>20037391
>Is this henry james? Fucking kek
Seriously?

>>20037363
fucking love it lmao i hope this guy actually releases the book

There's loads to pick but I like Old man by the sea's:
'He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great fish. He only dreamed of places now.'

Getting old makes me sad.

alone he watched the sky go out, dark deepen to its full. he kept an eye on the engulfed horizon for he knew from experience what last throes it was capable of. and in the dark he could hear better, too, he could hear the sounds the long day had kept from him, human murmurs for example and the rain on the water

quoted from memory

>>20037391
fucking retard, those were two of the stupidest questions i've read lately

I write down some of them.

Joubert's writings are specially kino.

"But then, finally comes the day where one grows old"

"Only the works which have, if not worked in, at least thought of, are good."

"My discoverings bring me back to my prejudices."

"No reason, no words"

I think this one was from Faust.
"Maybe in maturity you'll learn that running away achieves nothing"

This one's from Bolaño's Night in Chile
"Man must be responsible of his words, and of his silence"

Some also get me because of how fucking silly or stupid they are.

From one of Bukowski's short stories, can't remember which one.
"She says I have a drinking problem, fucking bullshit" I said as I pulled out two six packs of beer from the fridge."

and from Vizinczey's In praise of older women
"Since I couldn't rape her, I fell in love with her"

And that's about the ones I had written down or I can remember right now.